The first time someone comments, it’s held for my approval. After that, the person can comment freely, although if anyone posts a comment with a lot of links it will be automatically held for approval (because this resembles features of comment spam).

In this context approval means I allow the opinion to be expressed. It does not necessarily mean I agree with it or endorse it myself.

A blog becomes bland if the owner cherry-picks comments to constitute a cheering committee, while deleting those that disagree. Even so, I reserve the right to delete abusive comments or close commenting on a post if the tone becomes hate-filled or drifts to ad-hominem shots or irrelevancies.

I’m especially resistant to seeing any participant attack or attempt to psychoanalyze another. If tempted to do that, please think again.

Fundamentally, I want comments to make good points, or answer questions I’ve asked, or add clarifications or interest in some other form. Trolling – posting to provoke – is basically boring, and will get you banned.

So far I have only had to ban a small number of people. It doesn’t happen often. I will usually issue a yellow card before this happens unless someone posts an egregious troll or attempts to use this blog to insert commercial links.

I do fix typos and formatting in comments, up to a point.

If you make a comment to the wrong article, please repaste it to the correct one, and I’ll notice and delete the mistaken one. I keep a pretty close eye on the comments.

Je suis contente de voir qu’il y a quelques gens qui participent ici en français et j’aimerais souligner que c’est aussi bienvenu que l’anglais.