One of the reasons I’ve taken a break from this blog is that I’ve found the effort of dealing with various kinds of disruptive commenters to be more than I can justify. Unfortunately, the same problems emerged at the RSMG blog, so I’ve developed a new discussion policy. The policy prohibits flames, snarks, trolls and especially sock puppets. When the new improved version of this blog returns, I’ll be adopting something similar, though probably a little less restrictive (I enjoy a good snark from time to time, but you so rarely get a good one).
So, if you’re interested, pop over and take a look. If you’re so minded, make comments, bearing in mind that the policy is already in force.
John Quiggin 
My policy is to post what I think and not read the replies. But I guess that is the same attitude of those who want to be disruptive. Sorry John.
I can see John’s point though. It must be awfully tiring having to read through some of the tripe that people post. In recent months, I’ve cut back the number of blogs that I read. Life is too short to live it in front of a computer.
CHANGE THE FONT. CHANGE THE FONT. FOR CHRISTS’ SAKE CHANGE THE FONT
Long overdue, John. Can I also suggest you put a length limit on individual comments? Maybe tell people that if they really want to put a major disquisition on this site they should ask you for a guest post.
Oh, and CHANGE THE FONT.
Entirely reasonable. It always makes me laugh when people seem to treat this or any other web space as entirely pupublic, and no one should dare intrude on their right to spout off crap. “Help, I’m being oppressed!”
BTW, this site is really borked at the moment. The RSS feed is broken, and the style sheet (if that’s waht it’s called, I’m no expert) is back to something ugly and wordpress.
Have you considered a comment karma system? Something like slashdot might be better, but no one seems to have written the plugin yet.
http://www.cyber-knowledge.net/blog/2006/10/15/wordpress-plugin-rate-your-comments-comment-karma/
I completely agree with your policy.
agree with policy but please change the font.
Surely John you of all people should realise how bad it is to read for those of us over 50!
1. Keeping up the intensity of your blog is impressive, and I think that in itself would deserve a break. Dealing with anti-social activity must be an unwarranted distraction.
2. Just so I don’t fall foul of the rules, I need a description of snark, troll and sock puppet activity (flames I know about).
3. Fix the font.
4. Slightly more helpful comment: check out the cognitive research for what fonts work on the web. Sorry I don’t have a link to offer.
Follow the link to RSMG for an explanation of snark, troll and sock puppet, though I don’t think you’re in any danger of falling into these categories
On fonts, the research I’ve seen favours sans serif fonts, high contrast and plenty of white space. I already have all that. Type size is user adjustable (at least for me using Firefox). So I honestly don’t know what kind of change people want.