Monday, May 25, 2009

I Only Steal FromThe Best

Since we're seeing a return of my least favorite kind of comment, to wit: the "why are you talking about that, why aren't you talking about this?" I thought it might behoove us all if I gave a quick and clear statement of policies and procedures here. And since I'm basically lazy, I stole this one from John Scalzi's excellent blog, Whatever:

Everything on the site is my opinion (except comments written by others, which are their opinions). I have strong opinions. At times, you may not agree with these opinions, or how I choose to express them. This is not my problem.

I make no claims as toward being even-handed, fair, or nice. I write what I want here. Your being offended is not a reason for me to stop writing as I choose.

I run this site as I please. You do not get a vote. If you try to suggest that you do, I may be rude to you.

I prefer to take a light hand at comment moderation, and thanks to excellent commenters, I am usually able to do just that.

That said, I reserve the right to edit all comments, and to moderate all comment threads, as I see fit. Your comment is more likely to be edited, moderated or deleted if it contains phobic content (based on race, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, etc), is a personal attack or threat toward another commenter, is entirely unrelated to the entry topic, features more than a “fair use” amount of someone else’s copyrighted work, has such poor grammar and spelling that it annoys me, is an obvious piece of trollage, or if I find it or you obnoxious and decide I’ve had enough. Don’t like it? Don’t comment. Simple.

I participate in comment threads. Fire away at me. You need to be aware that I respond to tone as well as content. If you’re polite, I’ll be polite. If you’re a jackass, I’ll be a jackass back. If you argue poorly, I may correct you. If you want to gauge my levels of
tolerance, watch how others comment to me and triangulate accordingly.

Hard to improve on that, so I won't try.

Those are the rules, such as they are. Learn them. Live them. Love them. This blog is not a democracy, although as stated above, I don't delete or ban lightly.

But if you're being tiresome and, in my opinion, driving others away from the site, you're gone.

10 comments:

Curt Purcell said...

I can't stand comments like that. Often as not, anonymous, to boot.

JD Rhoades said...

Anonymous comments are another pet peeve, but unless they're clearly trollish, I usually deal with them by mocking the anonymouse's lack of balls in failing to take responsibility for their own words.

Kristy Kiernan said...

Well, if I'm going to live in anyone's dictatorship, I'm happy it's yours. Rule on.

JD Rhoades said...

Hey, K, you'll always be my Grand Vizier.

Anonymous said...

Everything tastes better with Viagra and Dusty Rhoades.

Tom said...

"The Freedom of the Press belongs to him as has one." Or so I've heard.

JD Rhoades said...

Thanks to the Internets, Tom, we can all have our own.

Celine said...

You could also throw in a little of Neil Gaiman's "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch" rant to good effect, I think. The sheer naked entitlement-whorism of people who want to insist that you only write what THEY think you should write never fails to astound me.

JD Rhoades said...

Celine, in some cases it's not so much arrogance as it is an insinuation that there's something sinister or, god forbid, "partisan" in your not discussing something. It's such a prevalent wingnut tactic that the wingnut debate dictionary even has an entry for it:

"Glennuendo (n.) - The act of drawing a darkly ominous inference from an opponent's failure to discuss a political issue. From Reynolds, Glenn."

Some people, on the other hand, just have a real, shall we say, devotion to a particular subject and won't let it go.

I highly recommend the WDD, by the way. I also like their definition for

"All-or-nothingism: This is when one is mocked because his/her recommended policy does not completely solve some problem."

We see a lot of that here, too.

charlie stella said...

How did I miss this last week?

Sometimes people are so taken with themselves they see things that just aren't there. That might be the case here.

I wonder what happens when the "Wingnut" Directionary applies to non-wingnuts ... god forbid the original post.

Celine seems often and easily astounded.