Instapundit explains why he doesn't have comments. He's right. At his level of traffic, monitoring the comments would take so much time that there'd be no time for blogging. While we get hundreds of comments a day, we still read each one--and try to delete those that contain profanity and name-calling. Because we're nowhere near as popular as Instapundit, we can still do it. We hope to continue, and we've noticed in recent months, that our readers are getting the message. There are fewer objectionable comments. For that, we thank you, because we believe interaction and the ability of readers to express their view is important. Plus, it's a lot easier for us to report the news than to analyze it. Reader comments allow you to write the analysis so we don't have to, which in turn allows us to keep TalkLeft up to the hour (give or take a few) with current events.

So, thanks to you readers who use asterisks in place of letters to help us avoid the profanity censor-blocking software used by businesses and law firms, who use words other than name-calling and personal attacks to voice your disagreement with us or another commenter and who follow the html instructions for including url's in your comments. It will help keep the comment section of the site alive even as we continue to grow--and we are committed to trying to do that. We think it's time we recognized your efforts to accomodate our idiosyncratic rules publicly, because so many of you have adapted. Thank you.

Update: Samizdata states a great comment policy here. Trolls and blogroaches beware.