10th
Some Blog Comment Guidelines :: Ownership, Content and Tone
Thanks to all you crazy cats out there who read this blog, and a special thanks to all of you who’ve commented.
One of the best parts of blogging has been reading your comments and seeing some of these posts create conversations of their own.
Your comments are usually better written, better thought out and much more entertaining than my posts. In fact, some of you are flat-out brilliant and others absolutely hilarious.
As you know, my blog can sometimes be playful, other times reflective. And yes, I’ve been known to post some thoughts that are laced with strong opinions (it’s true). I hope those posts don’t come across as polarizing, but an invitation to discussion and dialogue.
In the past I’ve blogged about politics, race, religion, gender and a number of other issues that have drawn hundreds of comments. A lot of those comments sparked engaging discussion and dialogue. Later this summer I’ll post a few thoughts on faith and sexual identity. I hope that will be interesting for some of you, and I hope that the comments will facilitate a positive dialogue around the issue(s).
But you know that there are few rules to dialogue for it to be constructive. One of those rules is finding a basis for trust. Of course it’s silly to think that in cyber-space you can really trust a digital identity. But I’d love to see the comments section of my blog become a space for discussion and dialogue, one where people are free to have a wide range of perspectives that would all be respected.
Part of that also includes transparency. Specifically, I think it means owning what you post.
It’s easy to take a smug or critical tone when you don’t have to stand behind your opinion. It’s easy to hide behind words and say things you would never say to a person’s face when you don’t have to own them.
A couple years ago a good friend wrote a brilliant article for her university newspaper. It was well thought out and reflected deeply personal thoughts and opinions on the issue of race. Once it went live there was a long, long string of comments—many of them constructive, but some of them down right nasty and mean. And to no one’s surprise, the comments that were most inflammatory were anonymous and unclaimed.
I saw how those comments hurt her; in fact, she stopped writing for a while after that.
To ensure that people feel safe to put their thoughts and ideas out there, as well as to engage the blog content in a way that doesn’t unnecessarily escalate it to personal attacks, I’d like to suggest a few guidelines for commenting on my blog.
Comment Ownership: It’s a common practice that many on-line and print publications refuse to publish anonymous letters to the editor.
I’m asking any of you who want to comment on my blog, for the sake of accountability, to put your name on your comments. If you’re afraid to do that, at least use your valid e-mail address when filling out the box you write your comment in. I promise to never publish, expose or display your e-mail address unless you actually put it in the body of your comment (which isn’t a great idea anyway, so I’d discourage you from doing that yourself), but I may use it to contact you directly if there are questions about your comment we can actually have a constructive exchange about them.
If you don’t identify yourself in a way that creates accountability to your comments, you run the risk of having your comment(s) marked as “spam” in the program that tracks my blog’s comments. I don’t think this is unreasonable, just this week I actually have “blocked” several Twitter identities that are spammers and I frequently do this same thing to e-mails.
Comment Content: The only comment I’ve ever deleted from my blog contained a nuanced racial generalization that was unflattering at best, harmful at worst. I will delete any racially charged comments and comments that are discriminatory, this should go without saying.
Also, try to keep it clean—I mean, if you have to cuss or curse or use swear language (not sure what the cool kids call it in 2009), for style or to underscore your point that’s generally fine, but if it turns the corner toward vulgarity I’m going to have to remove it.
Finally, I will also remove any comments that are blatant spam.
Comment Tone: Last fall a couple of my posts triggered some spirited exchanges with the ideas and opinions I wrote, but even more interesting were the conversations those commenting were having with one another. Though there was a lot of banter back and forth, for the most part the tone remained civil. I admit, a few times I even jumped in the rhetorical ring of ideas ready to fight it out myself. But I am asking that all comments are careful to fight with the content, not others who ware commenting.
If/when a comment becomes a personal attack against someone, rather than an attack against the content of what was posted or other comments, it will be removed.
If you can keep these three guidelines in mind I think we can continue to have constructive exchanges and productive dialogue around ideas and issues that will sometimes be playful, other times urgent and pressing.
And if you do, I’d be happy to dialogue with your comments, and I imagine others will as well.
