I’m still relatively new at administering a blog, but it has now become clear that we need to give our readers notice as to what will and won’t fly regarding comments.  

The starting point is that we love comments.  Without them, our posts lack life.  Therefore, if you are tempted to comment, please do send it to us.  You can do so anonymously (readers won’t see who you are).   I rarely use the email address you provide in order to comment, though I occasionally write a note to a potential commenter asking for a clarification or thanking him or her for an especially good comment).

As of late, a few commenters have used their comments to pull the conversation way off-topic. I fear that allowing this to happen is annoying those who want to stay on-topic. There have been a few other problems, as well.  Rather than rejecting these problems on an ad hoc basis, I thought it would be more fair to publish some guidelines as to what “works” as a comment.   I added a few other housekeeping items in this list as well.

To reiterate the bottom line, please do send us comments.  We really enjoy hearing for you.  We want to know what posts “work” and where we need to improve.  We get more than 1,000 unique visitors each day now, and we’d enjoy knowing who you are and what you are thinking.

Without further ado, here is our new Comments (etc) Policy (I’ve also posted this file also in our “About Page”):

Comments

We welcome comments, especially those that disagree with our posts and those that point out perceived errors.  Please send us your comments, as long as they are relevant to the post, informative and polite.

We consider all comments you send us to be intended for publication with attribution.

We reserve the right to edit your submitted comments for content, clarity, and length.

We will reject or edit comments to the extent that they contain the following:

• Potentially libelous comments.
• Obscene or racist comments.
• Personal attacks, insults, or threatening language.
• Plagiarized material or copyright violations.
• Private, personal information published without consent.
• Comments totally unrelated to the topic of the post.
• Promotions or spam.
• Comments that attempt to change the topic of the post to an unrelated topic.
• Repeated comments by the same author making the same point.
• Name-calling, personal attacks or racist taunting.
• Hyperlinks to material that is not related to the discussion.

Don’t send us comments that consist of lengthy writings you’ve pasted in from elsewhere, including news articles.  Doing this could constitute a copyright violation.  Instead, you should link to that information.

Anonymous posters should consistently identify themselves with the same name, so that readers know that all such comments are coming from a single individual.

Email

All emails received by this site (or by the individual authors) are considered intended for publication with attribution unless otherwise requested in the initial email from the writer.

Other Notices and Disclaimers

In case there is any doubt, we would be honored to have you link to our posts.  No need to ask permission.  We would prefer that you not copy entire posts, but that you limit your copying to excerpts (especially on our longer posts).   Just make sure you give our writers credit!

The content contained in each of the posts on this site is exclusively attributable to the individual author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any of the other authors.

Dangerous Intersection is not responsible for, and often disagrees with, material posted in the comments section. Because this is an oftentimes vigorously paced opinion site we make no claim that we are able to fact-check each claim made by each comment.