Words, words, words

There must be something in the air this week; it's only Wednesday and we've already had more hostile/abusive comments on this blog in the past two days than we've had in the previous year combined! (And we're not the only ones getting hit.) In a funny way, this is a good thing - we've gotten new readers and new exposure, and clearly we've written some provocative stuff. BUT. Given the ... mmm ... tenor of some of the comments on two recent posts, it seems clear that it's time to articulate a comments policy that has been merely implicit up to this time. So here's the deal:

1. We LOVE comments. Really. We fucking thrive off them, and eagerly check our posts each day to see if anyone out there is actually listening.

2. We even love being disagreed with - you don't like something we had to say, let it rip! We're especially fond of people who can be funny when they're disagreeing with us (like counter-rants on the MMR), but even non-amusing disagreements are welcomed 9 out of 10 times.

3. However, from this point on, any comments that are nothing more than name calling ("You stupid fucking shitheads" or "You right-wing [???] geezer fucks" or "How fucking stupid can you be, you stupid stupid stupid idiots") will be deleted, without apology. And repeat offenders may be banned. Because, frankly, if you're going to call us names, you at least have to make us laugh. And we're not interested in creating a hostile environment for our more regular commenters.

Is this a subjective system? Yup. But we really like having conversations with our commenters, and there's no way to converse with someone who's only interested in calling you names. (Unless, like I said, they're really funny names.) Thanks for reading.