I wonder if adding a comments policy for the first time is like getting your first piece of blog spam — its another sign that your blog has matured so that not only are you dealing with blog spammers, but good ol’ fashioned trolls.

Anywhoo, this blog has persisted for some time now with generally well-meaning comments, but with a recent post and comments I think its time I laid down some ground rules.

The comments policy is over here, and is now linked to at the bottom of every post, and (based on the one I put together for the BlogHerald) basically outlines that I will keep comments unless the have content that:

• is abusive
• is off-topic
• contains ad-hominem attacks
• promotes hate of any kind
• uses excessively foul language
• is blatantly spam

For now I’m tolerating otherwise “anonymous” posts (i.e. fake name / email) provided the discourse is reasonable and adheres to the above.  And of course this being my blog, I get to arbitrate what counts as abusive, off-topic, ad-hominem, hate, foul language, and spam.  For all would-be spammers, take note: I have a liberal idea of what counts as spam (although being blog spammers they’ll be using automated tools to scrape RSS feeds, and therefore not actually reading these posts).

Anyway, I feel like its almost as if I’ve had to lay down hand-washing rules in a hospital — but there you are.

I rarely if ever delete or moderate a comment, but if it happens to yours keep the comments policy in mind before you get a hold of me.

RESOURCE: For those wondering about comment policies in general, Lorelle wrote a great one at the BlogHerald a few months ago.