As one of the longtime skeptics about allowing comments in the Corner, I’ve pretty much come around/caved into history. The vast majority of comments — including most of the snarky ones at me — have been perfectly fine and even more than occasionally edifying. My question is, Why so few? Is it still a big pain to register? Does the pump need to be primed somehow? I know Rich asked this a couple weeks ago, but I was wondering if thinking changed on the matter.
Comment below if you can, email me if you must.
Update: From a reader:
Jonah,
I was amazed to see your post as this might mean you don’t know that the comments feature doesn’t work. I’ve tried posting comments many, many times but with only two exceptions it never works. I Emailed your website guy and he said that to post a comment I first had to empty my cache, and then erase any national review cookies on my system, and then I should be able to post. That worked on two of the comments I was able to post, but for all the other it didn’t work.
What typically happens is that it tells me I have to log on before I can comment. I log on, but then I got back to the post and it still tells me I have to log on first before commenting. I’ve also had many instances where I was logged on and I wrote a comment, but then after hitting the preview button it just took me back to the original post.
I tried fixes for a few days but then just gave up. Today I decided I’d try one more time so I emptied my cache and deleted all the national review cookies and tried posting. To my surprise it worked this time. Perhaps the comment problems were fixed, or perhaps I just got lucky. If something was fixed, then Rich should make an announcement.
If the NRO comment field was working you’d see hundreds of comments in some of these posts.
Well, that’s certainly one plausible explanation.