Comment Policy, March 2005

This comment policy supercedes all previous comment policies, and is in effect unless a newer comment policy supercedes it. To see the current comment policy, choose the “Comment Policy” link on the main page.

I reserve the right to delete or edit any comment, though I will alert people to edited comments. I do promise to keep editing or deleting to a minimum, though. Discussions about unpleasant subjects (like sexuality or violence) should be done respectfully and without vulgarity.

Spam, loosely defined, is commentary on this site that serves some other purpose besides discussion. Spam, specifically defined, is whatever I say it is on this site. Spam will be disallowed when it can be detected at posting time, and deleted in other cases. Frequent spammers may find their commenting privileges revoked.

Unfortunately, spammers often hijack other computers to do their dirty work, which may cause innocent third parties to lose privileges. Since I cannot tell innocent victims from willing participants, I cannot promise to always restore them. People with this problem are encouraged to take steps to prevent this, such as installing virus checkers and spyware checkers, browsing with Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, switching to Linux from Windows, or buying a Macintosh.

In the pursuit of preventing spam, my site may present commenters with a set of letters and numbers in a funny-looking image that the commenter must type in and submit before the comment is accepted. The site may also decide that some comments are suspicious enough that they require my personal approval before appearing on the site, and thus will not appear right away.

I apologize for all the hassle, but trust me: you probably would rather not see the vile trash that gets sent here just so people can make a buck.

UPDATE (2005-12-07): Someone is spamming this comment specifically in a way that defeats my spam traps, so I’ve disabled comments.