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Comments: Editorial Policy

Whether or not you subscribe to this blog, you’re welcome to post comments in response to anything you find here. I’m hoping to develop this blog into a space where professionals in the field, and others with a serious interest in it, feel free to engage in online dialogue with others on a variety of subjects. So I have a few ground rules, and a few requests:

1. Mind your manners. If you think someone’s wrong (myself included), prove it with reasoned argument. I’ll trash comments that get abusive. (Doesn’t mean I’ll reject heated debate — just the opposite.)

2, Try to stay on-topic. If you want me to open a new post on another subject, with its comment space, suggest it to me.

3. Make your comment, even if brief, a contribution to the discussion. Add some pertinent information, relate an illustrative personal anecdote, explore another aspect of the question under consideration. No blather, no me-tooing. The “Oh yeah? Sez who? Go get ‘em, kid” level of commentary I find at many blogs wastes everyone’s time. Generally I’ll dump those also.

4. Use your full name on your comment. Just as newspapers and magazines don’t publish unsigned letters to the editor, I won’t provide a platform for anyone who opts to remain unidentified. Your experience and professional qualifications do carry weight when people read your comments, appropriately so. And if you’re linking your comments to your website then any reader can find you online, so you’re hardly disguising yourself successfully. (Note: If you have a good reason for remaining anonymous ― for example, putting your name on a whistle-blowing comment could jeopardize your employment ― you can contact me via email.)

5. I won’t do serious editorial revision to any comments, but, as a life-long proofreader, small errors of grammar, punctuation, and spelling irk me. I’ll take the liberty of correcting those here.

Abraham Lincoln: On the Money

Abraham Lincoln: On the Money

6. The conventional wisdom has it that blog posts and comments should stay short — the shorter the better. I disagree; this leads to cryptic, less than fleshed-out interchange. My posts will run comparatively long, as blog posts go. Your comments can run long too. Follow the Lincoln rule: Asked (in jest) how long he thought a man’s legs should be, Lincoln replied “Long enough to reach the ground.”

7. Finally, a note to spammers: I’m the designated editor/administrator of this blog’s content. All comments come to my email inbox first. Spam gets deleted before it reaches the posting area. Don’t waste your time.

All posted comments become part of this blog’s public history. As such, by posting a comment you thereby license to me reprint rights to that comment in perpetuity, for use in any subsequent publications of material from this blog, in print, electronic, or other media.

Click here for an advisory on how to post a comment.

— A. D. Coleman
http://www.nearbycafe.com/artandphoto/photocritic/about-photocritic-intl/comments-editorial-policy/
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