Posting and Comments policy
Everyone knows that the moment the publish button is pressed, it goes out in that form on RSS, just as comments go out in their original form.
However, I reserve the right to alter my post within the first hour because no matter how much one reads it in preview, it still doesn’t look the same as when it is published. There are four reasons I’ll alter a post, once published:
1. [Within an hour, with no explanation given] If there are glaring typos, wrongly arranged paragraphs, poor syntax etc – editing reasons. I simply do not want a post to stand which does not say what I want it to or which looks shoddy.
2. [Also within an hour,with no explanation given] Where I’ve written something about someone or about a group of people which really doesn’t, in the light of day, bear scrutiny. For example, I made a statement in one post about Scottish union leaders and in further research, which I admit I should have done earlier, I couldn’t find support for my statement. It was better to delete those words.
Again – this has to be within the hour. Anything after that time has to stand or else, after that time, I’d have to make it painfully clear exactly which words I’ve altered, where they were to be found in the original and why they had been changed – and it has to be a very cogent and pressing reason, not just on a whim, “to make it look better”.
3. [Anytime] If a commenter points out a factual error or there is an issue of copyright pointed out to me. I’ll go in and fix the error, attributing this to that commenter.
4. [Anytime] If I add something, rather than alter it – for example, a poll or an addition to a live blog or an update, such as on the final Germany v England game – these will always be signposted so that you can see they’re late editions. Once again, this would never involve altered text already there, not even fixed typos. It would just be addenda.
The above policy seems the fairest to all parties and is the one I shall slavishly follow.
My attitude is that I want to leave comments as free as possible and not censor them and it would be nice if commenters understood that they’re fairly unprotected in this open forum – if they make statements, then others are going to come in and have a go at that, sometimes in fruity language. We’re all big boys and girls.
Regarding yours truly:
The rules are a bit different for me, in that I’m more unprotected than you. Call me whatever you want, vent your spleen but please keep it on topic and as long as you back it up with data, then I can’t cry about it, can I?
As for you, there has to be a certain amount of protection:
1. Absolutely no ad hominem and let me give an example to illustrate how I define this on this blog. If you call a fellow commenter an effing idiot, it will be deleted. If you say that that person’s arguments are effing idiotic, then it stands. If you’re a Zogian and someone comes in and states why he/she believes Zog to be rubbish, then it will stand. If that someone attacks you, personally, as being rubbish, then it is deleted. It’s a fine line.
2. Just because I, as moderator, don’t castigate someone who says something racist, sexist, ageist or any other -ist, in no way means I’m condoning that point of view. As long as it was argued out, then it stands and I’d hope someone with the opposite point of view would come in and counter it. If that doesn’t happen, then eventually I’ll go back to the thread and add something myself.
3. The commenter who is obviously starting to take the michael and who takes advantage of an open policy just to fill comment after comment after comment with bile will be told that that’s probably enough now and please desist.
4. Comments way off topic will be deleted – this includes spam and includes two or three people in real life who wish me personal harm. I do have these enemies who, in my [not so] humble opinion are nutters and these people are blocked.
I’d like to see lively debate here and I’m not going to get that with a constrictive comments policy. Hopefully, all the foregoing is a reasonable compromise.
UPDATE
The policy has been tested out by one or two people and I’ve had to add another post on the matter.
Filed under: Blogging
Your blog your rules, can’t say fairer than that.
Sounds reasonable!
your blog, your rules; my blog, my rules; X’s blog X’s rules
This has nothing to do with your blog policy I have no problems with that
But I have considered points one and two overnight
You say it is not OK to call someone an effing idiot and the comment will be deleted.
Then for example you say it is fine to call a group of people manipulative lying cheats or an idiot on the basis that they were born white or male or female or with only one arm etc etc. Without the commenter producing factual evidence to support the remark.
That doesn’t seem very consistent to me.
I never said anything of the sort, with respect – pure strawman and conflating and distorting two entirely different ideas.
Yes it is because it is a behaviour, an action, a decision to support something insupportable – it is idiocy and thus the comment stands.
That would be deleted straight away because it attacks the person on something he or she cannot help.
I noticed in your previous comment that you confused the terms “women” and “feminism”, two mutually exclusive terms. The former is a gender and nowhere do I accuse that gender of idiocy – in fact I do the opposite. I wrote that I was in awe of what the female gender is capable of. I mentioned you as one of these.
Feminism though is a false socialist construct and it is women themselves who have shown that it has been deeply damaging to the cause of women. I can re-post the quotes of dozens of these ladies again if you like. Feminism correctly predicted a backlash but it did not expect it to come from within the ranks of women themselves – it supposed it would be a purely male backlash.
Now, the reason Feminists got this wrong is because they firmly believed they represented women’s interests when in fact, women finally woke up to the propaganda they’d been labouring under for so long and correctly stated that the Feminists are the enemy of women.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese wrote:
Welshcakes makes the same mistake in castigating the woman who made the observation I quoted. Perhaps Welshcakes might possibly be in the wrong on this? Stranger things have happened. A social movement which promotes hatred of men, misandry – and Dworkin et al do this – is always going to unwittingly or perhaps even wittingly produce misogyny as well.
