Thursday, November 11, 2010

Comments policy

I want there to be lively debate in my comments section. I'm not going to ban anyone for disagreeing with me. But I have to enforce the following rules to fend off the forces of chaos and douchebaggery:

Registration is required in order to post comments.

My comment policy in short: I'm mostly hands-off, but if you're persistently offensive, disruptive, or tedious, I'll delete comments; if you continue, you'll get a short-term ban or, in rare cases, be banned permanently. Big no nos: nasty personal attacks and/or slurs. I usually warn people first; if you persist after a warning, expect at least a short-term ban.

The details:

Don't say things so vile and hateful that if you said them to Gandhi, he'd punch you in the head. Calling someone an idiot is fine. Lots of people are idiots. Just use caution when moving much beyond this level of invective. Back-and-forth namecalling is tedious for everything.

A few specific things that will get your comment (and perhaps you) banned as soon as I see it: the words "cunt" or "faggot," used to disparage people or groups, references to sex organs, hateful slurs, gratuitously nasty personal attacks, flagrant lies about me or anyone else, threats.

If you regularly post comments that violate these basic guidelines, you're done here
. I'll delete every comment you make, even those that don't violate the guidelines.

REALLY IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If your comment simply doesn't post, it's not because I deleted it. It's because Blogger's spam filter has filtered it.
The spam filter is unreliable, but unfortunately I can't turn it off. If your comment follows the guidelines, and wasn't filtered because, say, it was full of profanity and slurs, I will un-filter it as soon as I see it. That may take awhile, as I am not always in front of my computer.

EDIT: ADDITIONAL RULES:

Stay on topic, more or less: We all go off-topic from time to time. If you're constantly going off topic in a way that's tedious or disruptive, I'll delete your comments.


No more than two posts in a row, unless you are responding specifically to arguments from other commenters and want to break it up into different comments. If you have an afterthought, or a correction, and want to post a second comment, that's perfectly fine. If your comment is so long it needs a second part, that's ok, but seriously think about being more concise. Posting every thought that pops into your head in comment after comment? No. Blog comments are supposed to be about dialogue, not monologue.

Don't quote entire articles. If you want to post about something you found elsewhere, post a brief excerpt and/or summary and a link. Don't post the whole thing.


Don't misrepresent what other commenters say or put words in their mouth. This is already covered in the "don't lie" bit above, but I want to reiterate it. If you misunderstand something someone else says, or have a different interpretation (and a good argument to back that up), that's fine. But repeatedly misrepresenting others, particularly after they have corrected you, will get your comments deleted.

10 comments:

  1. "Don't say things so vile and hateful that if you said them to Gandhi, he'd punch you in the head."

    There is nothing a person can say that would cause Gandhi's corpse to re-animate and punch that person in the head.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Or cause his ashes to take a corporeal form and punch a person in the head, if he was cremated rather than buried.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I hope this applies to Tec too, as for the likes of manhood academy, there is good enough reason to ban him.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Manhood Academy being banned is a foregone conclusion, but I'd say the odds of Tec getting banned are about as slim as...well I can't complete the joke without making what David will likely call a "gratuitously nasty personal attack" so let's just say it probably won't happen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I can't ban anyone; blogger is not set up that way. I can delete individual comments, and when they violate these guidelines, I do.

    In the past I've let some things slide, from MRAs and non-MRAs, that now I would probably delete.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Interesting - on my blogger, it looks like I can BAN people...

    I'll look into this.

    P.S. I really would like to get an E-mail from you...

    ReplyDelete
  7. There is nothing a person can say that would cause Gandhi's corpse to re-animate and punch that person in the head.

    I bet I could do it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. >If your comment simply doesn't post, it's not because I deleted it. It's because Blogger's spam filter has filtered it.

    Really, blogger's comment system is one of the worst around and its spam filter is horrid. You should consider an outsourced comment system like Intense Debate or Disqus (I prefer the former) which allows some nifty things like threading.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Also, Blogger's comment system has this really weird login gateway. If you select an account to use from the "Comment as:" drop-down and then make a post, it creates a cookie for the selected account but eats your post anyway. This is why I have a habit of copying everything I write to the clipboard or into MS Word or Wordpad before posting it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. erm - i don't know if you have many British people around [and i'm NOT British] but i feel compeled to ask: what about the c-word used as the Brits use it? [i can't bring myself to use it at all, i'm really just curious. i see lots of people who just say "all use is bad" and lots of people who say "ok, we'll assume that everyone is now using it like a Brit". i'm wondering what a rational non-extreme policy would be?]

    ReplyDelete

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