You mean like usenet?

I mean if it wasn’t bombarded by spam.

Can you tell that I really miss usenet?

1) I am preparing other posts, albeit in desultory manner. Furthest along is one on framing and filling.
2) There is nothing wrong with recycling previous posts, together with comments. By that I mean every now and then revisiting a post by bringing it out of the archive and putting it up front, with a notation to the effect that is what you are doing, and why. Reasons could range from you like the issue and would like to give it a second chance, to this issue aroused a lot of discussion last time and now that we have had a chance to let the issue sit in the cask and mature, it might be worth tasting again.

http://amptoons.com/blog/

and I attribute its success in that regard to its recent comments plugin, which groups by post and displays a large number of comments. This allows you to gauge conversational velocity of recent comments per post, which really helps things, and allows people reading the from page to very quickly see if there’s any new activity on posts they’ve been participating in. Having a week’s worth of comments is important, so that people who only check the site every few days won’t miss comments they would otherwise respond to.

Alas, even that isn’t enough to make conversations last indefinitely. The problem is that the subject matter being explored in conversation is very non-linear, but the format of blog comments are completely linear. People coming into the conversation get bogged down by the linearity. When threads get too long and too noisy, new participants rarely enter, and back and forth between a few participants is rarely desirable after a point.

When posters elevate a topic brought up in a comments thread to a new post, that issue is mitigated somewhat. It gives new issues, and objections, more attention, and allows for a fresh context to be constructed. This is something you might consider doing more frequently, if you want to encourage that.

I’ve long thought that some form of non-linear discussion forum would be a big improvement. Something wiki-like, but that fixes wiki weaknesses. A small step in that direction is subthreaded comments (when done well). But the commenting volume here isn’t high enough to warrant (or benefit from) that.

This preamble is just to be sure you understand that the blog mostly is neither about nor for me, BUT, I often find bits that grab my imagination, and set my head to spin. Ain’t the i-net grand! I can read about enlightenment or bias or philosophy, have 1/2 a clue, and a wonderful time. Thanks.

I’m glad you don’t plan to close and delete comments after a while like many journals, and I agree that all good conversations (and too many bad ones) are eternal. Unfortunately, the problem with blogs is that comments and followup are second-class. The flow tends to pass from threads usually after a fairly short time and one can’t usually expect a comment in a two week old thread to be read by anyone other than the site maintainers (original authors? — whoever would get notices of comments being posted in a thread). I suppose that means I should put my hat in to become a contributor so that I can pick up old conversations with an original post when necessary.

I guess my time zone (middle east) was so infrequent it was not worth mentioning.

Michael, someone should post a summary of “why Bayesian” soon, and then we can refer back to it. Also, no conversation ever expires.

(1) Every now and again, how about giving us a quick explanation of why Bayesianism is the focus so much.

(2) Get rid of that ugly icon. The “BS” in the slash-circle thing that appears in webbrowsers next to the url. It would be better to have nothing rather than that—especially since you went the classy route with your banner.