The way comments on this blog currently work is that I have to manually approve comments from people who have never commented before, but comments from people who already have comments approved are approved automatically. I will not manually approve any comments that violate the rules outlined below. If any comment that violates the rules below is approved automatically because it is from a commenter who has comments that have already been approved, I will delete the comment as soon as I see it. Here are the rules:
- Spam comments are not allowed. This includes all comments that are clearly intended to promote specific products or whose sole purpose is to increase traffic to other websites. I have a spam filter on this blog that is designed to catch obvious spam comments automatically. The spam filter is usually pretty good, but, if any spam comments make it through the filter, I will delete them without approving them.
- All comments should be civil and respectful. Comments that I consider uncivil or verbally abusive—whether toward me as the author of this blog or toward other commenters—are not allowed.
- Bigoted comments are not allowed. This prohibition applies to all forms of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, bigotry against religious people in general, bigotry against atheists, etc. Whether a comment is bigoted will be decided at my own discretion.
- Comments that aggressively promote conspiracy theories or historical fringe theories are not allowed. This policy especially applies for theories that are totally disconnected from any kind of historical reality. I welcome disagreement within reason, but, when things get really far out, I will draw a line.
- All comments should be a reasonable length. I understand that some people are verbose. After all, I am often verbose myself. I will not, however, allow comments that I consider to be excessively long, especially if such comments are only loosely connected to the subject of the article.
- Comments should be intelligible. I understand that English is not everyone’s first language, and I will allow comments that contain grammar and spelling errors as long as they are coherent. I will, however, draw a line if I cannot tell what a commenter is even trying to say.
I reserve the right to expand or amend this policy at any given time.