What I will and won't discuss, and comments

I'm annoyed that I have to make this post, but I guess that I'm going to have to actually set some sort of policy.

In the course of discussions related to the faculty job search process, comments have been made by posters regarding specific people and their job performance. Some of these comments have been about anonymous faculty or candidates; others have not. Some have been by anonymous posters; others have not.

Unfortunately (though understandably), Blogger does not allow me to go in and redact individual names from comments, as far as I know. I can either leave the comment alone or delete it altogether.

Consider this fair warning. If you post a comment that I think is inappropriate, I will delete it. In this case, I think anonymous comments that single out specific people (that is, where the identity of the subject of discussion is unambiguous, even if the full name isn't given) for criticism about their job performance and tenure chances are inappropriate. This policy isn't censorship - you're free to start your own blog and post whatever you want on it. I'm not going to provide a forum for those discussions.

UPDATE: Upon further reflection, I've deleted more comments from the previous thread, scrubbing out potential identifiers. I think I was able to preserve most of the insightful commentary while removing the tawdry gossip. I don't want to moderate posts, but I may have to go in that direction in the future. I wish blogger had an alternative to wiping out comments, but considering that the service is free, I shouldn't complain.