Main | Saturday, March 27, 2010

Commenting On JMG

Folks, traffic on this here website thingy has more than doubled in the last year and our already comparatively high volume of commenting has zoomed along with that, usually running about 900 - 1000+ comments per weekday. As I simply don't have the time to monitor 25,000+ comments per month, please take this post as my semi-annual caution and plea for restraint.

As the longtime regulars know, I consider our very lightly moderated community of commenters to be the single-most important facet of this blog's success, however you want to measure that. We don't require registration, we allow anonymous messages, and yes, on many occasions that openness can drag the level of discourse down to third grade YouTubery. But as some here already know, I believe in owning our own asshats, rather than censoring them. Troublemakers and trolls may cause a ruckus just because they find it amusing, but such assholery is instructive to the rest of us that not only is our community fractured on many issues, it also contains some total douchenozzles. I'd rather let them expose themselves by their own words than sanitize the comments with rampant bannings and deletions.

That said, there ARE a couple of ironclad rules here. First and most importantly, you simply MAY NOT post the personal information of any person, whether they are a private citizen or public official. This includes home addresses, personal email addresses, and personal phone numbers. Information about elected officials, corporate executives, and members of activist groups (on either side) such as their office numbers, their work email addresses, and their office addresses may be posted. Secondly, you must not make physical threats, however empty, against specific individuals, companies, or organizations. Laws regarding such internet threats, even anonymous ones, are evolving towards prosecutions. Do not risk it. If you see such postings here, please alert me at once by email.

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