Comment moderation policy
Comments on this Weblog are moderated by Ray Fraser, a kind-hearted volunteer, according to the following policy.
The most valued comments are alternative perspectives. If the posting is about a trip to Kugluktuk, Nunavut, a great comment would start “I took a trip there 10 years ago and my experience was …”.
The least valued comments are reviews of the posting, good or bad. The reader has just read the entire posting. He or she doesn’t need someone else’s opinion that “this was great” or “this was bad.” Reviews make sense in the off-line world where consuming the book or movie happens after reading the review and takes a lot more time and effort. In the online world, the comments are usually read after the item being reviewed has been consumed.
Comments that attack another person’s motivation, intelligence, or character are bad because they degrade the quality of the discussion and discourage thoughtful comments by others. For some reason, human beings often are confident that they can discern the hidden motivation for another person doing or saying something. Trained psychiatrists and psychologists, however, do very poorly at this task, so what hope is there for a lay person?
Cute/clever comments that are off-topic should only be published if they are very cute and clever indeed. Off-topic content breeds more off-topic content.
Attributed/real-name content is preferred to anonymous content.
Due to the fact that 90 percent of the comments posted on the former version of this blog were link spam, all comments are reviewed by the moderator before going live.
