A couple of changes to our comment policy
We’ve been thinking about what we can do to encourage interesting conversations on our blog.
Our comments policy up to now has been pretty relaxed, which on the whole we think is a good thing. But at the same time, we’d like to keep the conversation as accessible as possible and prevent it wandering off topic, or into the realm of the surreal.
So we’re going to make a couple of changes to our comments policy and see how they go –
When making a statement of fact, please provide a source
The idea of this is that every time you make a statement of fact (particularly scientific facts), like ‘carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas’ or ‘wind turbines don’t save any emissions anyway’, you provide a source or reference for your statement. In most cases this should be a hyperlink.
Of course this won’t be in itself a guarantee of accuracy. But… it might help us (and other commenters) understand and engage with your point. We’re thinking along the lines of: ‘That isn’t right, your source doesn’t show that…’ or ‘That’s a really useful graph you’ve linked to.’
We tried this on a recent (very active) comment thread and it seemed to work pretty well, preventing spam and making comments more thoughtful. So we thought we’d roll it out across the site.
Please keep your comments to 400 words or less
We try (admittedly not always 100% successfully) to keep our blog posts reasonably succinct. We’d also ask you to keep your comments relatively short, and as a rough measure we’re going to suggest 400 words as a maximum.
In our experience, much longer comments stifle discussion, and aren’t really great for others to try and respond to. It’s pretty easy these days to get your views online – linking to longer blog posts, articles you’ve written or (as above) to useful sources is all very welcome.
We have set a word limit on the Disqus moderation system which means that if you write more than 400 words, the system will truncate you!
So, in summary…
Our comments policy now looks like this:
Stay on-topic: stick to the subject of the blog you are commenting on. Off-topic comments (even if reasonable, polite and interesting) may be deleted. Comments which contain links to inappropriate, irrelevant or commercial sites may also be deleted.
Advance the discussion: we welcome evidence-based comments and links to useful resources. When making a scientific statement, we ask that, within reason, you provide a link to a relevant source to back up your statement. Not doing this might mean your comment gets edited or deleted.
Keep it brief: There’s a maximum length of 400 words per comment. Beyond that the comment system will truncate you!
Be polite: comments which contain swearing or which abuse other participants in the debate may be deleted. Particularly:
No ad hominem attacks: vigorous debate is fine, but not personal attacks or accusations.
We’re aware of course that moderation sometimes involves making judgement calls and in practice working out what is ‘ad hominem’ or isn’t – or what is a statement of fact and what isn’t – might be tricky. Our comment policy will always be an experiment so we’ll see how it goes.
For our part we will try and be as fair and welcoming as possible and provide a space where useful discussions can happen. If you feel a decision about comments seems unreasonable, just send us an email.
Finally, particular thanks go to our regular visitors and commenters for helping us figure this stuff out.