The Flame is not so bright to itself as to those on whom it shines, so too the wise man
Hello Everyone,

I want to apologise for not moderating the comments for the last two days, I have been extremely busy and just too tired when I get home to log on. Today when I looked I saw that we had over 2,700 comments waiting to be moderated and I have to say I was blown away.

Of course that number will be reduced by half when I delete the spam but it is an enormous job and I wanted to let you know that I will get on to it and clear up the back log as soon as possible.

Our Comment Policy

I would like to take this opportunity, while I am talking about comments to discuss our comment policy.

First it should be obvious to most readers that we regard the comments as an important part of this blog. We believe it is crucial that we moderate them because if we didn’t people would give up reading them due to the large number of posts that just waste time listing porn web sites or others that are of dubious interest or worse.

I really appreciate that a number of you have noticed that we have no spam in our comments section and that is part of our commitment to you. We believe this policy improves the whole experience for all our readers.  However it is a big job and sometimes, like now, we do get behind and I really apologise if you are waiting to see your comment appear. It will be there soon, I promise.

We Want to Hear Your Opinion

Secondly, when I looked at the comments waiting to be approved I saw a couple that said they didn’t agree with such and such point of view but they didn’t say why.  This blog is a philosophy blog and disagreements or alternative views are the basis of good philosophy and good conversation. I really urge you to tell us what you do think. I hope that by highlighting some of the comments we have received by posting them as a guest article,  even if they  criticise one of our articles, you can see we are serious about encouraging real discussion.

We never delete a comment because it doesn’t agree with or compliment our post. In fact we rejoice when someone feels comfortable enough to write to us and outline their point of view. For or against. So please feel free to join in and post a longer comment.

Why We Delete Some Comments

Finally I would like to touch on some of the things we take into consideration when we approve or delete a comment.

First and foremost, we check to see if it is relevant. If a comment has nothing to do with the article or the general range of topics we discuss on here we ask ourselves “would our readers be interested in this?” Generally the answer is no. There are millions of blogs about just about any topic so a review of the Zune or iPod for example would be better to post to a relevant blog than here.  Generally, we do not approve posts that link to porn or similar web sites.  Viagra et al  are so widely available on the net that we think a drug free zone is also a refreshing change 🙂

However, sometimes a reader will post a comment about a new search engine or other web site that we do think is of interest and therefore we do approve them. But we try to keep these random posts to a minimum.

We Add Our Comment To Your Comment

We also add comments to many of your comments either answering your questions or adding further elucidation on some point  so I do recommend that you check out the comments as they can be quite interesting.

Last but not least, we try to reduce the number of comments by ensuring that multiple posts to the same article from the same source are weeded out and we approve one or at most two if they include additional relevant material.

A Note to Spammers

Well I hope that helps and I would point out to spammers that we do read and check out every web site before we approve a comment.

Thank You

I would like to thank every reader who has taken the time to post a comment. You are an important part of this blog and we look forward to receiving your comments with interest (and trepidation). I certainly hope more of you will  feel free to add longer commentaries or submit articles and I can assure you that ALL relevant comments, good, bad, for and against or of a contrary or similar opinion will be approved.

You can submit an article either through the comments section or by going to the contact us page and posting it there. If you request us to contact you, please ensure that you provide a correct email address.

Best Wishes,

Ric Vatner