Comment Policy

All comments posted to AllFreelanceWriting.com are subject to the comment policies and rules below. If you break them, chances are good your comment won’t be approved, will be edited, or will be deleted at my discretion.

Note: Every person’s first comment is moderated to help prevent spam. Occasionally all comments on the blog must be moderated — during spam attacks, group attacks of any kind, or when particularly heated discussions are taking place (especially after normal business hours).

Comment Policies

1. While I’m more tolerant of insults directed at me (as per rule #2), insulting other readers or other site contributors will not be tolerated.

2. If you choose to post something venomous, I insist that you take credit for those comments publicly with your full name (I think that’s only fair, as I don’t hide behind anonymity in my posts). Insulting or obscene comments posted with a generic handle, first name only, or obviously-fake email address will not be tolerated. If your comments are simply constructive and conversational without that bite, I really don’t care if you use a handle.

3. Any language that I deem to be inappropriate in the context of my readership will be edited or removed.

4. If you say something ignorant because you were too lazy to read a post fully before commenting, I may point out the idiocy once. After that, don’t be surprised if future comments of that nature are just deleted to save the headache. I’m a blogger, not a babysitter–I don’t have the time to continually point out that you haven’t yet learned to read.

5. If you’re caught trying to further your own cause by commenting under multiple names / handles, all of your comments on that post will be removed (and yes, there are ways to tell). I reserve the right to name and shame any supposedly anonymous trolls at my discretion (you’re rarely as sneaky as you think you are, even when trying to mask your IP address). This behavior may result in a permanent ban on commenting, and information collected from your comments and our site statistics may be used to publicly attribute the anonymous of falsely-attributed comments to the actual original commenter instead of deletion, at my discretion.

6. If it is discovered that a line of comments is a result of anyone’s attempt to incite a mob mentality, all comments related to that call to action will be removed, and commenters may be banned from future comments here. For example, visiting a company’s forum to announce an unfavorable mention on the site and to ask members to get together to comment on the post, attack the poster or other commenters, etc., will result in deletion. This applies to any hint of mob mentality on this blog. Comments that remain objective and don’t appear to have any malicious intent may be published regardless, depending on the scope of the situation.

7. All posts will have comments automatically closed after being live for six months on the blog. This is in one part to cut down on spam on pages with higher page ranks (a common spammer tactic). More importantly though, we’ve had several new waves of comments over the past few months occurring on very old posts, dredging up old topics and reigniting debates that were long since settled in the context of the original posts. I have neither the time or patience to continue to humor these kinds of comments. Some of the contributors behind the original posts are no longer with us and available to respond. And frankly six months is plenty of time to have your say. As this blog gets larger and with traffic nearly tripling in the past year and a half, these types of comments are becoming a bigger problem. If a post seems extremely relevant and the original line of comments hasn’t ceased in that time for any reason, or if the post involves some kind of technical support element (such as the release of free tools or new products), exceptions may be made on an post-by-post basis.

8. If you repeatedly violate these rules (or in cases of extreme behavior – such as hate speech), you may be banned from future commenting on AllFreelanceWriting.com.

*9. If your comments have little substance, are irrelevant to the conversation, do nothing but try to incite arguments, are libelous in nature, or appear to be commenting solely to get links back to your website, the comments may not be approved. If you repeatedly engage in this behavior, future comments from you may be automatically blocked from appearing on the site. So don’t get off on the wrong foot.

Simple, right? Be nice to others. Take credit if you want to be an ass to me personally. And read before commenting. Don’t agree? Then don’t comment.

Oh yeah. And don’t spam. Spam really pisses me off.

* New comment policies as of the last update

This comment policy was last updated on June 29, 2011.