Blog comment rules

If you haven’t commented before, read this.

This blog is moderated. You can contact webmaster Ralph Maughan at rmaughan2@cableone.net. The other webmaster is Ken Cole.  5-6 other people post articles. There are a number of long time readers who have commented for years.

Your first comments to this blog go directly into the moderation box and must be approved by the webmaster. Every day new people are approved. About every two weeks someone is disapproved.

After your first comment is approved, your future comments might appear automatically. Permission to comment can be revoked. Due to the controversial nature of the issues discussed, experience tells that a completely open forum would be a string of insults. We don’t want this to be a forum for free floating emotion. There are quite a few strangers who show up and post a troll. They are usually removed unless posting them would seem to bring the embarrassment they deserve.

It is probably not a good idea for your first post to ridicule or insult the readers and editors of this blog. Comments such as those are common and usually their authors are blocked from making future posts. For obvious reasons it is especially unwise to make such comments from a government owned computer.

We also frown upon the use of Nazi analogies when speaking of wildlife issues. To understand this it is recommended that you understand Godwin’s Law.

We can see your email address, the screen name you use, and your IP number. Readers can only see your screen name and any link to your web page you elect to provide. Although potentially libelous comments are removed, you are legally responsible for them should we fail to locate them.

Please use a valid email address. If we find it is a fake, you will not be able to post anymore. We sometimes try to email new commenter before their comment is allowed through to see if it’s a valid address. Do not try to fool people by using different screen names and fake email addresses, your IP number doesn’t change. We can see what you are doing. The same is true should you issue a threat to someone.

We’ve found that people who think their comments won’t be let through are more likely to use a fake email address. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Note too that spam, which you will rarely see, is an ever present problem with all blogs, especially those with more readers like this one. Hundreds of spam posts are often received here daily. WordPress (the host of this blog) uses a routine (Akismet) to automatically try to detect spam. Akismet yields more false positives than false negatives. In other words, your comments can unintentionally end up in the spam queue. The best way to avoid this is not to have more than one hyperlink in your comments. Multiple hyperlinks are a leading characteristic of spam sent to blogs.

We try to go through the spam and pull out valid comments, but when faced with reading through a couple hundred unpleasant attempts to take you to porn sites, lead you to web pages that try to download a Trojan horse, or sell you dubious products, this task is often beyond our patience.

While Ralph Maughan is the primary webmaster; Ken Cole  frequently moderates and posts. The Wildlife News is supported by the Western Watersheds Project by the partial provision of  an employee (Cole).
Ralph Maughan

 

14 Responses to Blog comment rules

  1. We moved the rules for commenting on the blog to this separate page so they would not be so intrusive.

    We hope to keep it here unless it looks like those who want to comment are not aware of them.

    • I would like to see more updates on the day to day activities on the wolves and their packs. My organization likes to keep up with all the wolves on a personal level. I lo have several essays on wolves and their ecosystems. If your interested in reading or printing my essays I would be honored. Thank you for all the work you and your staff do to protect our beloved wolves. Gina McKelvey 2000 Arlington Ave Penthouse 511, Los Angeles, CA 90018 Phone (310)591-9472

  2. Note. If you comment on this page, please keep your comment on the rules of the blog rather than other matters.

  3. avatar Savebears says:

    Despite what gets posted, know that we all appriciate your blog as well as keeping it as clean as possible.

    One thing I will bring up is your comment about IP address, they do change and can be changed if you have knowledge to do so, also many of us travel quite often, so will have a different IP quite often.

    Just wanted to bring that up, but again, IP can and do change quite often.

  4. avatar Doug Pineo says:

    I read your short piece about hunting. I generally agree with you about grazing issues, but yet I’d rather have to deal with grazing than wind farms, and associated “smart grids”. Neither supporting or condemning hunting puts you in the same prim place as National Audubon, even as you acknowledge that the artificial schism between hunters and anti-hunters is a huge reason for the general failure of conservation of the nation’s natural heritage in the current era.

    Perhaps you think all hunters are Raul Labrador or Ted Nugent, though many thoughtful hunters indeed “think like a mountain”, and act on their principles. Your non-stance on hunting is worse than disappointing. You only add to the general disarray and mournful lassitude among conservationists in late 2013. Our children, and the world they will inherit, deserve better.

  5. avatar Nancy says:

    Happy New Year rick! I’ve have the same thought about a majority of people who live here in Montana 🙂 but as you must know, its gonna take more than a village, community, counties, state to have a positive impact when it comes to the welfare of all wildlife.

    Their lives are too often manipulated and then destroyed to satisfy a tiny fraction of this country.

  6. avatar chris cooper says:

    “Your e-mail address will not be published”.
    I live in Idaho and have seen, first hand, the anti-wolf sentiment from hunters and their friends. Ignorance of the facts (that wolves make for a healthier forest ) here is appalling. Yes. The wolves need a voice here, but not being willing to make yourselves known will not get the word out or the job done. Feel free to make my e-mail known to anyone who requests it.

  7. avatar brian mcnary says:

    Whenever I see an entire page devoted to “blog rules” what I see is this.

    “Blog rules” are simply a methodology wherein blog authors can hijack and control the dialogue while trying to come off like they are being “fair minded.”

    Caustic and ridiculing comments are easily dismissed from most blogs including my own without explanation. I tend to land on the side of free speech and oddly- I have only jettisoned 6 comments in a million+hits.

    Controlling the dialogue is a common teaching practice and with that I note the author (a former instructor of mine and good guy) and the subject matter. I see nothing wrong with stating the truth up front here rather than pretending to be “fair.” You cannot educate those who practice contempt prior to investigation. I would simply state that we are not here to attract dissent. If you want to argue or make nasty comments pls find Huffington Post.

    Having arrived on the planet via the most raped and destroyed landscape ever (Butte, Mt) I have a special fondness for environmental concerns. Thank you Ralph for helping shape me into the pro union, pro environment, and everything else libertarian I have become. And even though I disagree with wolf reintroduction- I have to admire the cut of your jib.

    Brian

  8. avatar Scott Slocum says:

    How do we report comments that violate the rules?

  9. avatar Nancy says:

    Very cool Randy 🙂

  10. avatar Ida Lupines says:

    More like the “bad old days” for indigenous people. I wasn’t thrilled about reading that either. It’s like criticizing Western religious prayers.

  11. avatar Ralph Maughan says:

    Arlene Bowman,

    You are now to this forum so you might not realize this is the wrong place to post your comment. This should be about comments on the rules for posting.

    Please repost this to another location. I will be removing it from here

    Webmaster

  12. avatar William singh says:

    I was there in mid June of this year for 2 weeks and saw the pups playing at slough creek. I try to go yell stone at least twice year and favorite place is Lamar valley. In Lamar valley my favorite place is pepple creek.

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Quote

‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey

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