More wordpress.com troubles for WUWT: post thread closure comments

Phil., where ya been?? You missed a golden opportunity to post your innuendo when this thread was new and being read by thousands. But I doubt that more than a dozen or two readers are still following it 4 days later.
You wrote:
…you post in threads for which you are also the moderator.
So do most, if not all moderators. What’s wrong with that? And I comment under my real name (unlike some anonymous posters). Would you prefer that moderators should be censored? The knowledge they contribute is as beneficial as any to the discussion. Or would you prefer that the views of moderators who are posting separately, and under their own names should be censored?
Regarding your opinion that it’s better to log on to a different screen to comment, I can’t speak for other mods but I suspect they also comment from the Edit screen, because it’s easier and more convenient. Why go to the trouble of bringing up a different screen, finding the right place to comment, posting a reply, and then going back to the Edit screen? I don’t think you would do it that way.
And I remind you that the WordPress change that caused this problem was done without any warning, and without posting that information on the Edit screen. Since the boss very rarely closes comments, why would anyone go to the bottom of every thread to check for that?
I’ve moderated close to a million comments here, weeding out the rising tsunami of spam and rescuing the legitimate comments that often get caught in the Spam folder (including rescuing yours), and in general doing the rote work necessary to keep things moving along in a timely manner. Since I can confidently support the skeptics’ position with a mountain of facts, evidence, and observations, there’s no reason to censor anyone. I’ve always said that a big difference between WUWT and alarmist blogs is that they censor comments they don’t like. WUWT doesn’t.
No doubt you’re aware of the recurring WordPress glitches and problems that readers constantly complain about. The unannounced change that prompted this article was another problem, and it won’t be the last. But to insinuate that I had to resort to deleting a comment because I couldn’t argue the skeptic’s side is presuming facts not in evidence. You’re good at technical details, but you are certainly no skeptic. I am, which makes it easy to deconstruct the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare. And when have I ever shied away from a debate? On the contrary, I enjoy deconstructing that false alarm.
I’ve always posted your comments like everyone else’s. Whenever I’ve snipped anyone’s comment it’s been for violating site policy, or for an impostor pretending to be another commenter. In those cases I gave a reason for the snip (the only exception being when someone used the F-word or similar. That would simply get a ‘snip’, and the author understood why).
And why would I delete my own comments, like you said? I’ve regularly advised commenters to keep a copy of their posts. That’s still good advice. So if for any reason you don’t see your comment, just repost it. Simples.
Next, you say Your participation as both a poster and a mod in the same thread leads to suspicion of dubious activity.
It would have been hard to find a thread that I didn’t moderate and comment on, since I’ve been moderating comments under every article for ten or more hours a day, 24/7/365 since this site began. You can be as “suspicious” as you like, but if I had done what you’re alleging even 0.01% of the time, there would have been scores of complaints like yours.
But I can recall only one similar complaint: William Connolley alleged that I had deleted a comment, or done something nefarious (I don’t recall exactly what he claimed because it was two or three years ago). Yes, that’s the same William Connolley who was repeatedly (and temporarily) supended by Wikipedia for deleting hundreds of comments skeptical of man-made global warming.
When Connolley complained I was immediately suspended. But after the boss investigated Connolley’s accusation via the time stamps, related comments, and whatever other WP forensic tools he was able to use, he emailed me saying he’d proved that Connolley was fabricating his story, and I was promptly reinstated. The events then were very similar to now, but without Saul’s threat.
Also, you may not be aware of it but there are about a half dozen other moderators. I can only speak for myself. And WordPress routinely causes various glitches and hiccups. I have no idea what comments you’re referring to, but I’ve always posted all comments (excepting those noted above), and moderated without playing favorites. There’s no need to; the alarmist narrative fails due to the lack of credible evidence or supporting observations. But I can assure you that if …a day later both your and my posts disappeared, that I had nothing to do with that. Why would I delete my own comments, anyway?
You’re using this WordPress glitch to join the monkeypile, along with a couple of others. I think that says more about the ≈3% piling on than it does about my moderating.

‘Phil.’ said:
“This is part of the problem, you post in threads for which you are also the moderator.”
