Alibris Secondhand Books Standard

Saturday, December 12, 2009

comment policy

I've never formally articulated my comment policy, but a few recent comments have made it clear to me that I need to outline what type of comments I will not accept.

No, I'm not referring to the ongoing debate in Where's the Climate Data? Disagreement — even sharp disagreement — is fine.

I'm talking about the commercial spam. If you leave an advertisement as a comment, it will be deleted.

When I started this blog, I allowed all comments. Then I started getting spam, and I deleted them as they came up. After a few weeks of this I added CAPTCHA to filter out the spambots.

On September 6, 2007, someone broke the CAPTCHA and left more than two dozen advertisments for World of Warcraft Gold. In response I silently changed the comment policy.

I now no longer use CAPTCHA. Posts fewer than 14 days old I monitor regularly. I have deleted and will continue to delete any commercial comments found on new posts. All comments on posts more than 14 days old will be sent to me first for moderation.

When you drop by to say "...please where can I buy a unicorn?" your comment is innocuous enough to be approved. But when you return the next day to post an advertisement for cialis, you'll have no such luck. So whoever is doing that, please stop.

That is all.

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7 Comments:

At 12/21/2009 8:55 PM, Blogger Steve Hayes said...

I recently deleted a long comment that had nothing to do with the post it was ostensibly commenting on. If people want to post that kind of thing, they should start their own blogs -- it's easy enough to do.

So there are two kinds of comments I routinely delete:

1. Off-topic comments that have nothing to do with the post (which includes all commercial spam).

2. Ad hominem comments that attack people rather than dealing with arcuments and opinions. Disagreement is fine, as long as they attack the opinions expressed and not the opinion holders.

 
At 12/22/2009 9:33 AM, Blogger BruceA said...

For now, I will allow off-topic comments; if my blog started getting more comments, I'd probably change that policy.

 
At 1/30/2010 5:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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At 3/03/2010 3:59 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I confirm. I agree with told all above. We can communicate on this theme. Here or in PM.

 
At 3/03/2010 9:10 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I apologise, but, in my opinion, you are not right. I am assured.

 
At 3/09/2010 5:42 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Si, probablemente lo sea

 
At 3/12/2010 1:47 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It does not disturb me.

 

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