We want the comments area to be a lively, but friendly place where people can have a good discussion about the blog content. In order to do this there needs to be a few rules in place.
Remember, it’s my site, my content, and my rules. If you aren’t happy with the rules then don’t use the comment system!
So what are these rules?
BE RESPECTFUL OF OTHERS
Different people will have a different perspective on things. Try to understand the other persons point of view. You don’t have to agree with them, and you don’t have to force them to agree with you. Please put your points across in a respectful way, and remember, sometimes you will just have to agree to disagree.
READING AND WRITING
If you are standing in front of someone you can get an idea of the emotion they put into what they are saying directly to you. When you are reading a comment on a blog you are really just guessing at what they felt when they wrote it and what emotion they are trying to convey.
And that’s the problem! People are guessing, and often take offence at things that were never intended to cause offense.
Throw into the mix that for the person writing the comment, English may not be their first language!
So before you explode with offence and rip into someone in anger, please pause, take these points into consideration, re-read the comment, and consider if they maybe meant it a different way.
WHY COMMENTS MAY GET DELETED
In order to keep the comment area a safe, clean, friendly place, there are going to be times when it is necessary to delete comments. Here are some of those reasons…
- Personal or nasty attacks on others
- Racist or sexist language or behaviour
- Vulgarities
- Using false credentials when posting a comment
- Lies, misleading statements, or statements which can not be substantiated
- Advocating or recommending something which is illegal
- Posting a comment whose primary purpose is to link to another site to promote it or gain SEO value
- Contains copyrighted material that has not been licensed for use on this site
- Designed to lead visitors away to rival sites
- Affiliate links
- Links that are masked, redirect links, or using URL shorteners
- Comments that appear spammy
- Comments that are too short and/or fail to add any value to the conversation
- Comments that are too long – if you want to write a blog post then do it on your own site
Please note that the above is not intended to be a complete or definitive list, it is intended to provide you with some guidelines as to what is considered acceptable. The final say on what gets removed or not will be at our sole discretion. Keeping the comments area and the community that contribute them safe is always going to be our priority, as well as maintaining a quality and healthy level of conversation that readers and contributors can enjoy and benefit from.
SPOTTED A COMMENT YOU THINK WE SHOULD HAVE TAKEN ACTION ON?
There are various processes in place to automatically detect ‘bad’ comments and make sure that they do not appear on the web site. This primarily includes automated comments, but also to a degree human generated spam, which is much harder to detect automatically. However, like any automated process it will not be perfect, and there may be times when bad comments appear on the site. The presence of these comments does not imply that we condone or agree with those comments in any way, or that we approved them for publication. In fact it’s almost certain that we aren’t even aware of them!
If you spot a comment that you think falls foul of the comment policy, or just shouldn’t be on the site then please contact us to let us know. You’ll be doing us a big favour.