I’ve been a moderator on every thread. Other moderators comment too, and we all post under our own names. You’re just trying to split hairs. So that argument fails, and so does this one:
“It would be better if you either did not do that or used a different log in method when posting to that you use as a moderator.”
I always log in as: ‘dbstealey’… “Phil.” And it’s easy to be a critic when you have 20/20 hindsight. Had I known the thread was closed I wouldn’t have replied. Until this unannounced WordPress change happened, there had never been a problem like this. And now that everyone is aware of that WordPress change, it’s already resolved. So your “log in method” criticism was dead on arrival.
Next:
“I was unaware that you were still a moderator but wondered if you were because sometimes strange things happened to posts when you were posting…”
My moderating was never a secret. Nor was it advertised. And you are insinuating things that I never engaged in. Also, have I ever been reluctant to take on any comment of yours, or anyone else’s that I didn’t agree with? (FYI: the answer to that is a decisive ‘No.’)
I’ve always moderated in a professional manner, and I certainly never misused that position to delete any comments of yours. Why should I, when I look forward to them? Because while you’re up to speed on details, it’s easy to show that your overall conclusions suffer from a lack of supporting observations. If you were a real skeptic, you would see that.
You also misunderstand what a good moderator does to keep the site current; rescuing legitimate comments from the Spam folder in a timely manner, fixing typos in articles and comments whenever requested, moving spam that gets past the filter back into the Spam folder, weeding out inappropriate language, and comments about chemtrails, and identifying impostors pretending to be legitimate commenters, fixing links so they display properly, and many other repetitive details. It’s not the picture you’re trying to paint, of evil Moderator Snidely Whiplash searching out ‘Phil’s’ posts to delete.
I’ve done the rote work of moderating since this site began. I’ve also regularly advised readers to keep copies of their comments so they can re-post them in case of a WordPress glitch, which happens all too often, as we’ve heard from other commenters. I’ve also emailed new moderators, reminding them that they shouldn’t post personal comments under an article as a moderator. Rather, they should comment separately, using their own name.
Since moderators rarely communicate with each other, I have no way of knowing who might have done what — if anything. Yet with no evidence whatever, you implied that I was deleting your comments (“sometimes strange things happened to posts when you were posting.”). That’s just baseless character assassination. It may surprise you, “Phil.”, but you’re not important enough that I would bother deleting your posts. Why would I do that, when it’s so easy to post a skeptic’s rational, data-based response? That’s what I do all the time.
And if I or anyone else was arbitrarily deleting comments, then after moderating thousands of threads containing nearly 1,800,000 comments, there would certainly be dozens, if not hundreds of readers complaining about it. But there aren’t.
Your insinuation isn’t just a one-off; it’s a baseless smear, and I think it’s because you never could make a convincing argument supporting the cAGW scare. Out of more than 180 comments here, you’re one of only two or three disgruntled commenters who used this article as a chance to monkey-pile on by using bogus insinuations, and implying things that are no more than your opinion. That isn’t a reflection of my professionalism, it’s a self-serving attempt to spin a false narrative using slanted comments like this:
“Your participation as both a poster and a mod in the same thread leads to suspicion of dubious activity.”
“Leads to suspicion”?? Moderators routinely comment in the same threads they moderate. We use our own names, ‘Phil’, and your “suspicion” is not shared by the overwhelming majority of commenters here.
By trying to suggest that I deleted your comments, you are accusing all moderators of the same “dubious activity”, because we have all commented in the same threads we moderate. But if you had any evidence that moderators are doing anything wrong, you would have posted it instead of trying to make a bogus case.
Your “suspicion of dubious activity” amounts to bearing false witness, because you don’t have any verifiable facts to support your narrative, which is nothing more than malicious gossip. Furthermore, on the relatively few occasions I’ve snipped someone’s comment, I posted the reason why – unless it was something obvious like using the F-word, in which case I simply replaced it with: [“snip”] .
I rarely pass up the opportunity of replying to a comment I disagree with, “Phil.”, because for a real skeptic, refuting alarmist conjectures is one of life’s small pleasures. And it’s our job.