Comment Policy

This comes up now and then: people think I am not going to post their comment because they disagree with me, or thinking I didn’t post their comment because it didn’t show up after a certain amount of time.

So here’s the deal:

1. I have the Akismet comment spam plugin on this blog. If it thinks your comment is spam, I’ll never see it. Generally I think it’s pretty spot on, and have not heard of a single instance on this blog where someone’s valid comment was incorrectly labeled as spam by Akismet, but I suppose it’s possible.

2. If you have never commented here before, or use a different name / email address on the comment form than you used previously, your comment will be held in moderation. I will get an email immediately. I might approved it immediately. More likely however, it will sit in my in box for a period of a few hours to a day or two. Potentially longer. Sorry. I’m lazy.

3. Once you have had a comment approved, you go into the approved posters list. When you post another comment with the same name and email address, it should go straight through. This is all standard WordPress stuff.

4. Even after Akismet does its filtering, I still get a lot of obvious spam/phishing type comments. Naturally, these get marked as spam manually, by me, not approved.

5. Occasionally there are some comments where I’m not quite sure if it’s a spam/phishing thing, or a real comment. Usually some utterly generic comment on some old post: “Great post. Thanks!” – on something I posted 2 years ago, for example. If I approve something from someone who turns out to be a spammer, then they will be on the approved posters list and will be able to spam the blog, so if there’s any doubt, I usually just delete the comment. That way if the poster was valid, he or she will not be blacklisted and can post again.

6. Other than those cases, I generally approve every post. Even if you disagree with what I’m saying, even if I disagree with what you are saying, even if I think you are an obnoxious jerk, even if you think I am an obnoxious jerk. Obnoxious jerks often have something useful to say, even though they say it obnoxiously and jerkily. In the close to six years I’ve had this blog up, I can only recall two cases where I actually censored someone’s comments. In both cases the comment was just completely abusive and had no editorial value whatsoever.

In short, if you have something to say, and you post it as a comment here, it’s going to appear, eventually. If it doesn’t after a day or two, try again or email me. You don’t have to goad me on with, “You probably won’t post this but…” or repost your comment 3 times because it’s not showing up.