Third post in one day!

Apparently I'm in a mood to post on my blog as I wait for the album Genuine Negro Jig by the Carolina Chocolate Drops to finish downloading. Really cool group which Terry Gross interviewed on Fresh Air roughly a week and a half ago.

Since I wrote a post which could theoretically cause people to comment, I figured I'd set out a commenting policy for my blog. Once again below the fold, so its easier for people to see all three posts today.




To begin an unnecessarily long post, my comment policy is as follows.  All comments should be civil. All comments should be on-topic in a post like my previous one where I have an opinion set out.  The majority of my small posts like the Kinder one feel free to simply treat it simply as an open thread, where as long as its civil pretty much anything goes (keep in mind both my grandmothers read this).

I am well aware that having a comment policy for a blog which only my family and friends read is unnecessary and probably will continue to be in the future. Even as I feel ridiculous, I still want to have this on the blog to point to should I ever need to. It is like having a policy for interviews or practicing my signature for autographs, but whatever, its my blog.

To be fair, I did just read an interesting article on comment sections with John Scalzi and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (which I tried not to copy in this post). Some of the sites I read daily I love the comment sections and look forward to them almost as much as the articles themselves. This contrasts with other blogs where I avoid the comment section completely and never bother to read it.

The difference between the two types of comment sections is in the moderating. Good moderators are a must to have a valuable comment section when a significant amount of people read and comment Now this blog does not need this, since no troll would ever bother to comment on my entries at this point, but the world and especially the internet is an odd place and I would never say it could never happen.

Basically, if I were to ever have a blog that a significant amount of people read, into the thousands, I would follow the example set by Ta-Nehisi Coates and John Scalzi, where they are perfectly willing to ban people or delete comments. Comments need to be respectful and civil and focused on the topic at hand.

Clearly this has not been an issue on this blog and as I said likely won't ever be, with the four comments or however many I have had total on all 20 blog posts. Still, the difference in reading the comment sections for Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein is glaring and shows the need for committed moderators and comment policies to make a readable comment section.