UPDATE: It is time to start moderating comments in advance. I regret this. It is a defeat. I will try to let as many as I can through as fast as I can...
This is the place to comment on the comment policy, the email confidentiality policy, and the websufing anonymity policy.
Comments that add to the post and discussion will be retained; comments that detract from the post and discussion will be deleted (if I have time to moderate), starting with those that are actively misleading, and continuing with those that aim to provoke a food fight. Drive-bys are deprecated. Meta comments are super-deprecated. I don't have time to do this properly: comments that should go may stay, and comments that should stay may go (especially by commenters with a bad history). Remember: I want to have a comments section that normal readers will want to read and learn something from. From my perspective, would-be commenters, it is not about you--it is about them.
If you don't give me a real email address so that I can communicate with you, don't whine.
Emails to me may not be kept confidential without my express prior agreement to keep them so.
I will not collect or distribute or republish information about who visits this website.
The smartest thing I have seen on comment policies is Teresa Nielsen Hayden http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006036.html. Here are selections (with my annotations):
Making Light: Virtual panel participation:
There can be no ongoing discourse without some degree of moderation, if only to kill off the hardcore trolls. It takes rather more moderation than that to create a complex, nuanced, civil discourse. If you want that to happen, you have to give of yourself. Providing the space but not tending the conversation is like expecting that your front yard will automatically turn itself into a garden. (Which I, unfortunately, don't have time to do: whatever it is, it's not a garden.)
Once you have a well-established online conversation space, with enough regulars to explain the local mores to newcomers, they’ll do a lot of the policing themselves.
You own the space. You host the conversation. You don’t own the community. Respect their needs. For instance, if you’re going away for a while, don’t shut down your comment area. Give them an open thread to play with, so they’ll still be there when you get back.
Message persistence rewards people who write good comments.
Over-specific rules are an invitation to people who get off on gaming the system.
Civil speech and impassioned speech are not opposed and mutually exclusive sets. Being interesting trumps any amount of conventional politeness.
Things to cherish: Your regulars. A sense of community. Real expertise. Genuine engagement with the subject under discussion. Outstanding performances. Helping others. Cooperation in maintenance of a good conversation. Taking the time to teach newbies the ropes. All these things should be rewarded with your attention and praise. And if you get a particularly good comment, consider adding it to the original post.
Grant more lenience to participants who are only part-time jerks, as long as they’re valuable the rest of the time.
If you judge that a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it’s important to get rid of it, or at least make it hard to read. Do it as quickly as possible. There’s no more useless advice than to tell people to just ignore such things. We can’t. We automatically read what falls under our eyes. (I think that this is the most important directive of all: trolls must be squashed quickly, or the space turns into... Kevin Drum's comment section.)
Another important rule: You can let one jeering, unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two or more of them egging each other on, they both have to go, and all their recent messages with them. There are others like them prowling the net, looking for just that kind of situation. More of them will turn up, and they’ll encourage each other to behave more and more outrageously. Kill them quickly and have no regrets.
You can’t automate intelligence. In theory, systems like Slashdot’s ought to work better than they do. Maintaining a conversation is a task for human beings.
Disemvowelling works. Consider it.
If someone you’ve disemvowelled comes back and behaves, forgive and forget their earlier gaffes. You’re acting in the service of civility, not abstract justice.
