Thursday, March 30, 2006

comments policy

I can and will delete your comments for any reason I feel necessary. I don’t have to explain, tell you why, or give you a second chance, and, in fact, I probably won’t do any of those things. Get over it.

* a blog is not a public square,
* nobody is obliged to listen to you if you are being a jerk, and
* you are always free to express your opinions on your own website.

Now that that’s out of the way:

Constructive criticism is by all means welcomed, but if all you’re doing is coming here to rip apart everything I do, I kind of need to ask why you’re bothering, and wonder about your real motivation.

We welcome fans of other teams (and have quite a community of people from all over the world visiting here), and while trash talking with class is fine, we’re nice people here. I don’t have enough time in the day to read the blogs for the team I like, I cannot imagine having enough spare time on my hands to go find fan blogs of other teams to taunt the fans there. There are sites that welcome that. Go find one of them.

I do not tolerate sexism, racism, or homophobia even once. It wasn’t a joke, because that stuff isn’t funny, and you weren’t “kidding”. There are places that embrace all of that. Go there. Or better yet, go play in traffic.

Gratuitously self-promoting comments are also not welcome. If you want to promote your blog, then participate in the discussion. That means that you can’t derail a post by saying ‘Hey read this neat thing I wrote on my blog” unless it directly relates to the conversation, and you’re saying something more than “Hey go to my blog and read this.”

And in case it wasn’t clear, to quote the site I’m stealing it from (because it’s the best description of comment guidelines I’ve ever read, anywhere), “This is not a public street corner. While I am a rabid free speech supporter, your natural right to self expression does not require me to publish your opinion and spend bandwidth and resources doing so.”

And to steal one more brilliant thought from someone else:
1. Do I lack the balls to express my opinions under my own name?
2. Is my post/comment a purely personal - as opposed to professional or ideological - attack on someone I’ve never met?
3. Have more than three out of my previous four posts/comments been broadly negative in tone?
4. Am I the kind of cowardly, pathetic **** who would spit in someone’s face and then run away?

If so, you’re not welcome here.

Aside from the obvious troll of another team, mostly people get kicked off for being pompous blowhards & for #3 above.