October 3, 2005

My Extremely Petulant Comments Policy

Now that the site’s redesigned, the comments feature works a little differently than it used to. It’s set up to prevent huge onslaughts of gibbering robot comment spam, and over the past few months I’ve realized these measures allow me to moderate the incoming comments in other ways, too. My dumb little rules are as follows:

The first thing you need to know about the comments is that they aren't posted to the site right away. They're emailed to me and then I approve them if I think they're okay. And by "okay" I mean anything that's 1.) not junk, 2.) not abusive, and 3.) relevant to the discussion.

This means I'm no longer publishing any comment that reads like an email and/or mentions things that are more appropriate for a private message. I don't mind reading these kinds of posts in themselves, but sometimes the comments section of my site reads more like a guestbook, which isn't what I intended. I know some people feel it's easier and somehow less intrusive to communicate via the comments feature, but thanks to the cool little web form I have on my contact page, you can write me without having to open your email program. I like to read my fan mail but there's no reason why everyone else should have to read it, too. And if you submit a comment with a question, I'm not going to publish it unless I'm willing to follow it with an answer, which, sadly, isn't too often.

I won't publish comments that are posted to the wrong blog entry. I won't approve any attempts to respond to entries where I closed or disabled the comments feature. (Because I do that for a reason.) I will not approve any comments written in all caps. I won't approve comments written without punctuation. I'll forgive a few typos, but if your post gives the impression that you're drunker, crazier, or significantly more careless than other commenters, I'll do you a big fat favor and not publish it.

I'll publish a comment that's posted in response to another comment, and I'll probably publish the subsequent comment in response to that comment, but beyond that, all bets are off, because this isn't a bulletin board.

I might not post your comment if it's really long, or if you comment a lot and I think you might need to get out a little more. No hard feelings. I'm also not going to post your comment about how you wish I'd update my site more often, because, alas, it never has the effect you were hoping it would have on me.

Obviously I won't publish your comment if you're a douchebag, or a troll, or if you have a blatantly fake email address, or a bug up your ass about something I wrote, or if you're a robot, or an online casino enthusiast. Also, please don't hit the "post" button 10,000 times thinking that it'll make me publish your comment faster. I'm afraid it won't.

Really, if you're a reasonable person, I'll likely publish your comment. Mostly I'd love it if you didn't care too much whether I approve your comments or not. People post comments for different reasons, and not all of them fit with my idea of what my site is. Thanks for understanding.

Posted by Wendy | Monday, 12:32 PM | send link

Comments

Ha ha, I like that you can post comments on the Petulant Comments Policy. I just wanted to say that the sentence "Obviously I won't publish your comment if you're a douchebag" is funny. Funny because it's true. Will you publish *this* comment? Does the act of writing it make *me* a douchebag? Only time will tell!

Posted by: Josh at October 12, 2005 11:42 PM

The reason a comments policy will never lead to paradoxes, at least sound ones of the Goedel's Theorem sort, is the possibility of indefinite expandibility of the policy as a formal system.

Given that things like arithmetic or algebra as we know them do everything we can think of in the technological world, yet are easily expandable to fit any paradoxical statement you can come up with, it's child's play to take a rich system like an English-language-based comments policy and expand it to resolve any paradoxes, as long as the only useful work it's required to do is screen comments with extreme petulance.

Posted by: Marion Delgado at October 13, 2005 06:36 AM

Do you ever post to the WW message boards? I recognized the "troll" reference and wondered.....

Posted by: Tanya at October 19, 2005 10:53 AM

That was a very clever response and entertaining response.

The comment policy is actually rather good to, but I prefer to leave it unsaid on my blog and keep people guessing. It builds suspense, adds mystery and builds the curmudgeonly persona I'm cultivating.

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October 3, 2005

My Extremely Petulant Comments Policy

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