Sad but this reminds me of the warning they play at Yankee Stadium. Every inning a recorded announcement warns patrons that errand balls may fly into the stands and can be dangerous if struck by one. Obviously this not only occurred multiple times but the unintended recipients of fly balls were shocked that such an event happened at a baseball game.

Are we left with an MP3 loop of the blog author’s prerecorded “comment policy” every time someone visits our sites?

Sad times.

I would love to add a link to my comment policy on this WordPress.com blog.

Basically, all it needs to say is “I have the right to edit, delete, or block any comment or commenter…” It doesn’t have to be a huge diatribe or a list of specifics. Just something that says “I have warned you…”

Not to be cheeky, but where is your comment policy? Perhaps would it work better if linked near the comment box - with all due respect to what you can do with a hosted blog like this one. Maybe I am just to tired to spot it though…

Perhaps should I make my own laws instead of relying everyone to use common sense and be prepared to suffer if they don’t. I still doubt that people not adhering to it would come back to complain though. At least they didn’t when I deleted their track backs or when askimet caught their spam.

Perhaps would it be an idea to show good examples of this. I read johns and although I still don’t see what they will help do I find them clear and to the point. Michaels was a bit more to my liking as they also stressed something positive and why you have to have rules to protect that positive. That would rather be the route I would take if I write any I think.

I feel a blog post brewing

The key to a good comments policy is that once it is done, it only needs to be referred to if someone challenges it. With it clearly evident, few do.

I think that a good About, contact, copyright and comment policy pages should be default on any blog. It tells your visitors that you are serious about your blog and have integrity, especially when it comes to protecting readers.

The problem with policies is that they tend to over complicate things or not being clear about how they work. I guess that I could have one that states that expect people to have read how to comment and how I deal with comments and suffer the consequences if that haven’t.

The alternative would be spelling everything out and do we want that? I may get in trouble at some point, but my policy (and that doesn’t need to be published I think) is to let people comment how they see fit until a certain point after which they are simple gone.

Between the great or alright and the really bad is the tricky zone (I really explain this much better in my article, believe me), but not one where you shouldn’t be able to handle it in the comments themselves. Respond, argue, whatever, but do it in the comments and in my opinion you don’t need policies to do that.