Multiple comment problems here

1. Haloscan appears to have lost comments posted on this blog prior to September this year. I'm trying to figure out what happened and if they can be recovered; meanwhile I'm very sorry if your comments are gone. I did not delete anyone's comments. I hope this problem won't continue, but I can't guarantee that. (UPDATE: looks like they're "archived" and I'll have to decide whether to shell out some cash to get them viewable.)

2. Blogger didn't have comment-posting capability when I started blogging, so you had to use Haloscan; now Blogger has its own system. I enabled it several weeks ago and don't like it, but I also don't like Haloscan losing old comments. The upshot is that I now have two separate comment systems enabled here, which is very stupid. Almost everyone is using the Haloscan comments so far, and I hope to figure out what to do soon.

3. I appear to need a comments policy, so here it is:

• Obscenities are not allowed and can get a poster banned.
• All non-obscene insults directed at me are allowed. If it overwhelms actual dialogue, I'll tighten the policy, but really, I don't care if I'm insulted.
• Over-the-top insults directed at other people who post here are not allowed and can get a poster warned or banned - there's a gray area between sparring and insulting, but please keep it civil.

Hopefully that'll work for a while.

UPDATE: I changed the site so only Haloscan permits comments. I'll see about getting the old comments public as well.