When all the site problems were at their worst, one of the things I did to try and lighten the server’s load was to remove the random quotes feature here. It didn’t seem to help, and boy, did I get lots of email complaining about their absence — I didn’t think you guys would even notice!

Anyway, I’ve restored them now. Look over to the left, just below the big red A and the Americans United logo.

We just got the very abrupt word that Seed will be doing an upgrade of our servers tonight, like real soon now, and that during this process you won’t be able to make comments. Apparently, the little text box will still be there, and you’ll be able to type away madly, but nothing will happen. Don’t get frustrated, just be patient, and maybe tomorrow we’ll see some improvement in performance.

There are rumors whispering about on the scienceblogs grapevine that there may — I emphasize may — be some brief downtime of the site on Wednesday, while the techies do some magic and switch us to some better performing hardware. We hope. If I were a man of faith, I’d be praying, but as it is, I’m too smart to think that would do any good.

For the Spanish-speaking readers, this post has been translated into ¿Qué Debe Pensar Un Científico Sobre La Religión?.

It’s July already? Time to tally up the votes in the last Molly nomination thread and induct yet another regular commenter into the Order of the Molly.

The acknowledged worthy for the month of May is Kel. About time, too, his name keeps coming up month after month, and someone is always jumping in to wave their arms about and eclipse him.

So now you have to think back over the past month of voluminous commenting and pick out a name that stood out for you, and leave it in the comments right here.

Tomorrow, I get to spend a very long day traveling to the Lindau Meetings, which will be great fun, and you can expect some science blogging from that event (Bora will also be attending, so Scienceblogs has you covered).

However, I am seeing some troublesome stirrings here. A certain demented ex-commenter is morphing to avoid his banning, we’ve just had a flood of weird spam (a dental office using spam tools? Tsk, tsk), and I just know my ability to police the site is going to be hampered by meetings…or good Bavarian beer. So just be warned: I may have to turn user registration on again. I know you hate that, but I also hate accumulated spam.

I’ll think about it overnight, but I may have to put the handcuffs and ball gag on you guys tomorrow. For a while.

This must be an example of those emergent properties people talk about. In one of the comment threads, some simple suggestions for new commenters have been formulated. They’re pretty good — pay them some heed.

1. When you post, even if you intend to reply only to PZ or to one other comment on the
   thread, up to 200 people (or more) will read, and possibly respond to you. Keep this in mind.

2. As this is a science blog, a greater proportion of the readers and commenters here well-
   educated, and, if not scientists, are reasonably well-versed in logic, observation, empiricism,
   debate, and rationality. As such, their responses will likely be pointed, eloquent, articulate,
   and highly opinionated.

3. Any comments you make will be judged, and often judged harshly for grammar, intellectual
   consistency, knowledge of the subject addressed, and openness of tone. Get used it; this is
   the deep end, not a wading pool.

4. Commenters who wish to make religious, spiritual, or other arguments are welcome to do
   so, provided they are willing to respond to the observations and criticisms of other posters,
   many of whom are experts in their fields. Commenters who argue without insulting other
   commenters personally or in whole, and who actually respond to counter-arguments will have
   a stimulating time.

5. Commenters who begin their interaction on this blog with insults (you’re a bunch of jerks),
   threats (you’re all going to hell) or other poltroonery (atheists have no morals) will be
   responded to in kind by persons who generally have far more experience and education, and
   certainly a greater vocabulary in both insult and invective.

6. People often say stuff on the Internets that they would never say to your face. You are
   strongly urged to get over it.

People do get banned here, although it takes some effort. You can also read my list of grievances. In addition to the vociferous commenters already here who will skewer offenders, keep in mind that I rule this place as a casual dictatorship — if I get annoyed, I bring out the axe. All that’s saving some people is that I’m also a lazy tyrant.

One other thing I have to add for the regulars: I have a Three Comment Rule that I don’t really enforce very consistently, but would make for a somewhat less hair-trigger environment. Basically, if someone brand new to you shows up and says something annoying, don’t jump down their throat right away. Give them a couple of chances to clarify first, and then if they’re still painfully stupid, open fire with both barrels.

You little scamps in the comments have been acerbic and rude and loud again, haven’t you? I’ve received a little threat in the mail about your activities, and you know how threats get me all trembly and weak in the knees.

