However, it begs the question: have you ever tried to contact Krugman as to why he is as nasty as he is? While it is good for readers and commenters to walk the high road, it is difficult when the man insults people on a daily basis.

I’ve noticed that it is very easy (and tempting) to indulge in name-calling, so I applaud your reasonable efforts to re-enforce everyone’s self-restraint.

I agree with the first commenter’s point – would a whole thread made up of not-so-subtle snide disparagement really be that edifying? [unless of course there were some layers of self-referential irony in your last paragraph that I missed?]

I do have a question for you, and I’ll formulate it as rapidly as possible and email it to you [it's in the workshop at the mo', due for a re-build] – hopefully before you start charging email fees that are beyond the reach of impecunious Englishmen such as myself.

P.S. It worries me slightly that I enjoy reading your blog irrespective of whether I understand the topic. Is that something to do with me, or the blog?

Several theories
1. Econ profs are particularly generous.
2. The number of econ profs who blog is actually small, and a small fraction of any group is generous.
3. They are trying out arguments and approaches as dry runs for books, courses, or talks they plan.
4. They have fun.

We know 1) is wrong because economists are grinchy, just ask Yoram Bauman.

I’m here to discuss something only tangentially related to your post. Namely this comment: In general, if you’re dying to talk about something that’s entirely off-topic, please either wait till I post about it, or speed up the process by sending me an email with a request for a post on that topic. (I promise nothing of course.)

What I don’t understand about bloggers, especially economics bloggers and especially especially professors of economics bloggers, is why not advertise a price for your services?

Sometimes in the middle of a discussion with an opponent, I want to learn what the standard economic view is on something. Or the rightleaning view. Or why economists hold this view. Sometimes the stuff would be really easy for an economists to give. Sometimes it would be difficult. It’s always a luck of the draw emailing economists.

A far better method would be for economics bloggers to put up a price for their services: say $100/hour of video chat. Or $20 per email or something like that. They have something like this for extremely famous economists like Gary Becker. I’m sure your rate would probably be very expensive as well, but a graduate student? In fact, none of the less well known bloggers do this. Why NOT? Sometimes a question doesn’t need a Gary Becker level answer. Sometimes a graduate student could easily answer it. But no avenues.

Your thoughts?

“do you really plan to sift through every single post and then decide whether it is just barely enough on topic or just slightly too tangential? Is that a good allocation of your time?”

Considering that Steve already reads the comments for the purpose of replying to them I don’t see how this activity would make any marginal difference.

Deleting posts that have sole the purpose of attacking someone personally is quite uncontroversial (I think), but do you really plan to sift through every single post and then decide whether it is just barely enough on topic or just slightly too tangential? Is that a good allocation of your time? (Ok, being Steven Landsburg, i guess you probably had a little cost-benefit analysis and decided it is.)

Perhaps I should have been clearer: This is not a change in policy; it is the re-statement of an ongoing policy, and I delete almost no posts for this reason. As a rule, you have to be quite far and quite blatantly off-topic to get deleted for being off-topic. But I reserve the right to be (slightly) harsher about this from time to time, and seems appropriate.

“…and that’s how I was thrown out of the Capitol Hill Babysitting Co-op.”