Any and all comments written IN CAPS shall be automatically sent to the trashbin.
The Saker
Showing posts with label moderation policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moderation policy. Show all posts
Monday, April 28, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
New comments and moderation policy adopted
Dear friends,
Thank you all for your inputs. By general consensus, the new moderation and comments policy is now adopted. I will post a note about that in the left sidebar.
Now, back to business (-: finally! :-)
Cheers,
The Saker
Thank you all for your inputs. By general consensus, the new moderation and comments policy is now adopted. I will post a note about that in the left sidebar.
Now, back to business (-: finally! :-)
Cheers,
The Saker
Monday, April 21, 2014
Personal announcement: New moderation policy plan adopted
Dear friends,
The following comments moderation policy has now been adopted:
1. Comments must contribute to the interest of a thread, a post or of the blog. Just venting or totally inane comments will not be allowed.
2. Comments must be respectful. Criticisms are welcome, but they must be fact based on logically outlined. Name calling does not qualify.
3. Off-topic comments are allowed, but have to offer something of interest to the readers. For example the recent posts about MoA are of interests to many, even if off-topic, thus they should stay.
The main intention for me is not to censor any form of speech, but to make it interesting and enjoyable for people to read the comments and participate in an intelligent exchange of ideas.
Now I need to tackle a more complex issue: racist comments.
I must begin by stating what I subjectively consider to be racist for the purpose of this blog:
1) the idea that humans differ from each other in essence.
2) the idea that your genetic makeup restricts your freedom of choice.
3) the expression of irrational hostility to an ethnic group or race.
4) the denial that all humans are equally precious to God or that some humans deserve a special status not granted to others.
And, just to clarify, here are a few examples of what I do not consider racism:
1) Criticisms of religions, tribes or ideologies because a person has to make a choice to belong to a religion, tribe or a political movement. Thus it is absolutely legitimate to criticize Judaism, the Jewish tribal identity or Zionism. It is, however, not legitimate to criticize somebody born Jewish just for that fact. Nobody chooses his/her ethnicity.
2) The opinion that races are different in certain aspects; saying that Blacks have a lower IQ then Whites is a hypothesis which must be proved or disproved based on facts. Facts, whatever they are, are neither racists nor non-racist. They just are.
3) It is not racist to state that one is of the opinion that Italians and Greeks tend to be louder than Norwegians, it is not racism to state that Hungarians are taller than the Japanese or that Argentinians are more musical than Iraqis. In all these cases what is being asserted is that races, nations, ethnicities are different in some aspects, but not in essence.
4) It is not racist to say that the gas chambers were never used to kill Jews, that Stalin was about to attack Germany when Hitler preempted him with his own attack, or that the Turks never committed a genocide of Armenians. These are historical topics which should be freely investigated and either affirmed or disproved, not censored.
(Just for the record and to be clear: I endorse none of the examples I have given above to illustrate my point)
In other words, there are race or ethnicity related opinions which can be controversial or which some of us mind find offensive, but which still are part of the realm of legitimate speculation and investigation.
For the purpose of this blog I will try to stick to a narrow definition of racism because I do want to avoid censorship of ideas as much as possible.
Frankly, I will try to use common sense first and foremost. I think that for 99.9% of you this should make no difference at all. But a few trolls, freaks or paid provocateurs will now be shown to the door.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
The following comments moderation policy has now been adopted:
1. Comments must contribute to the interest of a thread, a post or of the blog. Just venting or totally inane comments will not be allowed.
2. Comments must be respectful. Criticisms are welcome, but they must be fact based on logically outlined. Name calling does not qualify.
3. Off-topic comments are allowed, but have to offer something of interest to the readers. For example the recent posts about MoA are of interests to many, even if off-topic, thus they should stay.
The main intention for me is not to censor any form of speech, but to make it interesting and enjoyable for people to read the comments and participate in an intelligent exchange of ideas.
Now I need to tackle a more complex issue: racist comments.
I must begin by stating what I subjectively consider to be racist for the purpose of this blog:
1) the idea that humans differ from each other in essence.
2) the idea that your genetic makeup restricts your freedom of choice.
3) the expression of irrational hostility to an ethnic group or race.
4) the denial that all humans are equally precious to God or that some humans deserve a special status not granted to others.
And, just to clarify, here are a few examples of what I do not consider racism:
1) Criticisms of religions, tribes or ideologies because a person has to make a choice to belong to a religion, tribe or a political movement. Thus it is absolutely legitimate to criticize Judaism, the Jewish tribal identity or Zionism. It is, however, not legitimate to criticize somebody born Jewish just for that fact. Nobody chooses his/her ethnicity.
2) The opinion that races are different in certain aspects; saying that Blacks have a lower IQ then Whites is a hypothesis which must be proved or disproved based on facts. Facts, whatever they are, are neither racists nor non-racist. They just are.
3) It is not racist to state that one is of the opinion that Italians and Greeks tend to be louder than Norwegians, it is not racism to state that Hungarians are taller than the Japanese or that Argentinians are more musical than Iraqis. In all these cases what is being asserted is that races, nations, ethnicities are different in some aspects, but not in essence.
4) It is not racist to say that the gas chambers were never used to kill Jews, that Stalin was about to attack Germany when Hitler preempted him with his own attack, or that the Turks never committed a genocide of Armenians. These are historical topics which should be freely investigated and either affirmed or disproved, not censored.
(Just for the record and to be clear: I endorse none of the examples I have given above to illustrate my point)
In other words, there are race or ethnicity related opinions which can be controversial or which some of us mind find offensive, but which still are part of the realm of legitimate speculation and investigation.
