Thursday, March 30, 2006

comments policy

Thanks for reading and commenting. While I appreciate my readers and enjoy comments, this isn’t a message board, it’s a blog. I can and will delete your comments for any reason I feel necessary. I don’t have to explain, tell you why, or give you a second chance, and, in fact, I probably won’t do any of those things. Get over it. I am a rabid free speech supporter, but nothing requires me to provide you with a private soapbox, using my time, sweat equity and web server space. Your recourse is to go elsewhere, or start your own blog.

  * a blog is not a public square,
  * nobody is obliged to listen to you if you are being a jerk, and
  * you are always free to express your opinions on your own website.

The last point is a big one. If you don’t like this blog, don’t come here. I am tired of arguing with people who come here because they can’t get themselves heard on MetsBlog or Deadspin or similar, and think that they can come here and grace us with their divine baseball knowledge.

This is not WFAN. The type of trash-talking and one-upsmanship you are accustomed to in those forums does not fly here. Do not post just to hear yourself talk. It is tiresome. Get your own site.

Constructive criticism is by all means welcomed, but if all you’re doing is coming here to rip apart everything I do, I kind of need to ask why you’re bothering, and wonder about your real motivation.

We welcome fans of other teams (and have quite a community of people from all over the world visiting here), and while trash talking with class is fine, we’re nice people here. I don’t have enough time in the day to read the blogs for the team I like, I cannot imagine having enough spare time on my hands to go find fan blogs of other teams to taunt the fans there. There are sites that welcome that. Go find one of them.

I do not tolerate sexism, racism, or homophobia even once. It wasn’t a joke, because that stuff isn’t funny, and you weren’t “kidding”. There are places that embrace all of that. Go there. Or better yet, go play in traffic.

Gratuitously self-promoting comments are also not welcome. If you want to promote your blog, then participate in the discussion. That means that you can’t derail a post by saying ‘Hey read this neat thing I wrote on my blog” unless it directly relates to the conversation, and you’re saying something more than “Hey go to my blog and read this.”

Aside from the obvious troll of another team, mostly people get kicked off for being pompous blowhards & for #3 above.