I moderate comments on this blog primarily to kill the evil sp*m monster, but also because I’ve had a few trolls under my bridge. If you’ve successfully posted on FRL before, and your post has no more than one or two links, you should expect to see your post appear immediately.
If your comment has a lot of links in it, WordPress will send it straight to the dustbin. I can retrieve it and post it, but I won’t see it unless you alert me, so email me to ask to have it posted.
If you are a new commenter, or your comment is anonymous, it could take up to a day for me to post your comment — longer if I’m on the road.
I particularly welcome comments that are:
- Interesting, even if inaccurate or poorly-argued
- Amusing, intentionally or otherwise
- Historically significant
- Pertinent to the discussion
- Generally rounding things out
- Concurring or intelligently disagreeing with previous posts
Responding with “Jane, you ignorant slut” is not an example of intelligent disagreement.
Comments that have a good chance of never seeing the light of day have these characteristics:
- Rude, particularly to friends and colleagues of the site author
- Intolerant, particularly if homophobic, racist, sexist, or just plain mean-spirited
Restoration to posting status may require apologies and/or promises to behave better in the future. However, I have only had to ban one person (a creep who posted homophobic comments), and you can see from the comments on many posts that I don’t limit conversation to people I agree with. So disagree away!
