The Saker is the latest to discover that limiting comments becomes inevitable once a sufficient readership is obtained:
The problem is that this explosion in readership brought A LOT of new commentators who are not regular readers of the blog and whose comments were often quite disruptive of the normal mood of our comments section. So alongside plenty of very good commentators, many with true expertise, we good flooded with all sorts of very unhelpful types, including for example these:
GROUP A: the sincere (however misguided) ones
“Drive by commentators”: they leave one sentence, such as ” this author is an IDIOT”. No argument, nothing, just an insult.
“Preachers”: they have some agenda, say that nuclear weapons are an invention and do not exist. They will not even bother reading the article, they will just plug their slogans.
“Jew haters”: for these folks, Jew and only Jews, are responsible for all the bad things in creation, so all they can talk about is Jews, Jews, Jews and more Jews. These are the folks who will use that stupid trick of writing trick (((Raevsky))) around the name of anybody they suspect might be a Jew.
“Religious nutcases and assorted Bible-thumpers”: for them it is all about quoting Scripture ad nauseam no matter what the topic is. The worst of those are those who think that they know something about Christianity but, in reality, not only know close to nothing, but the little they know, they wholly misunderstand. They will bombard you with scriptural quotes to try to hide their own ignorance of the Scripture and its meanings.
“Brainwashed corporate media drones”: they will say that they read in, say, the so-called Institute for the Study of War, Foreign Policy or even CNN/FOX that the Russians are out of ammo, Putin has cancer, and the latest US Wunderwaffe will turn the tide and defeat Russia.
“Self-advertisers”: they just want to use the comments section to “plug” their website, book, ideology, etc.
“The offended ones”” these are the folks who are offended by something a guest author or myself have written and they are on a vendetta to get back to me/us.
“The entitled ones”: they believe that commenting on the Saker blog is a God given right, even if they don’t bother reading the moderation rules, and if their comment is not posted, they get seriously offended.
“Idiots”: these are folks who are too dull to realize their level of ignorance and incompetence. They think that they have the “right” to their opinion and they deliver their inanities with great gravitas and pomp. When their comments get intercepted, they go into rage.
“Sloganeers”. They are under the mistaken impression that a few disjointed sentences brough together in a paragraph amount to an argument. Typically, here is what they would write like this: “Putin is just a WEF puppet. The Russian army is getting hammered by HIMARS. Russia will soon run out of aircraft. So-and-so is a scumbag (and probably a Jew). The US F-22s and F-35 can quickly defeat the Russian forces.” 5 slogans, separated by period, no factoids, no substantiation, nothing but slogans. And BOY do they get offended if you tell them that they need to learn how to think before sharing their “gems of wisdom” with the rest of the planet.
There are many more, but I will stop here.GROUP B: the deliberate trolls
Technique one: they flood the comments with questions/statements which are aimed at pushing the discussion within the confines of the official narrative. For example, they will repeat mantrically that the Ukrainians have defeated Russian forces in this or that location.
Technique two: they wait for a new post, and then the pounce like a pack of wolves. The idea is that if under an article the 10 out of 12 comments are very negative, then the article probably deserves that. That is an old psychological trick (read up on the Asch conformity experiment for interesting details).GROUP C: computer generated trolls
These are trolls which don’t exist, they are just paid PSYOP operators supported by AI machines. One of the things which gives them away is that they never check if their comments are posted. We have had some of these which for YEARS post 3-10 comments PER DAY even though we banned them many years ago and none of their comments every get posted. Yet they still continue.
Fortunately, we have no need for comments anymore, because we have SocialGalactic.