Why your comments on Admissions 101 last at least a year. Is that enough?

I have been getting complaints lately from readers who try to leave comments on my blog posts and find they cannot because the deadline for comments has passed. The rule for a long time has been only three days of comments per blog post.

I asked Jodi Westrick, the washingtonpost.com protector and godmother of this discussion group, why that is. She said:

“We close comments automatically after three days to prevent spam comments from taking over the threads. It helps with moderation too. I’m not sure why three is the preferred number, but that’s the way it has always been – long before we moved over to Methode (in the case of articles).”

I wish that period was longer. I myself get the urge to comment on one or two of my blog posts after the deadline has passed. I am thinking five days, the length of a work week (few comments appear on weekends), would be a better rule. If you have some thoughts on that, please post them here.

And why you are at it, address yourself to one more intriguing revelation from Jodi:

“Ad 101 has a limit of 365 days for now (but I can bump that up as necessary).”

Would we like more time than a mere year for our longer discussions? As many of you know, until we had to switch to a new operating system (the aforementioned Methode, rhymes with load) three months ago, Admissions 101 had produced what I am sure, if I was into checking such things, was a world record string of four years of posts on the AP vs. IB issue. I would like Jodi to consider going to at least two years. Maybe she has the power to do that for any thread that lasts as long as a year. I will ask her.

In the meantime, what do you think?

- Jay Mathews

Note from Jodi: The period on this thread has been set to two years.