Comment Policy
Kasia August 5th, 2008
I am a strong proponent of free speech. However, I am an equally strong (if not stronger) proponent of civil discourse and reasoned debate. What’s more, I am the owner of this blog. It is, if you will, my Internet home. Therefore there are limits to what I will tolerate on this blog, just as there are limits to what I would tolerate in my home.
You are more than welcome to disagree with me or other commenters. You are more than welcome to express your disagreement. You are even more than welcome to do so vehemently. However, please note the following guidelines carefully.
1. Personal insults (i.e. calling someone a “dumbf***”), profanity (whether in English or another language), and statements that clearly serve no purpose except to inflame other readers (i.e. “The Pope is a puppet”) are not appropriate and will not be tolerated.
2. I am a Catholic, and this is a Catholic blog. I am more than happy to welcome non-Catholic readers and commenters, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, or anything else. However, I expect that my readers of any faith (or lack of faith) will confine any critiques of anyone else’s religion to the substance of the religion (i.e. whether Jesus was the Son of God, or a prophet of God, or neither of the above), not simply bash. Bashing is rude and disrespectful, and it is a fast road to sewer-grade discourse.
3. Please refrain from intentionally tempting others whom you know to have a particular weakness. (This is a permutation of Jimmy Akin’s rule about tempting hobby-horsers.) That does NOT mean you can’t speak your mind just because So-and-So is sure to disagree with you. If I took it that far, I’d have to quit blogging altogether. It simply means that we should not intentionally antagonize other readers by saying “Gee, I wonder what So-and-So will say about THIS!”
4. Humor is great! But please be mindful that it doesn’t always translate as well into written communications as it might be in verbal communication. There are no body language cues, no tonal cues, no nothing. So if you’re one for dry quips, you might want to consider emoticons. I know, they’re cheesy, but they get the point across.
Violating points 1, 2 or 3 will get you warned, privately if possible, though if you don’t put an e-mail address into your comments and I don’t have it through other sources, it’ll be public. It may also get your comments edited, at my discretion.
Multiple violations will result in public warning, and may eventually result in comment moderation being enabled and/or the offender being banned from commenting, at my discretion.
Point 4 is just a suggestion. But if you are consistently posting things you think are humorous and others are missing the humor, please strongly consider taking the suggestion. It’s intended to minimize accusations of Point 1 violations.
