Comment Policy

I've had to deal with a comment that was beyond the pale of polite conversation this morning. Normally, I would have deleted it, but I decided to simply remove certain words and leave a small editorial explanation within the comment itself. The reason for this is that the comment was blatantly racist in nature and it came on a post that, in some ways, would invite a racist response. I hoped that by leaving the editorial portion, I could persuade people to leave that line of thinking and stay on topic.

I'm still not sure that was the right decision, but it stands for now. If it turns out to have been the wrong decision, I will simply shut down comments on the thread and ban the offending users.

I've only deleted a handful of the nearly 9000 comments that the site has received over its life, and those were very specific circumstances. One was a personal attack that was simply unacceptable and the other two were racist in nature.

Over the last few months, though, there have been a few circumstances where I thought that the comments were very close to a line of acceptable behavior. With that in mind, I think it is finally time to have a sort of official comment policy. I realize that most of us don't need this policy--that even the heated discussions here tend to stay within pretty civilized boundaries. But I want it to act as a reminder to all of us that we want to stay within those bounds.

1. Blatantly racist comments will be deleted as will bigoted comments about any religion (except Scientologists--we all hate Scientologists since they can be blamed for the movie version of Battlefield Earth. The book sucked, too.). This is racist as defined by the dictionary:

   adj 1: based on racial intolerance; "racist remarks" 2: discriminatory especially on the basis of race or religion n : a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others

   So, comments that meet this definition, regardless of whether they have been left targeting whites, blacks, Koreans, or Russians (for example) will be removed. We all hate Martians, though.
2. Personal attacks are discouraged. Overly personal attacks will either be edited or deleted. The arbiters of this are any of the authors of this site, and their decisions are final.
3. Continual personal attacks or violation of other rules will result in banning.

If you have any ideas on how to make this list more complete, leave it in the comments. I don't have a problem with constructive criticism or new ideas. I do want it to remain a simple set of guidelines for our interactions with each other, though.

Mostly, I want it to be a reminder to all of us that behind the pixels there is another real live human being. If you wouldn't say it in the real world to their face, don't leave it in the comments. Stay as civil as you can (although I understand not backing down to someone who is being a jerk) and stay as constructive as you can (unless it happens to involve Martian Scientologists--whom we all hate).

Thanks to everyone for doing their best to stay on the right side of that line--it will help keep this site a place where people can disagree with each other without resorting to hating each other.

Posted by zombyboy at August 27, 2004 09:59 AM