Just a word to explain why some 16 comments since about two weeks ago have been disapproved and then deleted.

From the start, I wanted the comment thread for our particular corner of the blogosphere to be unmoderated, with offensive comments deleted only after (soon after) publication (that is, once they were caught). That is the rule I follow in my own blog, at Newsstand, and I think colleague Manolo follows that simple guideline too. But Current belongs to Inquirer.net’s pool of blogs, and must follow Inquirer.net rules. Primarily because even comments have their own RSS feed, and offensive comments once distributed by RSS can no longer be retrieved and then deleted, Inquirer.net requires comment moderation.

Fine, you might ask, but define offensive? Well, as we all know, there are very few hard and fast rules; chief of these, I would think, is what we can call the doubter’s rule: If there is some doubt as to whether a comment is offensive, give the commenter the benefit of the doubt. Publish the comment.

Another basic rule: writing in ALL CAPS is the Internet equivalent of screaming. Lower the volume.

A third: Do not insult other commenters. The 16 comments I caught in the offensive-comments net all fall, without exception, under this rule of thumb. Insult politicians and big business and the Elders of Zion, if you want; criticize the Inquirer or its editors and columnists and blog gatekeepers, if you wish; raise conspiracy theories about what gets published here or not or who gets convicted or thrown to jail, if you will. But respect other commenters, at least for the trouble they take to write down their thoughts, with a minimum of courtesy.

Many of the 16 comments use the word of the year: hunghang. And direct it at specific commenters.

“MGA HUNGHANG KAYO!!!!” says one. “Mga honghang ang dami nyo ng pinagsasabi,di nyo ba alam na ang magnanakaw galit sa kapwa magnanakaw?” says another.

Others use variations on the same theme. “Asan ang mga katulad mong bobo? 100,000 daw magrally? Nasan?” Or: “The other group of morons here are asking why Chavit is not included in the suit.” Or: “tanga! gumising ka nga!” Or even: “hoy egan.. isa ka pang ungas.”

Another even brought schools into the sorry picture. “Bobo ka pala e, the justices make decisions based on submitted evidences, not on hearsays or public opinions, hay naku, mga bobong tao. Ako kahit di ako lawyer, naintindihan ko. Siyempre, UPI-an ako, kaw siguro Benilde?” (No comment!)

Does anyone seriously think that the arguments we forward are enhanced by the insults we use? Or that expressing our thoughts in the language of insult makes them worth considering?

What, aside from venting their frustrations and their inability to argue in public, were the following commenters thinking when they wrote: “Ang kapal ng mukha mong magsabi ng mga bagay na nasa taas tapos di mo alam ang mga facts!” Or: “I don’t know if you’re just playing a dim-wit but your analogy really is out of this world?” Or: “baka tulad ka din ng idol mo…walang laman ang utak hahahahahahahaha.”

Really, is there a need to say: “I read that kind of arguments in the tabloid…given by those who argue but doesnt think…. You are a waste!!!!”

I did not delete the 16 comments because I did not agree with their substance; as anyone can tell just by scrolling through the hundreds of comments already published, anything goes here, as far as point of view is concerned. But let’s draw the line at insulting each other, shall we?

This playground is for the big boys and girls. If you want to play by shouting “DOUBLE STANDARD KA DIYAN…! UNGAS KA TALAGA…”, may I suggest another sandbox?

Of course, I can imagine some of you thinking, of me: “MAY PERSONALITY DISORDER KA PALA.”

The other day, I had to disapprove two comments, posted by the same writer, because in an attempt to defend his own views he took to calling two co-commenters names. That brings the total number of comments I’ve disapproved to maybe four or five, all of them (at least in my view) bearing great offense not to me or Manolo personally but to our fellow readers.

The disapproved comments were atypical; by and large, as can be seen from a simple review of the hundreds of comments we’ve already logged, commenters or (my preference) co-bloggers have been generally civil. Oh, to be sure, there is much sarcasm to go around, and insults have been exchanged, but subtly.

