Comment Policy

A start at a more explicit comment policy. Comments are welcome (themselves, and on this write up).

The main theme is that I want this to be an educational resource. Even though I sometimes take a broad view of what that means, please remember that this is the goal. To the end of being educational, it is best to provide a supporting argument and with a link or two to a more thorough source. See also my thoughts on link policy. I also am interested in discussion rather than debate. Part of that is that if a comment could be answered by 'read what the person actually wrote', I should simply reject it. (I haven't done this reliably, but will work on improving on that.)

Since my educational aims include jr. high students, the language also needs to be kept clean. This hasn't been much of an issue.

I do give an email address on my profile page, so if you think I've mistakenly rejected your note, you can drop me a line there and I can at least tell you what happened. Best to include the blog's name in your subject line as that account gets a ton of spam.

Questions to ask yourself in submitting a comment, or about a comment that doesn't get posted:

• Was the language clean (standard being what I think language-sensitive parents of jr. high class might think of you speaking to them)
• Was the comment substantive/educational? ('you're wrong' is not substantive, 'you're wrong because the moon is not made of green cheese' would be, if I'd said it was)
  
• If you're making a follow-up comment: Did you include new material, more detail, newer and better sources? (If your mention of the moon not being made of green cheese was insufficient to move me, provide a link to astro-cheeseological observations of the moon.)
• Are you responding to what was actually said?
  
• Are you on-topic?
• Is the comment in the same language as the original post?  [added 28 August 2010]
  

If the answers to any of these is no, there's a good chance the comment won't be posted. Also note that I'll be less lenient with posts that are from 'anonymous'. I do accept anonymous notes, respecting that sometimes people have reasons to not want a real name/address to show up. But, as inventing a name for yourself (as with my 'penguindreams') is quite easy, and gives readers a way to distinguish between different fundamentally anonymous commentators, I prefer that.

Comments? Additions? Deletions?