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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There is little doubt, in most people’s minds. My pal, The Bean, has the RPI to back it up.

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Most shocking result of an NFL playoff game I can remember. I heard nobody, not even this guy, Portland’s No. 1 fan of what’s for decades been a sad-sack NFL team, say he thought the Cardinals had a chance to win that game.

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Yes, there’s me over in the upper right-hand corner of this page, contemplating the river, and now I’m also here — relaxing on the Internet with my two relentless pals, Bojack and Bean. Together, we’re just three Portland wise guys, as you may know already. I hope you’ll be a regular visitor… to the Internet home, not the real one on the river. Out there on the houseboat I’m going to be too busy fixing dinners for my Internet pals, to pay them back in a small way for all the technical expertise they constantly provide for me.

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My friend Bean blogs about soccer today – something he knows a lot about  – as well as Merritt Paulson and some of the things I wrote recently. Basically, he says that MLS is just a developmental league for Europe. It’s good stuff and the only thing I disagree with him about is that Paulson is going to let the soccer thing slide once he gets his new ballpark for the Beavers.

I can’t see that. Not if he spends $40 million for the franchise. What he might do, though, is get the franchise up and running and then pawn it off on some unsuspecting locals who buy into all that Soccer City bullspit.

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My good friend, Bean, the brains behind every single technical thing done to make this blog work correctly, is upset about this – a group of Blazer fans predicting when the team will win its next championship. And he makes some pretty good points about how silly that is, too:

 The Blazers definitely have a wide-open window coming up, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that they’re going to win a championship. I’d like to see Brandon Roy play an injury-free season first. I’d also like to see Greg Oden play period. Let’s maybe wait a little while before we go getting all giddy over the prospect of a Blazer championship. At least that’s how we did it back in the day.

I think I’ll just sit this one out and let them argue about it. But it does seem kind of funny for a group of fans of a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since Rasheed Wallace was throwing towels in people’s face, to assume the team has a championship within its reach. And when I read phrases like “primed for a decade of dominance” I have thoughts of some poor guy in bib overalls counting tiny chicks before they have hatched. Seriously, when is the last time any NBA team had a decade of dominance? Jordan’s Bulls didn’t even have that. The last coach to preside over a decade of dominance was lighting up victory cigars on the bench — and folks, there’s no smoking in NBA arenas these days.

But then again, this kind of chatter is what being a fan is all about, isn’t it?

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