A Note on Commenting

I’m back from my self-imposed Thanksgiving break. Hi, everyone!

I was browsing through the comments recently left on my blog. The comments were varied and interesting, but some were less than polite or very off-topic, and I realized it was past time for me to define the commenting policy on this blog.

1. Interesting comments will receive replies. I can’t promise that they will receive replies immediately. Sometimes the most interesting comments wind up in the spam folder by mistake. Sometimes I’m too busy to reply right away and then I’ll forget to respond for weeks. (Or months…) But I do my best.

2. I like comments that assume good faith. What do I mean by “good faith?” I mean “sincere, honest intention or belief.” I’m a thoughtful person and I try to take people’s feelings into account whenever I write my posts, but occasionally, I’m going to screw up. I’m a human being and human beings make mistakes. If you get the sense that I’m ever trying to be malicious or willfully ignorant of people’s feelings, I’m not.

What does this mean? It means that, if you have a problem with something I wrote, feel free to point it out, but do it politely. I’m willing to listen if you express your thoughts with consideration.

3. Disagreement is appreciated. Snottiness is not. If you can’t do the first without including the second, you have more problems than I do. If I see an interesting point in your comment, I’ll throw out an “I don’t like your tone, young lady/man!” like an overbearing grandmother but then continue the conversation. People with interesting things to say deserve second chances.

4. Trolls will be deleted and then openly mocked. You’ve seen the “troll droppings” tag. People who leave trollish comments will be written about and mocked. Troll droppings, by the way, are not the same thing as polite disagreement. Troll droppings are comments designed for the sole purpose of berating me, flaming people, or getting on my nerves. Usually, they just make me laugh.

And speaking of troll droppings,

5. Comments are moderated by me and I have to approve of them before they appear on the blog. As the blogmistress, I have control over which comments appear publicly and which ones do not.

So, the poster known as Successful Troll is Successful who obviously created a dummy hotmail email account for the sole purpose of leaving a troll dropping on one of my posts? You have been foiled. You are not a successful troll at all, because a) no one saw your comment but me, b) I shall be deleting said comment forthwith, c) you did not succeed in making me angry, and finally, d) your troll dropping was too boring for me to even mock with its own special write-up.

That, my friends, is How You Fail At The Internet.