Comment policy

September 15th, 2005

I am delighted with the warm, witty and thoughtful comments which readers have posted on this blog. One or two bloggers have suggested, however, that it is time for me to publish a comments policy, and reluctantly, I think they are right. To be absolutely clear, I am not doing this to prevent commenters disagreeing with what I post. Debate is good. I am not however, going to let one or two people turn this blog into a platform for offensive or misleading comment. So:

  1. In almost all cases, I don’t moderate comments. I like people to comment here and I think it’s good to have comments appear immediately, so that others can join in the conversation.

  2. I request that all commenters stay on topic, avoid misleading anyone, avoid bad language and refrain from insulting others. If a commenter breaches those guidelines I will do one or more of the following three things:

    • comment myself, asking the commenter not to do it again
    • email the commenter at the address provided, asking him or her not to do it again
    • delete the offending comment and add all future comments from that IP address to a moderation queue

  3. So, I will moderate some comments. The comments which automatically get added to the moderation queue are:

    • comments from the people who breach the guidelines in point 2
    • comments from people who have no previously approved comments
    • comments which contain multiple links (I do this to protect against comment spam)

I will endeavour to take a broad view of what should stay in and approve comments as quickly as possible. Thank you to everyone who continues to add such positive, thoughtful comment here. I am very grateful for your support.

Entry Filed under: Blogging

2 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Andy Merrett  |  September 16th, 2005 at 9:15 am

    Seems like a good move, though it’s a shame that we need policies.

    Apologies if I’ve contributed in any way to the name calling etc. in relation to, well you know what in relation to…

    Staying generally on-topic, I was censored on someone’s comments for the first time last week, which I thought was quite an achievement. As far as I can see, I didn’t break the published rules.

    I’m not planning on makinig a habit of it!

  • 2. Freddie Daniells  |  September 16th, 2005 at 9:25 am

    Sounds very reasonable to me.

Leave a Comment

Some HTML allowed:

Trackback this post  |