Comment policy

It’s been a little quiet around here, other than repeating PLN blogs and announcing C&I issues. Not sure why. Maybe I should look at that “20 things to think about before stopping your blog” thing–but maybe not just yet. (I could use the weather Thursday & Friday as an excuse, I guess: Too hot to think, and we don’t have AC. But…)

Meanwhile, it appears that I never actually established a comment policy for Walt at Random. Maybe because I never thought about a fixed policy? Anyway, since such policies are being discussed in a couple of places, and since I still don’t have anything substantive to say that doesn’t either belong in Cites & Insights or on PLN (or in an EContent or Online column…), here goes…

  • Comments are welcome and invited as long as they’re vaguely relevant to the post. Linkbacks aren’t allowed–you can link to these posts, but the linkback won’t appear. (Spam, pure and simple.)
  • An email address is required for all comments and is never revealed: I won’t “out” you based on email address or IP address. On the other hand, I don’t require you to register or to sign in with any given account…
  • Signed comments are preferred. Anonymous and pseudonymous comments are allowed, but with a little less latitude.
  • I will not delete a comment because you disagree with me or make fun of me. Disagreement welcome…and snark is part of life.
  • I will delete a comment (or possibly edit it) if you use language I consider unsuitable, if you make personal attacks on anyone else, or if you say anything that’s remotely actionable (libel, slander, etc.)
  • I will delete comments that appear to be spam, that appear wholly irrelevant to the post, that seem to be beating a dead horse (especially one that’s not particularly library-related), that contain linked URLs that appear to be commercial or spammish in nature…
  • Comments are automatically closed six months after a post appeared, with some allowance for live conversations.
  • I attempt to check Spam Karma 2’s results before deleting them, but it’s conceivable that a “real” comment could be trapped as spam–e.g., if it has more than one link, is from someone who’s never commented here before, has a suspicious URL, etc. I’ve only rescued two good comments from Spam Karma in the last six months, so I don’t think this is much of a problem.
  • This is not an open forum. I delight in open conversations, even feisty ones, but in the end this is my blog; you’re a guest.

I think that covers it, subject to refinement as time goes on. I’ll copy the heart of that into a page…

2 Responses to “Comment policy”

  1. Paul R Wood says:

    After reading your rules and regs for commenting I first thought of a tongue in cheek response that I might put together that would maybe cross all those lines but being as new as I am to this whole process I didn’t want to get flamed out. I also came over to read some of your other posts and I found you as a result of Carolyn’s comment area. Thanks for being here and I hope to see mope of you.

  2. walt says:

    Welcome–and if you write a tongue-in-cheek response, you’ll probably find (a) that you don’t get flamed, (b) that you don’t get deleted. I’m just giving the reasons I would feel justified in deleting a comment. There are about 2,500 comments that attest to my reluctance to delete a comment that’s not clearly spam.

    I don’t know that I would have even written the policy except that I haven’t been inspired about blog entries lately…