However, there are now men and women who reject this hatred between the sexes and who promote the need for the sexes to appreciate each other. I just quoted one and I’m another.
Just to sum up – if it is the behaviour in question or the political stance, then it can be attacked. If it is the person, it cannot – at least as far as blog policy here goes.
you have entirely missed the point of my comment and selectively cut out:
on the basis that they were born white or male or female or with only one arm etc etc
You have got back onto feminist, socialist (even political) rubbish again. My point had nothing to do with that. My points never do!!! I don’t think that way.
I was talking about attacking a single person or a group of people because of based on, who were they were born or other some such that would cause ridicule, just because it does.
To sum up I am talking about behaviours not a political stance. I do not have a political stance I never have I am basing my comments on behaviours.
To be perfectly honest I am confused as to why you turned my comment into a political stance and why you are quoting those crap comments with have nothing to do with what I said!
Read what I said and don’t and don’t second guess what I meant.
I don’t make any of the mistakes you refer to in your comment, I thought you knew me better than that!
an idiot on the basis that they were born white or male or female
That would be deleted straight away because it attacks the person on something he or she cannot help.
Just to be clear that was one of the points I was making. You didn’t delete such comments or even remark on them…
Cherie, you say:
On my misunderstanding that you were not conflating feminism with women, Cherie, naturally I accept that if you say so. So, leaving feminism out of it, which I did erroneously feel you were referring to, leaving that aside, we’re still left with:
Now that is not a “selective”, i.e. a misinterpreted quote in the least. It is a verbatim quote in its own context.
No I don’t. It is not said anywhere. Nor can it be construed that I meant that. Let me state what I did say and mean one more time:
Now I would have thought that that was as clear as day. I reiterated this in my last comment:
Now that is entirely different to what you most definitely wrote, Cherie. You wrote:
“on the basis that” Quite significant words. There was no intimation that I intended that nor that I said that. In your own words:
No I haven’t, I’d argue. Your words are there as clear as day – those words allege that I judge a person on what he/she is, not on what he/she does. That is the opposite of what I do because I very much judge on what a person does or says, not on whom they are.
The reason I’m making such a meal of this is that it is a quite critical point. If I do judge on race or colour, then I am simply racist, as Peter Hain alleges. If I do judge on gender, then I am also sexist.
I strongly repudiate that I am any of those -isms.
There is a word grouping about discrimination – race, colour or creed. The first two are what a person is. The last one is a belief, a decision to pursue a certain belief, an alterable thing, susceptible to reason and argument.
Moving on
Now, if I do not accept a person’s creed because it is demonstrably corrosive to society, e.g. feminism or Islam, then I’m left with a philosophical dilemma.
Having refused to accept it through reason, not through blind prejudice – in other words, to quote chapter and verse to show why it is so bad – then the next question is what action to take.
We can use the example of nazism here. The consequences of that belief, that vision, was the enslavement and extermination of people. I don’t think too many are in doubt about that, in hindsight.
So the classic liberal dilemma is whether to accept the nazis’ right to go ahead and do that, on the basis of “freedom of speech, freedom of action” … or whether to make moves to stop it, to nip it in the bud.
I’d argue that it is necessary to nip it in the bud – the Churchillian, rather than the Chamberlainesque stance – but then I can have words thrown at me – naziphobic, for example.
Someone might say that that is entirely different to feminism and I’d argue no, they are both very destructive and need to be rooted out. To attach the suffix “phobic” to the end of what I’m attacking is a timeworn strategy and is meant to disarm and deflect legitimate criticism, provided that criticism is not blind prejudice but is based on supported argument.
Whether I can draw parallels between nazism and feminism is a debate in itself but it is a legitimate debate.
Mr Gruff
It seems to me he was referring to what women do. Do is an action and as an action, it has to stand, no matter how much I disagree. Besides, I didn’t comment on your comment either. I assumed he had said something and you had answered it – therefore requiring no further action on my part. I assumed you were a big girl and capable of holding your own corner. He hadn’t personally attacked you.
What I see this comes down to is that you did not like WG’s comments in general and expected me to delete them. Perhaps after all the foregoing, this is the nub of what you are annoyed about, Cherie.
But then you brought me into it and so I wrote this comment and the one before.
Which leaves us with the question of whether to delete WG’s comments, on the grounds that he was attacking what a group of people are, rather than what they do and say.
That one I’ll have to address this evening because I have to go to work now and I’m running late in the preparations.
Firstly if I was sounding annoyed it was because of this which I said above:
You have got back onto feminist, socialist (even political) rubbish again. My point had nothing to do with that. My points never do!!! I don’t think that way.
Secondly perhaps my example wasn’t a very good one, but I was trying to get away from you thinking it was a political point. I didn’t do that very well did I?
Thirdly I don’t recall mentioning WG at all in this thread and I don’t expect you go back and delete any of the comments.
Lastly (for now at least) I was only trying to point out that first two comments rules seem slightly at odds with each other pure and simple as that.