I've never seen Ed answer lots of comments. I don't think Ed answering is really what his combox is about, but admittedly I'm used to the "long, rambling combox trail" which could, I suppose, lead to miscommunications by making discussions harder to follow in some cases.

Ed does moderate, by the way. He swoops in and deletes posts. The moderation is just purposefully kept very light (you can see where he made the decision back in the early days of his blog). I like it. It seems to lead to less hesitation before posting and thereby more and better conversation, or something like that.

But speaking as someone interested in topics that Ed doesn't post about as frequently, like universals and the metaphysics of modality, I look forward to being able write about those topics with less worry about possible threadjacking.

I also liked some of Daniel's suggestions, which would have looked odd implemented on someone's blog.

iwpoe wrote:

I know what naive pop / scientistic naturalism looks like. I grew up on it.

Lord, those names. Is it cringe-worthy with all the self-assured dismal of religious caricature and non-"scientific" questions I've come to expect from Dawkins and co. or is it interesting?

It's interesting. Parts of it, anyway. I skipped a couple sections. There are a few silly anti-religion one-liners, but for the most part they stay within their respective fields of philosophy and science. Dawkins mostly keeps his mouth shut.

You may find the recording of the 2012 Moving Naturalism Forward conference,(starting here), interesting. It should not, however, be treated as representative of naturalism in philosophy (I don't see how that's possible at a conference without at least D. M. Armstrong, or someone of equal caliber).

Conversations within branches of philosophy usually focus on philosophy; conversations within "authors" usually focus on history and exegesis..People usually all stay in one part of a forum anyway, though.