As well as simply spouting drivel, I have also conciously tried to avoid any inflammatory topics - fewer people will become as worked up about my hatred of Almodovar as will about the Arab-Israeli conflict, or US foreign policy (I would hope).

This is a problem with blogs and message boards, as the means of response are both public and instantaneous, they can be challenging, enlightening, fascinating, but also ill-judged, inflammatory or downright offensive. It is very easy for a discussion to be dragged down into name calling within a matter of minutes.

Keep keeping on, as a Mr C. Mayfield once sang.

…the sites that suffer most from anonymous postings and drivel are the ones operating at large scale.

If you are operating below that scale, comments can be quite good, in a way not replicable in any “everyone post to their own blog”.

EiNY definitely does not operate at “large scale.”

In some ways, I think comments are what keep me going. They reaffirm that people are actually reading…and care enough to comment.

As for the quality of comments: Sure, there are always going to be spoilers, but as Curbed publisher Lockhart Steele points out in the comments section of Clay’s post:

On Curbed, like any high-traffic blogs, there are trolls. But there are also numerous readers who know more about NYC real estate than any of Curbed’s editors, and the insight they bring to Curbed’s comments on a daily basis make the site a much stronger read.

That’s what’s so infuriating about the recent trolls and abuse. They don’t add anything to the debate at all.

But I’d rather let them in—and deal with them in my own time—than shut everyone out because of a handful of morons.