My buddy Thucky recently went on the radio to complain that we had deleted many of his comments, including his most scholarly ones. At the same time, I’ve noticed a few things related to comments that bear mention. I speak only for myself, although my fellow writers may be in about the same place.
Regarding the Thuckmeister’s allegation, I’ve not deleted any of his comments. Given that there still are hundreds of his comments up, it’s hard to believe many were deleted, unless he was even more of an obsessive blog troll than we’d figured. That said, when we moved to the new format, some comments inadvertently were lost in the transition. As you might imagine, the process of transferring thousands of posts and all the comments associated with them was quite an undertaking. We did our best.
Anyhow, if Thuckarooskie had anything “scholarly” to say that he wanted to be sure was preserved, he should have posted it to his own blog.
Truth is, any inadvertent deletions on our part likely kept Thucky out of further trouble, so he probably should be thanking us. Just sayin’
Moving on, a commenter recently complained that I don’t answer his questions. I sometimes do answer questions, but have never felt obligated to do so. The comment section largely is for dialogue among the commenters, to allow them to express their own views. If I had unlimited time, I’d answer more questions.
We don’t have an official comment policy. Some blogs do, but we chose not to. Personally, I’ll allow almost all comments. I welcome the dialogue, even if I do not personally join in. Where I depart from that is if a comment contains inappropriate language or if the commenter is using the comment section as a substitute for running her own blog. If you find yourself writing a comment beyond 200 or so words, or commenting at a Thucky level frequency, you may want to consider creating your own blog.
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Between Blog for Arizona and Tucson Progressive, there are more than 500 comments by Huppenthal, writing as Thucycides or Falcon9. All of them are still visible; none were deleted.
The BfAZ database keeps track of whose comments have been approved in the past. Everyone’s first comment is moderated and approved by an administration (often but not always by me). If multiple comments have been approved, the system thinks you’re OK, and the rest go up automatically.
Yes, comments with links are automatically put into moderation.
I allow all kinds of off-beat comments, even those that do not agree with us at BfAZ. I do draw the line at comments that are threatening to anyone and comments that are merely name-calling rants.
Now, if only the right-wing blogs had such an open comment policy!
Thanks Bob, Donna, and Pam. All 3 of my comments are now out of moderation and are posted! (here, and in the Red Herring and If I’m Wrong posts)
I’m not sure why they went into moderation – I’ve posted here before and they did not contain links.
On my other blog comments with links automatically go into moderation. Might be the same here.
As if the presence of “scholarly” comments elsewhere mitigates calling poor people lazy pigs.
Thanks for this comment, Bob. I don’t think that you’re referring to me when you say “a commenter…complained.” However, I have been frustrated that I have twice tried to respond to your Hamas articles, and you have chosen to leave them “awaiting moderation”. If you “allow almost all comments”, what has happened to mine.
There are no known guidelines about the length of comments, and you have approved other, longer comments. There is no “inappropriate language” and I am not using this as a blog substitute. (I actually thought about re-posting your comments and my responses at ArizonasPolitics.com, but that’s not the optimal way to run a dialogue.) So, I am perplexed.
Hopefully, it is just some technical switch that is causing my comments to run down a different track that is out of your sight. If so, let’s work together on fixing the derailment. (If it was intentional, please simply state so – with a reason – and, we’ll move on.)
Mitch, I’m not sure what happened to your comments. I’m actually not the adminstrator of the blog, but I do have the ability to approve comments to my posts. I’m not 100% on checking for pending comments, so it’s possible both I and the administrator just missed them. If you’d like to re-post them, I’ll try to look out for them.
The commenter is complaining openly in his comments, which are published, as if I have some obligation to give him personal attention. So, yes, the reference was not to you.