From the very beginning -- in the pre-Internet dial-up BBS days -- online discussions have been infested with intellectual ankle-biters who have little or nothing of substance to add to the discussion and simply sling insults at those who do. This pollution of an otherwise valuable medium continues in the form of comments on blogs. A year and a half ago, SCOTUSblog tried an interesting experiment to clean up its comments by requiring commenters to use their real names. The experiment was a partial success, in my view, but not enough for the sponsors of the blog. A post there today states, in part:

At the beginning of OT06,* we instituted our current comment policy, whereby commenters will not be approved unless they leave their full names. We did that to prevent what we saw as unproductive sniping by a tiny minority of our readers that took away from the overall quality of the blog. After a year and a half of that policy, that sort of silly sniping has not abated despite the change.

As such, beginning immediately, we are going to formally disable the comments feature on most of our posts....

It is indeed unfortunate that it has come to this. I, for one, enjoy exchanging ideas with people who can remain civil while disagreeing. Regrettably, commenting on blogs too often involves opening oneself to ad hominem attacks and choosing between letting a public attack go unanswered or wasting time responding. The choices for a blog that has this problem are to (1) let it go uncorrected; (2) police the comments, an expenditure of time that few sponsors wish to make; or (3) turn off the comments, as SCOTUSblog has now done. If the sponsor chooses to let the problem go uncorrected, what typically happens is that thoughtful people stop or greatly reduce commenting, and the insult slingers come to dominate the comments. Choices (1) and (3) lead to the same result, then, that a useful medium is eliminated either de facto or de jure.

So the decline in civility of our society claims another victim. The SCOTUSblog experiment shows that uncivil behavior is reduced when people have to show themselves in public, but it is not eliminated. I suppose the result was to be expected, but it is sad nonetheless.

*October Term 2006, the term of the United States Supreme Court beginning on the first Monday in October.