Dear PZ Myers.

My name is Petter XXXX and I am a graduate student in biology at University of XXXX, as well as active as an ecology consultant in XXXX.

I would be grateful for the removal of slanderous comments directed personally at me on your blog Pharyngula.
I have nothing but admiration for your work with not allowing creationism or ID be a part of education, although fortunately that is not a big problem in Europe.

I commented on your blog that I thought it was unnecessary to riddicule people of faith.
I think it hurts the reputation of scientists frankly.
But that is my opinion, and I fully respect if you do not agree.

However, on your blog I am called

comment 131. Petter the ignorant rude jerk troll:

comment 187: Petter the lying christofascist troll.You are not a scientist. Stop lying. Your grammar, spelling, logic, and word usage are at the level of a highly religious moron. I’ll pray for you to leave your cave of darkness, mental fog, lies, and hate. Petter, time to pull out the xian default.

comment 189: “This comment accuses me of sponsoring terrorism”, it is likely to fall under “slander per se”

comment 191: Comments referring to sexual actions.

comment 192: Accuses me of impending human rights, would have a pretty good chance to fall under “slander per se” to.

I fully understand that it is hard as a blogger to keep up with editing posts that go over the line, and I am aware of that you did not write the comments.
However, you being the author of the blog I kindly ask you to remove all comments above.

A copy of this mail has been sent to my legal representative, in case further actions would be necessary.
I however hope that we can stop here, by you removing the comments.

Best regards,

Petter XXXX

Uh-oh. He’s quite right, you know. You’ve been saying unkind things about people, like for instance calling them ignorant, rude, and a jerk. We can’t have that kind of thing going on in a blog, now can we?

Oh, wait. Yes, we can. I rather like plainspoken responses.

And look, he’s asking me nicely, with only the slyest of implications of legal action, to delete your comments, but doesn’t seem to think his own warrant censure. I’ll have to think about whether I should do that.

OK, done. No.

Just a general suggestion to the thin-skinned who think about commenting here: don’t do that. No one gets treated gently here; even I sometimes hesitate at dipping a toe into the bacon-chummed shark-, piranha-, and candiru-infested waters here. You will get abused. And if you do get abused, don’t come crying to me to protect you, because I’ll just do something even ruder, like taking your plea and tossing it back into the deepest, murkiest, roiling whirlpool I can, and if you didn’t like getting a few boo-boos before, you’ll really hate the public flensing that will ensue.

And please, please, never write to tell me that your favorite authority figure, whether it is your lawyer or your mommy, will come after me if I don’t do your bidding. It makes me cranky.

---

By the way, I’ve done the complainer the favor of removing the bits from his letter that would reveal details of his identity. What makes this complaint especially stupid is that all any of the cruel, cruel commenters know about him is his very common first name; unless he thinks he is the only Petter in the world, he has not yet been exposed to any public or professional ridicule.

Of course, if someone starts harrassing me with futile legal documents, I can fill in those blanks.

Some of you may have noticed that we got hit hard by a Turkish spammer last night: several hundred comments, mostly saying the same thing, all linking back to a farm of Turkish spam sites. It’s extremely annoying, and I’m in the process of cleaning it all up. Normally that wouldn’t take long at all, but right now Scienceblogs is seizing and sputtering, like usual, so I delete 10 or 20 at a time, get the stupid timeout message, and have to reload and restart the despammer tools…so it might take a little while.

And it is all so pointless. They get a few hours of their url on my blog, but what I do in addition to deleting their spam is pluck out urls and unusual keywords and tuck them into my automatic spam filter file…which, after a few years of this nonsense, is looking like a goddamned Turkish dictionary. That means that a lot of Turkish words and links get automatically rubbished if you try to use them here — there must be a lot of national pride over there in Asia Minor, where they’re doing a phenomenal job of making Turkish the pariah language of the internet.

The winner of the Molly Award for the month of April kept having the same thing said about him over and over: he was overdue, that people were voting for him month after month. Finally, persistence pays off: you can now refer to Bill Dauphin, OM.

Notice that it is now June — you need to tell me who should win it for May. Leave a comment below that says who your favorite commenter for the month just past was.