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This next stuff falls under the category of “housekeeping,” and believe you me, it’s not one of La Cieca’s favorite subjects, and if you ever saw her house, you’d know what she means. Anyway, your doyenne has noticed that of late the delightfully freewheeling discussion here has from time to time (to extend the metaphor) gone off the rails. We have to be vigilant, dear ones, about the dangers of having passionate discussions turn personal. In particular, La Cieca is peeved by the tone of several posts in which commenters pose as mental health workers and “diagnose” each other’s psychiatric disorders. That kind of personality-targeted vitupery is neither informative nor entertaining, so it really doesn’t belong here.

Now, in an attempt to quell confusion, La Cieca is going to note that she considers there is a difference between “public” personalities (e.g., opera singers, management, published critics) and the private personalities of one’s fellow commenters. The former group have chosen the public eye and so are, in La Cieca’s opinion, fair game for whatever japery comes their way; similarly, their fans have every liberty to defend their favorites. What is out of bounds, though, is the vicious personal attack on a fellow commenter.

And so La Cieca has, in her artless unilateral way, put into place the following system. From this morning on, personal attacks in comments will be redacted and replaced with lines from the classic vocal text by Metastasio, “Mi lagnerò tacendo.” The appearance of these lines in a comment will serve as warning to the commenter to moderate his language and to keep to the subject at hand.

At any time, whether or not a commenter has been previously “Metastasized,” La Cieca reserves the right to suspend that commenter’s posting privileges temporarily.  If you find you are unable to post comments, it’s up to you to contact La Cieca and to explain to her why she should reinstate you. (Hint: “everyone else was doing the same thing” isn’t going to work.) La Cieca promises to show truly Titus-like levels of clemency.