Invisible Adjunct

Policies on Posting Comments

Comments are an important part of this weblog. I encourage people to post responses both to my entries and to the replies of other readers, and I greatly appreciate the contributions of readers who engage in discussion and debate, offering their own ideas and opinions and expressing both agreement and disagreement with me and others who post here.

While the vast majority of people who post comments here already tacitly agree to follow basic rules of civility, the time has come to define these rules explicitly. The basic rules of civility are best specified, I believe, in terms of the following prohibitions against incivility:

* No flaming
* No ad hominem attack
* No "shouting" at me or other readers through the use of ALL CAPS (the use of ALL CAPS to emphasize the odd word or phrase is fine, but the excessive use of ALL CAPS as an inflammatory device is unacceptable)

In other words, if you don't like what someone has said, attack the argument, not the person making the argument.

These rules are intended not to stifle debate (if we all agreed with one another, we wouldn't have much to say to one another) but rather to allow for debate: I want this weblog to be a space where people can express dissent and disagreement without turning ugly and nasty.

I reserve the right to edit or delete any post that violates the basic rules of civility. Repeat offenders will be banned from posting here.

Edited for clarity 13 June.

UPDATE (22 February 2004):

In an attempt to protect the blog against auto-generated comment spam, I've decided to close the comments for entries older than 30 days. If you'd like to post a comment to an older (and now comments-disabled) entry, please email me at ia at invisibleadjunct dot com.

Posted by Invisible Adjunct at June 2, 2003 03:56 PM