For the purpose of this blog I will try to stick to a narrow definition of racism because I do want to avoid censorship of ideas as much as possible.
Frankly, I will try to use common sense first and foremost. I think that for 99.9% of you this should make no difference at all. But a few trolls, freaks or paid provocateurs will now be shown to the door.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Request for comments about my moderation policy
Dear friends,
I have decided to take the opportunity of a lull in my Sunday afternoon to seek your advice as to what to do about my comments policy.
After quite a few years of relative obscurity, this blog has seen a sudden and massive explosion in readership. For years I was getting about 1000 visitors per week, now it regularly gets over 20'000 visitors per day from literally all over the world. With that influx of visitors, a lot of weird, sick and outright deranged also showed up - that is normal, even 1% of 20'000 is still 200 and my sense is that the freaks are even much less than that - possibly 20 or about 0.1%. That really ain't much, but that is enough to be a real pain in the ass, pardon my French. These freaks fall into several categories.
1) Your typical garden variety trolls
2) Obsessive compulsive racists
3) Monothematic delusional folks completely fixated on Jews
4) Nazis
5) Plain old idiots who simply cannot make sense
In the past, when my blog had few visitors I had a 100% freedom policy. Except for commercial spam, I would literally allow anything no matter who stupid or insulting. Then a little over a month ago I got really fed up with some exceptionally dumb Nazis so I decided to kick them out. Or rather then banning them, I began sending any moronically racist or Nazi post to the trash. When I asked for your inputs only one person got angry at me. Everybody else told me that they fully supported that decision and that I had waited enough. This new policy definitely helped and some of the worst offenders packed and left.
And yet I still get way, waaaaaaay to much comments about Jews and while I do not get many Nazis any more, I still get some world class idiots posting their nonsense. So I am not sure what to do next.
One thing I could do is drop my normal policy of "there is no such thing as off-topic on this blog" and require comments to remain generally pertinent to the topic at hand. But that would also mean losing the opportunity of having some very interesting off-topic comments posted. Or I could use my discretion and decide that off-topic comments I find worthwhile publishing and which not.
I could try to set up some pretty sophisticated and detailed posting guidelines, but that would be very time consuming and still probably leave loopholes.
Or I can ask you to trust my judgment and basically toss out anything I would find too offensive or too stupid. What I do not like about this option is that it sort of implies that every comment that I would allow would then get my implicit endorsement but that would be completely wrong. If, say, somebody posts a comment saying that Russia should try to vaporize the USA in a preemptive surprise nuclear strike I would categorically disagree with that, but I cannot say that this is not a legitimate comment in a threat discussing Russian options to stop US aggression. But if I do let such a comment through, would that not look like an implicit endorsement?
Bottom line - I need some advice from you all. I consider this blog as much yours as it is mine, and I want it to meet your expectations. I do not want to allow freaks and morons to pollute it, but I don't want to censor it either. So, please, post your suggestions here or email me.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
I have decided to take the opportunity of a lull in my Sunday afternoon to seek your advice as to what to do about my comments policy.
After quite a few years of relative obscurity, this blog has seen a sudden and massive explosion in readership. For years I was getting about 1000 visitors per week, now it regularly gets over 20'000 visitors per day from literally all over the world. With that influx of visitors, a lot of weird, sick and outright deranged also showed up - that is normal, even 1% of 20'000 is still 200 and my sense is that the freaks are even much less than that - possibly 20 or about 0.1%. That really ain't much, but that is enough to be a real pain in the ass, pardon my French. These freaks fall into several categories.
1) Your typical garden variety trolls
2) Obsessive compulsive racists
3) Monothematic delusional folks completely fixated on Jews
4) Nazis
5) Plain old idiots who simply cannot make sense
In the past, when my blog had few visitors I had a 100% freedom policy. Except for commercial spam, I would literally allow anything no matter who stupid or insulting. Then a little over a month ago I got really fed up with some exceptionally dumb Nazis so I decided to kick them out. Or rather then banning them, I began sending any moronically racist or Nazi post to the trash. When I asked for your inputs only one person got angry at me. Everybody else told me that they fully supported that decision and that I had waited enough. This new policy definitely helped and some of the worst offenders packed and left.
And yet I still get way, waaaaaaay to much comments about Jews and while I do not get many Nazis any more, I still get some world class idiots posting their nonsense. So I am not sure what to do next.
One thing I could do is drop my normal policy of "there is no such thing as off-topic on this blog" and require comments to remain generally pertinent to the topic at hand. But that would also mean losing the opportunity of having some very interesting off-topic comments posted. Or I could use my discretion and decide that off-topic comments I find worthwhile publishing and which not.
I could try to set up some pretty sophisticated and detailed posting guidelines, but that would be very time consuming and still probably leave loopholes.
Or I can ask you to trust my judgment and basically toss out anything I would find too offensive or too stupid. What I do not like about this option is that it sort of implies that every comment that I would allow would then get my implicit endorsement but that would be completely wrong. If, say, somebody posts a comment saying that Russia should try to vaporize the USA in a preemptive surprise nuclear strike I would categorically disagree with that, but I cannot say that this is not a legitimate comment in a threat discussing Russian options to stop US aggression. But if I do let such a comment through, would that not look like an implicit endorsement?
Bottom line - I need some advice from you all. I consider this blog as much yours as it is mine, and I want it to meet your expectations. I do not want to allow freaks and morons to pollute it, but I don't want to censor it either. So, please, post your suggestions here or email me.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
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