Comments guidleline revisions
So there was a day a week or so ago when a comment spammer went after us, 125 comments in a day. Our filters got them all. {Update: as I wrote this, one of the spammers figured out how to get through the filters. @#$@#$@#$} That makes me super-happy. And yet–
I am increasingly annoyed (and I think Dave agrees) with some of the bizarre comment drifting. If your comment, or a paragraph in your comment, starts “Off-topic:” or “This is off topic” or “I know this is off-topic” please, please, please don’t post it. If you want us to talk about something or start a thread, email us. We’ll do it.
I’m annoyed (and I think no one else is) with some of the self-site promotion. We go to great efforts to keep advertisements off this site, and while “ESPN has commentary on this at this link” is one thing, I’m uncomfortable with people pushing their own stuff. If it’s good enough, people will link to it on their own. And even though there’s a whole issue of intent, and who they are, and I feel lame saying this — this is sort of bad manners. Instead of bringing something to the party, it’s like hanging around and saying “hey, this sucks, come on over to my place.” We link to M’s sites. If people leave us to find other sites they like better, we’re cool with that. Many people from awesome blogs post great comments here, and their names are URL-ified if you’re interested in checking out more of what they have to say. Beyond that, it’s a long and slipperly slope of interpretation and argumentation, and I’m inclined to draw the line pretty strictly to avoid having larger problems later.
On both counts, we may crank the Despot-o-meter up a little. We’ll see. This kind of makes me want to just go ahead and implement registration, but… I don’t want to. Anyway, I’m revising the guidelines so this is stated policy now.