[pohl]

Here we are in 2010, in a world replete with democratized media, where any person with access to a computer — even without owning one — can sign up for a free email address at any number of free providers, and then sign up for a free blog service from an even more impressive array of providers, and speak their mind and refer to other such pages using the magic of Uniform Resource Locators. And, in this world, we have such an overgrown sense of entitlement that we get upset when someone chooses to reserve their blog as their own and doesn't allow us to take a piss in their pages.

Absolutely incredible that this is called an "inability to respond". Exactly how low does the bar need to be set before one is willing to lift one's leg to step over it?

Gruber links to people who have chosen to respond to him in their own blogs on a regular basis, and this has allowed me to discover blogs I may never have discovered before. It also drives traffic to them that they may never have seen before. What's so wrong with him expecting you to engage him as a peer?

[gloob]

Hypothetical answer: I'm not a blogger, nor do I want to be one. Gruber is free to do as he wants, of course - he is perfectly free to only respond to emails encoded with EBCDIC, if he really feels like it - but that doesn't somehow remove any legitimacy from complaints against him.

Secondly, I suspect the desire to comment on his blog arises more from a wish to engage (read: inform) other readers, rather than Gruber himself.

[tptacek]

And your point is? Nobody is entitled to comment on someone else's site. "Lack of comments" is simply a bullshit criticism.

[gloob]

No-one is entitled to have a window manager on Linux either, but I'd probably still be using a Mac if there weren't any. The OP of this thread is not, to my understanding, making a moral claim about how Gruber should or shouldn't have comments - he's saying that the inability to comment, combined with Gruber's factual inaccuracies, frustrates him sufficiently that he no longer pays much attention to the blog. Is he allowed to make that decision? Or is Gruber entitled to his attention?

[garret]

he no longer pays much attention to the blog

He pays attention enough to start comment threads about it.

[chc]

That requires almost no attention at all. IIRC, that's a large part of the reason why John doesn't want comments on his blog.

[gloob]

You'll have to take that up with him; I'm afraid that my insight into the minds of complete strangers is rather circumscribed.

[gaulinmp]

I was not claiming I want him to add comments, I was explaining why I can't stomach reading his blog. A claim which is obviously contradicted by my act of posting a comment.