Underwater Tea Party

Edward_ points to a new blog to which he and others are contributing, Artworld Salon. At first glance, it's less about art than about movers & shakers—a breathless post about a public spat between dealers serves as an introduction. That's fine, but I find distasteful the disdain for readers that the authors have built into the site: Comments are enabled—but only for invited commenters. Commenters, in fact, aren't described as commenters at all, but "panelists." Pinkies up, everyone? Come, now.

Now, there's nothing wrong with engineering your site so that, say, only those people whose last names being with C may comment. But it misses the point, and so does this site's policy. Again, it's a valid gesture, dispensing with the comments option—just don't confuse your comment-restrictive blog with an "open-source think tank."