Paul Krugman is going to “try an experiment“:
As regular readers know, a lot of comment inches on every post are taken up by the same few ranters, who say the same thing every time . . .
This from the guy who has spent the entire summer rewriting the same blog post: (Brad DeLong/Ezra Klein/David Leonhardt) agree with me that we’re in a liquidity trap, deflation is near, the stimulus wasn’t big enough, and European austerity will plunge us deeper into a global depression. Deficits don’t matter, and even if they did, it is all George Bush’s fault for cutting taxes for the rich and fighting wars. Unfortunately, that coward Ben Bernanke appears to be taking his marching orders from (Kenneth Rogoff/John Taylor/Niall Ferguson), and he refuses to run the printing presses at warp speed. Doesn’t he realize that I have a chart here that proves that I’m right and the rest of you are morons? See you in the breadlines. Well, I won’t be there personally. I’m rich. I’ll be on St. John. But it will suck for you . . . etc.
. . . it kind of degrades the experience for everyone else.
Everyone else, meaning Krugman’s sycophants in the comments section who also say the same thing every time.
But I’m not going to edit out hostile comments (and by the way, neither I nor the various other people who moderate here ever have.) What I’m going to try instead is a three-inch rule: if it takes up more than about 3 inches on my screen, I’m going to tag it as spam.
I thought the NYT already had a 5,000-character limit on comments, as well as comment moderators who remove abusive and profane comments. Krugman’s policy seems geared to limit comments to “Yay Dr. K!” “Way to go!” “Keynes was right!” etc. But, whatever. It’s his comments section.