| In real life, if anyone publishes, it is fair for me to comment on what he publishes in another venue. I am not obliged to call those comments to his attention, or to afford him space to respond, unless there are factual allegations that may be corrected. In any event, even if he were afforded space to respond, it would not be immediate and attached to the original piece, but would be in a letters column in the same venue. In this case, the venue is not the specific thread, but SI, or, perhaps more specifically, the Coffee Shop or other categorical segment of the site. Additionally, there are frequently overlapping threads, as in the case of RWET and the Bush thread, where most of the same people will participate on both the moderated thread and the open thread, so one is pretty much guaranteed roughly the same audience if one uses the open thread to object. But even if that were not so, it would not be much different from a letters column, which only some readers of a journal choose to peruse........ |
