So, you like blogosphere discussion, do you Nature?

Apparently this is a “Bash Nature” day around these parts. I found the following gem in my mailbox:

Dear Drug Monkey:
The following post you wrote on Nature News has been hidden by the moderator.
http://bluelabcoats.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/falling-below-the-line-is-your-proposal-just-not-good-enough/
http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2009/02/running-out-of-grant-funding
The moderator gave the following reason for this action:
Please make a comment rather than just posting a link
If you disagree, please feel free to comment again and re-phrase your comment.
Thank you.
-Nature News editors

I’m all whiskeytangofoxtrot? When did I post that? On what? That must have been one or two weeks ago….

Go 'wan, you know you want to. Blog that is. (UPDATED)

An editorial in Nature tells its readership that It’s good to blog. And more specifically:

More researchers should engage with the blogosphere, including authors of papers in press.

This is a very strange little editorial. It isn’t really what it seems to be about. Or it is about more than it seems. Something like that.
Let us start with the bloggy part.

Indeed, researchers would do well to blog more than they do. The experience of journals such as Cell and PLoS ONE, which allow people to comment on papers online, suggests that researchers are very reluctant to engage in such forums. But the blogosphere tends to be less inhibited, and technical discussions there seem likely to increase.
Moreover, there are societal debates that have much to gain from the uncensored voices of researchers. A good blogging website consumes much of the spare time of the one or several fully committed scientists that write and moderate it. But it can make a difference to the quality and integrity of public discussion.

Sounds pretty good. Nice little bit of endorsement from one of the science world’s two premier general-science magazines. All y’all bloggers who are on the science paths will want to keep a copy of this editorial in your little file (along with such items as this, this, this and this) to brandish to the Chair or Dean or tenure committee once your blogging habits are discovered.
The observation that discussions at official journal sites are likely to be less vigorous and useful in comparisons to more informal forums, such as blogs, is to be congratulated. Too true. We cannot rely on publishers who create discussion mechanisms because they are inevitably leery of the free-flowing anonymous-comment powered, occasionally offensive or profane discussions that abound on blogs. So they try to control and civilize the discussion. This never goes well.