A comment on comments

In general, the quality of comments submitted are quite high, and relatively little moderation is needed.   It would help, however, if readers would attend to the purpose for which comments are opened.  In yesterday's thread about the crisis of Israeli democracy, for example, I wrote:  "Comments are open for more links and information."   I let through one off-topic comment, but did not let through several others.  I did not open comments in order to hear people's (rather uninteresting, I might add) opinons on judicial review, for example, or to debate whether destroying judicial independence is a good or bad thing.  Sometimes comments are opened for a free-for-all discussion (not often!), but mostly they are not.   Comments on unmoderated blogs aren't readable, so let's try to sustain the high quality of comments here, in part by paying attention to the topic for the comments.  Thank you.