We’re working on this thing, but it’s slow going. Rebuilding some things that were lost due to a bit of a security crack that affected many WordPress blogs. Sorry that we couldn’t take comments yesterday but that function seems to be operating on some basis now. I hope.

Your continued support of this blog is most appreciated.

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It’s apparently been up for a while now and I hadn’t heard about it. Check it out.

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The site was down a bit over the weekend and would still be in that state if not for the efforts of Butterbean, who is, as usual, The Man. Thanks for finding your way back here. (And yes, we realize the RSS feeds are not working — we’re working on it.)

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I plan to open the comments up again later today have opened the comments… and I must say it’s been a nice reprieve.

The reaction has been interesting, too. I would say 80 percent of the e-mails I’ve received about closing the comments were favorable to my decision.  A whole lot of people thought it was time for a break and that a lot of the comments were getting out of hand. I apologize for having to make the move, because I like comments. But I just didn’t feel I had the time to police them as well as I should have.

I’m still not sure I do, in fact. But we’re going to give it another shot.

The other 20 percent were rather varied. A few people figure that it’s their God-given right to be able to comment on anything and everything written on the web. And it drove them crazy when they couldn’t leave comments.

Some people thought I shut down the comments because they were growing increasingly critical of me. That’s not true, by the way. I’m accustomed to the criticism and if you’ve ever heard “Dwight’s Greatest Hits” — a compilation of voicemails saved from my days of writing columns at The Oregonian — on 95.5 The Game you’ll know what I mean.

No, what bothered me most was commenter-on-commenter crime. The way people treated each other. I hate to be the venue hosting such hostility. It got nasty and sometimes way too personal.

And another thing that got to me was just how many comments certain people were leaving. Seriously now, if you find yourself leaving 10 or 15 comments on one blog post, you really ought to think about something else to do with your life that might be more productive.

So we’ll start allowing the comments again with a few words of caution:

– Please be nice to each other, even if you can’t be nice to me.

– Understand this blog is free and thus try to treat everyone here with the same respect you’d have for someone opening their home or heart to you.

– Try to limit the number of comments you make on each blog to two or three. Is that too much to ask? If you find yourself being drawn into an argument with another commenter, take a step back from the keyboard, take a deep breath and go link to another fine blog in my blogroll. Take your mind off this for a while.

– Please don’t troll here. If someone calls you a troll, by the way, there’s at least a 50 percent chance you are one — so give it some thought. Let’s try not to intentionally get under each other’s skin, OK? People get emotional about their teams and their beliefs and it’s hard enough not to arouse deep feelings without just intentionally setting out to do so in the first place.

– Debate is great. That’s why there are comment sections. Feel free to call me or anyone else out. But try to do so in a factual way without being personal. It’s really about the argument, not the argumentors, right?

Thanks for reading my blog. You pay me back by listening to me on the radio on 95.5 The Game from 6-9 a.m., on the Morning Sports Page with Gavin Dawson and Chad Doing — it is far and away the top-rated morning sports show in the market. Or by watching “Talkin’ Ball” 30 minutes after every Blazer game shown on Comcast Sportsnet Northwest. It’s a fun show.

Or you can really do me (and yourselves) a favor by wandering into a great men’s clothing store on Northwest 16th and Glisan called “Este’s” — it’s a first-class, old-time Portland place where the service and quality are almost as outstanding as the price. Those guys even manage to make me look pretty respectable, so you can only imagine what they could do for you. And it may be the only joint in town where if you tell them I sent you, you won’t be thrown out.

Again, thanks for coming here. I really enjoy doing this and have met so many very nice people here. Thanks, too, to my pal “Bean” — Chris Snethen – for all the tech support. You ought to check out his great blog right here.

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The blog isn’t going anywhere. Just the comments. I may not post anything today — just a bit of a one-day vacation. But am not retiring from blogging — just taking a break from those sometimes insulting comments.

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SportsbyBrooks has a really nice analysis of what it means and it’s interesting stuff. Turns out, it’s all about ESPN:

Look at ESPN. With the majority of our only truly national sports network’s revenue derived from contractual agreements to broadcast NFL, MLB, NBA and NCAA hoops and football games, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that ESPN’s news reporting operation could be compromised by those financial arrangements.