While there is little evidence that we have actually succeeded in convincing others (much of our exchange consists of opinion firmly stated and, when challenged, even more firmly restated), we have managed to keep talking. The comments of a recent regular poster, completely cynical about all politicians and even the political enterprise itself, have probably tested the patience of other commenters. And yet the discussion continues. That, I would like to think, is no mean feat; merely keeping this small part of the public square open is already a good thing.

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I’ve been meaning to do this for some time; this blog has had the good fortune to be read by prolific commenters, and it is only right that we recognize what they do for our particular corner of the so-called blogosphere.

Without them, Inquirer Current would lose much of its electricity, its snap and crackle. In a very real (or really virtual?) sense, this is their blog too.

Let me cite three of them in particular: Bert, Kabayan, and OFW in Afghanistan. They are not often on the same side of an issue, or reading from the same page (if I read between the lines correctly, they were not even on especially cordial terms in this blog’s early days); their frequent interventions, however, have helped turn this blog’s comment threads into a real forum.

If I’m not mistaken, three of our most commented-on posts are Manolo’s discussion of presidential timber in the senatorial forest, his take on Korean assertiveness, and my singing of the post-Zubiri blues. In each of them, you will find, among the other voices, Bert, Kabayan, and OFW commenting away.

Something Bert wrote, in the middle of a sometimes sharp-edged discussion about possible presidential candidates, struck the right note about our role as participants – as posters, responders, reply-ers — in the public discourse. 

Let’s blog, post, argue and quarrel about everything, anything political. That’s one way of making our voices heard. Every one of us, what ever our views, have one thing in common-and that is that we all want the best happening to our beloved country and people. We want the best for ourselves in our lifetime, and the future of our next generations. This common denominator is the one force causing the continuing political upheavals and turmoil happening in all those years in our country resulting from our grim determination to find the ideal government officials we want that could give light to our aspirations. It’s so sad that as of this moment we are still stuck with the lot of them that have failed us, including this present government. Adding salt to injury, advertently or inadvertently, unheeding of our contempt and displeasure we have bestowed them, they are still making moves and plan to perpetuate themselves on us forever by this plan to do the CHA-CHA. ARE WE GOING TO LET THEM? Please reply, the future of the our next generations are in your hands.

It has been a month since my last post; my apologies for dropping off the radar screen, but I have been unusually busy. With luck, this busy-ness, or at least parts of it, should bear fruit starting next week. My thanks to colleague Manolo for keeping the blog going, and to our growing band of readers who continue to post very interesting comments indeed. (More about this, later this week.) 

On to the present, which, as luck would have it, is all about the past: I was struck last month by a column of Billy Esposo’s in the Star, which offered an assessment of the columnist’s reliability as a political crystal-ball gazer.

I thought Esposo did the honorable thing: Unlike any other mainstream media political commentator I know, he asked his readers to judge his political prognostications. But a close look at his column, and at other columns he had written (easily accessible here), tells us that Esposo undermined his own experiment, by choosing to write about only those predictions that had, willy-nilly, come true.

In other words, Esposo inserted a new mono-bloc into journalism’s musical chairs game —- and then promptly wrecked it.

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In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reports on How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties. Taguba was born in the Philippines, his father was a veteran of Bataan, and Taguba himself became a bemedaled general in the US armed forces. Read about his integrity.

If only we have generals like him -here at home.

Today we printed the last issue of Inquirer Compact, the company’s first venture in compact-format journalism. We had a great ride, but, well, all good things must come to an end. Ours came after almost a year and a half of publication, with issue no. 572.

The transition occupied most of my time the last two weeks; one of the last things we did was to upload our front pages to Flickr, as a fittingly digital reminder of the work we poured into the title. Over the next several days, I expect, I will be updating the tags, the descriptions (in other words, the text part) of our Flickr site.

But if you’d like to take a look now, the door’s already open.