Here’s Dimitri Rotov’s response to what’s been said about him on this blog (and Kevin Levin’s blog) in the past few days.
I have one critical observation right now: it’s Gallman, not Gallmann.
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Crossroads 
So he doesn’t allow comments but he takes Gallman to task for criticizing him elsewhere? Then at the end of the post he invites Gallman to post a criticism of him … elsewhere?
And the ACW lacks critics? Really?
There is a distinct lack of critics in the context to which Dimitri refers. In particular, there is a lack of critics regarding the writings by folks with big reputations which may have been built by recycling old material which in turn has never been subjected to worthwhile skepticism. As I’ve posted in comments to other posts by Brooks, I strongly believe that Rotov serves a very worthwhile purpose. He is far from always right and often impolitic, but anybody who gets beyond his style and their own blind acceptance of long-held assumptions will find some surprising facts about established ACW “scholarship”. Frankly, Gallman’s “clown” material has a faint odor of circling the wagons.
I’ve been reading Dimitri since Usenet days. Among other things, he has always been a critical user of numbers. I’m not sure what Gallman’s beef is, but if he really has something to say he should get out and mix it up.
It was also Dmitri’s old CWBN site which turned me on to Rafuse, Harsh, and Beatie (generating a few book sales). CWBA has pretty much taken over that space these days though. I see he also put his old McClellan Society site back up; I think it was one of the first ACW-oriented web sites.
Like Al, I have a problem with Rotov’s blog being comment-free.
Dimitri makes his own choices, so it isn’t his problem. It’s a problem for others. It is more to the point that by definition responses to his commentaries have to appear elsewhere. However, it is also true that Matt Gallman’s objection to what Dimitri has posted is more one of style and approach than substance.
I’ve found that he will often respond to personal email with updates. Also, commenting via your own blog will get responses from him if he notices it. There are plenty of bloggers out there who don’t care to host comments, for some reason the two that come immediately to my mind are both acerbic Russian-Americans, although that’s got to be a simple coincidence. ^_^
With Blogspot in particular, the native commenting system leaves you open to a hellish amount of spam. I have a very, very inactive blogspot blog, I can’t imagine how much rubbish would accumulate with a blog with any sort of google profile.
Well, Jim, I don’t really have all that much of a problem with his not allowing comments. I do have a problem, though, with him taking Gallman to task for criticizing him on another blog when he makes it impossible for Gallman to respond to him directly–and then inviting Gallman to criticize him on some other blog, the very act for which he took Gallman to task at the beginning of his post.
There’s merit to that observation. However, if you are going to counter an argument, counter the argument. I didn’t see that in Matt Gallman’s response. What I saw was someone chiding other bloggers for giving Dimitri any attention. It would have been better to go after Dimitri’s logic, especially if one was to spend the time Matt’s spent discussing blogs.