Bwog comments exist for you—the reader.

We believe it’s important to provide a place for honest discussion among readers, and we’re firmly committed to upholding that belief. We have our say in the posts; there should be a place for you all to respond to that, and to engage with one another through those responses.

We’ve seen that discussion take many different shapes. It’s been funny. It’s been apt. It’s been totally, uh, absurd. It’s been utterly and unforgettably moving. It’s been well received by us, but it’s also warranted our intervention.

Meanwhile, we’ve moderated that discussion according to our comment policy. However, our current policy has led to a lack of cohesiveness in moderation—while it reserves our right to delete comments of a certain ilk, it fails to thoroughly outline situations in which comments will or will not be actively removed. Comments are rarely so black-and-white as to definitively fall into one of the pre-defined categories, and even when they do, we’ve been unsure when to exercise our reserved right. As a result, it’s been our job to decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to limit your discussion—and that can be haphazard.

Now, we think we can do that job better. We’ve decided to rewrite our comment policy to best serve the function of Bwog comments, and we’d like to ask for your opinions. This is what we’re thinking so far:

Reserve the right, but exercise it as infrequently as possible

  • Basically, we won’t delete any comments until we’re asked to.
  • But, you can ask us to—bring it to our attention by sending an email to editors@bwog.com, and we’ll review the comment(s) in question.
  • If we then determine that a comment fits one or more of the following criteria, we will happily remove it:
  1. The comment makes an argument that is solely prejudicial on the grounds of ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, or spiritual belief
  2. The comment includes a baseless personal attack on—or includes personal information about—an individual
  3. A commenter has left the comment in order to self-promote, or to create spam
  4. The comment contains copyright infringement

Encourage use of our “downvote” system

  • This is where the real moderation—by all of you—comes into play.
  • Anyone can choose to give a comment either a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” by using the icons next to a commenter’s name.
  • A comment that has a difference of five or greater dislikes to likes at any time (i.e. 50 or more dislikes and 45 likes) will have its opacity automatically reduced—we call this effect “grayed-out.”
  • Commenters can and should use this feature to express approval or disapproval.

Leave the libel up to you

  • We checked with a lawyer, and it turns out we’re not legally culpable for comments that contain libel.
  • Therefore, we’re grouping libelous comments with the rest—if you see something about yourself that you think qualifies as libel, you can ask us to remove it, but until then, we’ll leave it where it is.

So, go forth and be merry frank. Please leave any and all thoughts, comments, and criticisms in the—wait for it—comment section.