Comments on this blog go through the following process. If you have not commented before (it remembers your email address) I have to approve your first comment. Once you have had one comment approved you are trusted and your comments will show up immediately without my approval. Even after that, I am notified of and read all comments and will of course remove offensive or insulting comments.
Today I found a comment that had actually been captured by my spam filter which I’m not notified of, so I hadn’t seen it earlier. When I looked at it, I realized it wasn’t necessarily spam. But it was huge, and it had links, and it covered many different topics and sub-stories. It promoted various different DVDs and web sites. I had trouble even getting through it. Even though I think this person meant well and they were passionate, there was just too much. I thought about editing the comment myself, but didn’t know if I would do the commenter justice.
I realized I need to have an official comments policy for this blog. Other blogs have them, and I need one too.
- I love comments! – I want people to comment! User discussion around posts is what I love to see, so never feel shy about commenting.
- I delete spam. – I have spam filters in place to catch most of it, and if they don’t catch it, I will delete it manually.
- Relevant links in comments are actively encouraged. – If you have a link that will help people out, please add it. This is part of the conversation and improves the blog.
- Irrelevant links are not encouraged. – If you leave a comment with a link in it that has no relevance to the post you’re commenting on it could be deleted.
- Don’t forget to put your website in. – I have no problem with people using the provided website field which when used will provide a link back to your site. Obviously if this gets abused (links to offensive websites) even otherwise acceptable comments would still be deleted.
- Clarity is golden. – Please have a clear point to your comment that makes it easy for other readers to read and understand. Long comments are OK if you are trying to flesh out your point, but long meandering comments are not so good. If your comment reads like a blog post, then maybe it should be a post on your blog. I’ve often done this, started posting a comment on another blog and then in the middle realized, “Hold it! I’m writing a post for my blog, not a comment.” A comment should be commenting on the blog post, not be a post of its own.
I can’t stress enough that I want people to comment. Discussion is great, I am welcoming of dissenting opinions, as you can see by the comments so far! These guidelines will hopefully make the comments better for readers of this blog.