Comment Policy
I recently did an interview with Express (A Publication of The Washington Post) and the interviewer, Stefanie Gans, asked me: “What’s your policy on comments? Do you keep all of them? Even the offensive ones?” I answered:
“I think of comments like guests at a dinner party: If someone said this at a dinner party would I kick them out? Those are the comments I delete. Also ones that insult the physical appearance of friends and family. Sometimes people leave comments on my blog and I feel it’s as if they not only said something rude at a dinner party but they climbed on the table and took a dump.”
Sorry for how graphic that got (and, ironically, I’d never say THAT at a dinner party) but that pretty much articulates my comment policy. I delete the truly nasty ones and the insulting ones; otherwise, comments are fair game.
For the record, if you’ve left a comment and it hasn’t appeared that’s not because I’m actively screening it. Movable Type, the program I use to run the site, automatically junks lots of my comments for inexplicable reasons. So at the end of the day, when I come home, I go into my junk folder and unjunk them. So if your comment doesn’t appear, wait 24 hours and check again: if it’s still not there, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to check it out. Thanks.