Comment Rules

So, I haven’t had any problems with this so far except for some spam, but I’m going to put this up anyway to prevent potential problems (or at least have a place to point at when problems arise).

The way I have this set up is that I moderate a person’s first comment, and if I accept the comment then all comments by this person afterward get through without moderation. Any comment posted between the first and the time of my acceptance of the first also get put in the moderation queue. I’m not sure how wordpress tracks “person”, so it may be that if you don’t have a wordpress account all your comments will be sent to moderation. I do this in part because I assume any bigot or troll will just come once, spam a bunch of crappy comments, and leave, and also because I like to know when new people are commenting. I do read all comments, however, regardless of whether they are sent to my moderation queue, so even accepted people can be “moderated” to a degree.

The rules are simple:

1-a comment will be deleted if it consists entirely or in large part of: leetspeak, lolspeak, or IM/chatspeak. I find these difficult to read and have not read particularly many serious discussions that included them. Very bad grammar and spelling, despite also giving me a headache, are exempt from this (although it may be difficult to differentiate between chatspeak and legitimate spelling problems, I will do my best to err on the side of letting things through), because I realize this may stem from a disability or speaking English as a second language. Included in this are such contentless posts as a comment consisting entirely of a single, ordinal number (aka “first”) and the like. Difficult to read comments and comments in languages other than English will be accompanied by a request for clarification, rewriting, and/or translation. I realize this rule will be difficult to enforce in terms of errors on my end, but the most egregious violations will likely be accompanied by other problems so I will be lenient with this.

2-spam is automatically filtered out into a separate queue, and I look at it long enough to determine whether or not it is really spam. If is see comments in my regular moderating queue or on the site generally that contain links to webpages that are advertisements, porn, or are unconnected to the post, other comments, or other content of the comment, these will also be deleted as spam. A comment consisting of nothing but a post to a blog, esp. your blog, without other explanation will be deleted as well (if you want me to link to you a better strategy might be to email me). It is a good idea to include a description of the link and/or how it relates to the discussion, though lacking this will not necessarily get the comment deleted.

3-any comment containing hate speech or personal attacks is potentially subject to deletion. This is subject to the other content of the post, if that contributes to the discussion I will allow the comment, but include a reply of my own calling you out and encourage others to do the same. Any post consisting entirely of hate speech or a personal attack will be deleted and may even fall under the category of “threats” (rule 7). Statements such as “fuck you” are exempt, I will allow them mainly to highlight a lack of intelligent response.

4-any comment that outs another commenter or a blogger elsewhere will be deleted. If a comment contains your real name, full name, birth name, location, occupation, or any other information that you don’t want to be around the internet (or around in general), especially if it could aid anyone attempting to stalk you or similar behavior, please leave a reply or send me an email about it and the comment will be deleted regardless of other content (or edited, upon your request). Any comment containing a personal phone number or address will be deleted.

5-comments that another reader (or myself) find triggering will be edited to remove the trigger. Definition of trigger: anything that causes or exacerbates a major anxious, depressive, or similar response from a person. PTSD is a common reason for a particular thing to be triggering. What a trigger is not: anything that makes you angry or that you disagree with. This is, with outing in rule 4, the only time I will edit someone’s comment. The editing will be restricted to words or simple phrases, not sentences or entire comments.

6-any comment that contains advocacy of violence or similar will be deleted regardless of other content. I am a peaceful person, and even if I am very angry I advocate only peaceful solutions to problems and will not allow anything else on my site. If you want to push for vandalism, assault or anything in that vein, do it in your own space. This includes comments directed at people I don’t like, and perhaps these especially so. This also includes such comments as “go die in a fire” or insinuations that someone would be better off dead or we would be better off if they were dead (again, even if I don’t like them). This is not the same as death threats, which are addressed below.

7-any comment containing a threat of any kind will not only be deleted, but the commenter will be banned from commenting here. Threats include not only death threats and threats of bodily harm but threats of stalking and outing, or threatening to post material known to be triggering to a person. If I have to start banning people for threats, I will create a shit list of people whom I have banned. I will also, if possible contact the person who was threatened to let them know (if I don’t have evidence that they saw the threat), though I will not include the content of the threat unless it is requested. Also, if the threatener has a blog on wordpress, blogger, tumblr or similar I will send a message to the host letting them know of the threat and suggest the blog be removed.

If I have to edit a comment I will leave a message within the comment noting what I edited and why.

Hopefully I don’t have to do any of this, but it’s up here just in case.

  1. January 29, 2011 at 01:35

    For one reason, I can’t see all of this blog, it keeps disappearing? Are you utilizing XHTML?

    • February 6, 2011 at 16:20

      I’m not utilizing anything, just the bbc code that wordpress lets me. Not sure why it would be behaving weird, I’m not having any problems with it.

  2. March 17, 2011 at 15:29

    Hm. I never thought to put up _rules_ to commenting. I just do what I want, when I want, how I want. :P But then All of Blog is Belong To ME.

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