Comments policy

When we first installed comments, we considered posting a comments policy. We had seen the combativeness, flame wars and general nastiness that sometimes cropped up at other blogs, and we didn't want that for our blog. We figured there were plenty of other places for those who liked that kind of combat to fight their dogfights and stamp their little "kill" stamps on the side of their airplanes. We wanted TSM to be one of the places a reader could take a break from that kind of thing.

We never actully posted a comments policy (beyond a playful "no trolls") because we never really needed it. Our readership was small and shared our vision. (A mysterious penchant for turning even the most serious threads into discussions of pizza, cookies, hairstyles, clothing, and beer also helped.) We have had to edit or delete very few posts and have only had to ban one commenter. There has been the occasional flash of temper here and there, but overall the tone of our comments boxes has been civil, friendly, and free of personal attack.

That's the way we want to keep it. It's especially important to us now, for we are seeing many new names in our comments boxes. Some of those new names will be those of young readers -- homeschooled tweens who are here for the Group Read. We don't want any of these young readers getting flamed, and we don't want to see any of them being shown a bad example.

So:

We don't play rough here. We don't like profanity, blasphemy, flaming, personal attacks on anyone, or general incivility. We may edit or delete offending comments -- or ban offending commenters -- at our discretion.

[C]ivility is considered a higher good than First Amendment rights here. Incivility will be uncivilly suppressed. -- Church of the Masses comment policy.