Comment Policy
September 1, 2007 | In Help Guides |
Hello and welcome to the Ripples of Improvement Comment Policy! In order to foster a warm community where we can freely interact, I want to make sure we are all on the same page. Below are the ground rules, but in general, if you are mature and add value to any conversation, you are fine. So, read the more detailed notes below, then jump on in the comment pool - the water’s fine!
1. All comments will pass through three spam blockers: Akismet, Spam Karma 2, and Bad Behavior. If your comment has not appeared, and you are not a first time commenter (please see number 2 below), and you feel it may have gotten blocked by the spam filter, please contact me and I will see what I can do.
Please note: this blog has no follow tags enabled. Real people can follow your links, but search engines can’t. So don’t even bother spamming.
2. First time commenters are moderated. I will work hard to get to comments as soon as possible, but if you are a first time commenter and your comment has not appeared, please do not resubmit - it will get posted as long as it doesn’t violate any of the other provisions of this policy.
3. Although a comment may pass the spam blockers and end up posted right away because you have commented before, I reserve the right to remove all comments that I find offensive WITHOUT WARNING. If you are a repeat offender, you will be manually blocked. I WILL NOT edit comments, I will DELETE them. Deleting is faster and I need my time to respond to valid comments, not edit offensive ones.
To clarify, the following are examples of the type of content that is considered offensive and will result in deletion of your comment. This is not an exhaustive list, just the ones occurring to me as I write this:
- Profanity. If you feel strongly enough to use profanity, please do not leave a comment. Please cool down first and comment later. You may take your chances and use asterisks, but I may still delete your comment.
- Personal attacks. I don’t care how much of a jerk you may think someone is (including me), comments should react in a civilized way to what was said, not the individual. Please remember that as hard as we try, we are only reading words on a screen and we don’t have tone of voice of body language to add nuance to any words. It is very easy to misinterpret what is said without meaning to.
- Any words, phrases, or whole comments that are bigoted in any way. We are all human and we all have value. I don’t care about how you look, who you love, or how you may choose to worship. If you care, this is not the place to talk about it with anything but the deepest respect for any differences.
- Spam. The obvious references to sexual sites and products should be caught by the filters. The not so obvious plugs for other products may not be. I will discuss links separately below; violations of that policy will be considered spam and deleted.
4. Linking -
- I will allow links to relevant content that add to the discussion.
- I will not ban multiple links outright, but WordPress will automatically hold for manual moderation any comment with 2 or more links. Comments with 4 or more links may not even get that far; they may be killed outright by the spam blockers.
- Your website or blog URL are linked from your name, therefore a separate link just to advertise is considered spam.
- Again, to clarify, a link to content on your blog that adds to the conversation is fine. A link to say, “Hey, check out my blog at www.yourblog.com” is spam.
- Links should be through text, not copied and pasted, whenever possible. If you don’t know how to do this, that’s fine. However, please be sure that the link you are pasting isn’t super long. If it is, please use the services of tinyurl.com. This will help folks immensely and make your comment easier to read.
- Please, if you do need to copy and paste a link, especially a tinyurl link, tell us what it is before you paste. For instance: please follow this link to a great site on how we can make a bigger impact by working together: www.ripplesofimprovement.com
5. In the end, even with all the provisions above, comments belong to you. Please think carefully about what you write because I am not responsible for the content of your comments. I may delete them after the fact, but as I said before, I will not edit them, nor will I be responsible for the tone, etc. Therefore, if you start a flame war, it’s on you. On the other hand, if you realize that you started something great and you want to develop it into a full post on your blog - go for it! Please respect that what I write is mine, but what you write is fully yours.
6. I reserve the right to quote portions of comments in future blog posts. If I do so, I will consider said comment as if it was a post on that person’s blog or website and fully credit that person. I will also be mindful that whole scale copying of the comment is over the top and only pull out the relevant portion to quote.
7. Bottom Line: Ripples of Improvement is my blog and I reserve the right to full control of whether a comment or commenter stays or not. But I don’t say this to be mean; I want us to have a worthwhile conversation. If you have any questions or concerns about any of the above, please contact me directly.
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