Part of the problem is, I think, that a lot of the commentators want to be journalists, and can’t see what is hard or worthwhile about it.

Mad Priest: I’d often wondered why people look at me as if I’m a lower life form. I’d thought it was the gills.

In the blogging world words, ideas and images are given away (those who allow advertising on their blogs are viewed as lower life forms). The net is anarchic and anonymity is easily obtained.

It is no surprise to me, that Giles, who refuses to engage with the blogging community although they often cite him, should be scared of this new world. His power and authority come from the established church and academia. The Christian blogging community is part of the emerging church (even the conservatives are part of this trend). Christian blogs are more akin to a service in the back room of a pub than a service in an impressive church in a posh part of London.

In other words Giles is not part of our world and we are not part of his. Thank goodness.

Culturally we have long lost the ability to have a sensible debate in public without name calling and aggression, what appears on blogs is just a symptom of this.

The main problem is that the internet doesn’t introduce space to think. Comments can be fired off without the tiresome business of writing a letter, finding an envelope, buying a stamp and then missing the post, all of which gives the chance to decide you didn’t really want to send the letter anyway. I regularly hit the ‘submit comment’ button by accident before I’ve composed a comment that’s fit for public debate.

Most importantly, as you point out, he’s confusing people who comment with people who have their own blogs, and although bloggers will often comment on other blogs, there are also a lot of people who don’t blog themselves, but merely comment.

To my mind, a blog can be like a variety of different media, depending on how the site is run. You can run it as a free-for-all, and let people post any comments they like. Robert Scoble is probably the most high profile blogger like that, and a number of other bloggers can’t understand why he allows it.

Alternatively you can run it in a more restricted way. For example I have my comment policy posted on the page – essentially that we reserve the right to remove any comments that are offensive, illegal rude, or otherwise out of keeping with the site. Since WordPress logs all the IP addresses for anyone who comments, I can also check out dodgy postings, and also anyone who is putting in a phoney e-mail address or website.

Perhaps the best example of this was when a couple of Beth’s students discovered the site (any IP addresses in the school are now blocked by the way) and posted a fake comment under a classmates name. Unfortunately, as the site logs the IP address and the time, and the school logs everything the students do on the web, it was pretty easy to track down who it was who was really posting.