Commenting Rules

Published by

Clarissa

May 1, 2013

Here are the commenting rules published on Shakesville:

Comments are open to anyone as long as they don’t troll and/or traffic in racist, sexist, homophobic, trans*phobic, ableist, ageist, sizeist, or otherwise overtly objectionable commentary based on people’s intrinsic characteristics. Hate speech, slurs, rape apologia, rape jokes and metaphors, violent imagery and rhetoric, threats, trolling, concern trolling, derailing, playing the Oppression Olympics, pointless belligerence, sockpuppeting, silencing tactics, accusations of bad faith, disrespecting the mods, including ignoring them, telling contributors what they should be writing about or how they should be writing about it, and/or invoking the [TW] blogmistress’personal experience to use against her, or doing the same to any of the contributors, mods, or other commenters, could result in any of the following: Your comment edited to remove offending material, your comment replaced with an incredibly sophomoric paraphrase, your comment deleted, and/or your commenting privileges revoked.

I believe that everybody has an indisputable right to manage one’s own blog according to one’s own preference. So in the spirit of simple curiosity, I wonder: what is the point of making these ridiculous lists that make one sound like an anal control freak? This is just a small portion of the commenting rules, mind you. The whole thing goes on and on forever.

Why not just say honestly, “I will let people comment as long as I feel like it and ban them whenever I feel like it?” Given that nothing is easier than accusing pretty much anybody of “trolling, concern trolling, derailing, playing the Oppression Olympics, pointless belligerence, sockpuppeting, silencing tactics, accusations of bad faith“, etc., etc., this pretense at objectivity is a lot more dishonest than my sincere declaration that my blog is about entertaining me and nothing else and I will moderate as I see fit or as my left foot wishes.

What is sockpuppeting in this context? And how does one distinguish between pointless and meaningful belligerence?

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15 responses to “Commenting Rules”

musteryou

May 1, 2013

Once they pick all these nits out of their hair, will some brain matter remain?

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TimTim

May 1, 2013

I guess these lists making sense depends on how you see your on place. You see this as your personal space where you do and don’t what you feel like. Instead of making large lists of “laws” to be obeyed, this makes it just natural to treat your place with benevolent dictatorship.

But I have seen many places online that hold up the illusion of being some kind of community center. Spaces open to the public, that are subject to a set of rules rather than the whim of the owner.

These laws don’t change how the owner handles posts, comments and visitors, mind you. What it does, i guess, is instill a feeling of accountability of the owner, authors and mods in the commenting folks. It makes the owner looking fair and moderate. This totally ignores of course that the rules can be changed pretty much willy-nilly.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  May 1, 2013
  
  Yes, exactly, it’s all about generating a certain image of oneself for internal consumption.
  
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  1. Shakti
    
    May 1, 2013
    
    Meh.
    At least people can’t say they are surprised when the blog owner turns out to be a control freak. I don’t read this list as part of a pretense of objectivity at all.
    
    I can’t stand places that have all sorts of rules pertaining to the blogger’s sensitivities but claim they have none and/or are completely “objective”.
    
    If you have persona management software, you can easily sock-puppet.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      May 1, 2013
      
      “I can’t stand places that have all sorts of rules pertaining to the blogger’s sensitivities but claim they have none and/or are completely “objective”.”
      
      – Same here! I don’t pretend to be objective at all, but, in the end, there is a lot more freedom on my blog than on Shakesville.
      
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Stille (@aperfectbalance)

May 1, 2013

I think Shakespeare’s Sister is promoted as a safe space, and I also think it has a large readership, so I’d guess the list of stuff that might be deemed as unpleasant by said readership is also large. Writing it all down signals to the readers that their concerns on the matter will be taken seriously. I’ve no idea how this works out in practice, or if it’s meant to cover/distract attention from someone else, since I don’t read Shakespeare’s Sister and this list does not make me want to. I find discussion forums who make it one of their main priority to be safe spaces stifling (spaces safe for “people like me” included), and the quality of discussion is consistently below forums who have little to no rules except “don’t piss off the people providing the forum” – which, granted, is probably because the people I’m likely to read have a better chance of being pissed off by what pisses me off than the general populace, so moderation based on that leads to forums optimized for what I’m interested into.

Oh, and sockpuppeting is making multiple commenter accounts to make your point of view seem more wide-spread.

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1. musteryou
  
  May 1, 2013
  
  Ah, I see. sockpuppeting must be what they do on Youtube. Or failing that, most American males really are dunces…
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    May 1, 2013
    
    It’s very hard for me to believe that somebody would go to the trouble of creating multiple Disqus accounts with all the bother that entails just to participate on some blog. I think the blog owner is just trying to make herself feel more important.
    
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  2. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
    
    May 1, 2013
    
    Never underestimate just how bored can some people on the internet be, Clarissa.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      May 1, 2013
      
      “Never underestimate just how bored can some people on the internet be, Clarissa.”
      
      – Oh, yes. I do keep forgetting. 🙂
      
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  3. Isabel
    
    May 1, 2013
    
    ” Or failing that, most American males really are dunces…”
    or, more likely, most American males are not spending their days commenting on youtube videos so without more information it is impossible to make generalizations about anyone except Youtube commenters.
    
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2. bloggerclarissa
  
  May 1, 2013
  
  I left a comment recently (one of the 2 comments I ever left there), and the response was pissy and condescending. Which is the owner’s inalienable right, of course.
  
  The funniest thing was that the author of the post I responded to agreed with my comment and changed her post to reflect the perspective I provided.
  
  As for the safety of that blog, I never feel safe in places where there is a single correct position and a bunch of sycophants compete in creating ingenious ways of wording it.
  
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Titfortat

May 1, 2013

That is one thing I like about Clarissa, if you dont like what I say you just give me a time out. Great practice for your future parenting. 😉

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NancyP

May 1, 2013

I find the statement long-winded. Short version: “Don’t be an asshole. I reserve the right to ban those I consider assholish.” or “Be polite. Rude folks will be removed posthaste.”

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David Gendron

May 1, 2013

This is personal narcissism at his best. If you don’t want to have debates, don’t call it a blog.

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