Add in the fact that ESPN has no major national sports media competitor and now tell me what incentive ESPN has to report negative news about anything involving those league partners?

Of course, you already know all that if you visit me regularly. You see the stories that we produce daily that in many cases have every right to be reported nationally.

Say a sports blog breaks an original story that portrays one of ESPN’s league partners in an unflattering light. Because ESPN doesn’t have to fear another national network competitor widely distributing that blog’s story – because no such competitor exists – why would ESPN acknowledge the story? (Happens every single day, friends.)

That’s where TMZSports.com will come in. Harvey Levin doesn’t have to worry about a college football broadcast contract worth hundreds of millions when investigating Charlie Weis‘ on-the-record claim that Pete Carroll was living with a grad student in Malibu. Levin doesn’t have to worry about getting press credentials to future USC games, or getting access to Carroll for interviews.

Most importantly, Levin has the desire and the ability to distribute what he finds out about Carroll’s living arrangement to a large enough audience that the story will break through into the mainstream. Something independent sports blogs with huge scoops are largely incapable of.

Don’t think for a minute that ESPN’s beaten-down competitors aren’t also aware of this and will pick up TMZSports.com exclusives soley to force ESPN’s hand on inevitable, embarrasing stories dug up by Levin & Co

The sports media monopoly created by ESPN hath wrought a perfect storm for TMZSports.com to not only succeed, but to turn the industry upside down. Because not only will TMZSports.com itself quickly break into the mainstream, but its prominence will cause previously myopotic sports media consumers to suddenly consider a sports blogosphere that has been, to this point, largely ignored on an astonishing scale.

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I will be at the Blazer practice facility today with the rest of the media, but I’ll also be taking part in some way in the Comcast-95.5 The Game coverage of the draft.

I’ll be jumping in once in a while with Brian Wheeler live from the PF, with updates, speculation or just goofing around. If you want the local, Trail Blazer spin on the draft, I’d advise you go tune to 95.5 in your cars or Comcast Sportsnet on your TVs for complete coverage from start to (well past) the finish.

If something big happens, I’ll get a blog post up, too, and will try to get a few Tweets up on the Twitter page just to stay in touch.

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A lot of bloggers and media people are all over the workout scene. As a media guy, you don’t get to see much of the actual workouts — just a few minutes at the end. Then you talk to the players afterward.

Does it interest you? I mean, I’m just curious. I haven’t been out there, haven’t written anything about it. Certainly you can find all you need from Blazers Edge and The Oregonian. I just can’t get all that juiced up about it. Was going to go out this morning because the talent level today is a bit higher than it’s been.

But on the other hand, really, do you care? Last season it seemed to me that in terms of evaluating the Trail Blazers’ eventual choice in the first round of the draft, all of the workout stuff was a bit of a smokescreen.

If I could sit and watch an entire workout — actually try to discern whether a guy could play or not — it might be different. But that isn’t ever going to happen. Agents of these players would never allow it.

So what do you think? Is dwightjaynes.com letting you down a little bit in the area of workout coverage? Are you dying for my reaction after interviewing Joe Ingles or Terrel Harris?

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The kids over at Bust a Bucket are bored. There’s no more games to watch and so far, not a lot of off-season news of substance.

So the guys got together with friends, drafted full rosters of former Blazers and are playing out a season using computer simulation. It’s a new take on fantasy basketball and a fascinating idea that certainly helps you realize how much talent has gone through this franchise over the years.

They asked me to take a look at their rosters and rate them, which I’ve done. It’s the kind of thing you get asked when you’re one of the few people on the planet aside from Bill Schonely who has actually seen all those guys play in person. But I’m going to be watching to see how it turns out and I invite you to do the same.

And, by the way, if Walton’s team doesn’t win, the whole thing is a farce, guys.

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My pal, Bean, is Portland’s most versatile blogger and one hell of a guy. Here he is with yet another blog — he’s got some you probably don’t even know about but I won’t blow his cover – that details what he’s planning for the summer. It’s a take on one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes, “The Summer of George.”

It’s The Summer of Bean and I’ll do what I can to help.

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