Comment Policy

Comments are a way for you to discuss with me, and with other people.  However, some comments have been deemed as uninterpretable or unreliable.

I take your comments very seriously. So I have a few rules in place for comments.

1. If you’re new, the comment you draft will not appear immediately. I have a vetting process whereby I read the comment and publish only those comments that don’t appear to be “spam.” I don’t want spam cluttering up the comments postings so I approve only comments that are not spam.
2. Sometimes the posts I author generate strong emotional reactions because of the subject matter involved. If your comment is negative and addresses the argument I set out in the post, then I will publish the comment. If your comment attacks me personally or your comment doesn’t contain an argument against a position, I probably won’t publish your comment. There’s an appropriate time and place for editorial opinions. I can think of two places (i) the perspective pages of a newspaper with a particularly bad editor and (ii) a freshman logic, English, or philosophy class. So go back to school or submit a “letter to the editor” if that’s what you’re interested in publishing.
3. Comments should be directly relevant to the post the author is responding to. Readers may become very confused by comments irrelevant to the blog post.
4. Comments that are intentionally supposed to bring about an emotion usually isn’t successful in the blogosphere.  Emotions such as sarcasm, harmless ridicule, or “just having fun” not only gets a bad interpretation from others, but remember, other people everywhere can read this, not just people that I personally know.  If you are being sarcastic, please try to show that you are.