Comment Guidelines
Thank you for being part of the Boing Boing community! Our goal in the discussion threads is to have good conversation, with "good" meaning fun, constructive, informative, entertaining, or all of the above. So, speech is free, but Boing Boing is moderated. Here are the kinds of comments that energize happy mutants:
• More information about the subject of the post! If we post something, it's because we're genuinely interested in the subject. If you know more about it than we do, please share!
• New developments about the subject of a post. As the old comic strip goes, "It isn't that (we) don't like current events. There have just been so many of them lately."
• Opinions that move the debate forward. Disagree with what we or another commenter has to say? Let's hear it! But please be respectful.
• Comments that connect the dots. We appreciate you linking the subject of one post to other posts, even (especially!) when the connection isn't obvious!
• Factual corrections! We make mistakes, we fix 'em.
And now, some less pleasant things that should be self-evident but we'll note for the record:
• Offensive, inappropriate, or just plain annoying comments may be deleted or disemvoweled.
• Spam earns an instant ban. If you have a history of junk comments, plus promotional copy in your profile, you may be considered a spammer.
• Astroturfers will be banned. Cut-and-paste or nearly verbatim talking points are considered astroturf.
• Sock puppets (alias accounts created by previously banned commenters for the purpose of avoiding a ban) will be banned.
• If the bulk of your comments are whining, hostile, insulting or otherwise annoying, you may be banned.
• Please do not tell the Boing Boing editors what to blog. Writing "But that's not a wonderful thing" is lame. So is "topic [X] bores me," or "subject [Y] sucks."
• Please do not make racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or otherwise offensive comments.
• Please don't personally insult, bully, threaten, or harass the writers or your fellow commenters. Comments referring to other commenters as "idiots," "retards," or the like will be disemvowelled or not published.
• Please avoid using offensive words like avttre, snttbg and phag, which have been ROT13ed for your reading pleasure. If saying it to a stranger in meatspace might earn you a black eye, please don't say it in your comment. Replacing a few letters with asterisks is not a valid workaround.
• Please don't make off-topic comments about political candidates or parties for the purpose of arguing. If a political party or candidate is the subject of the post or is closely related, it's okay to discuss political parties or candidates. But don't do so simply to troll.
• Please don't suggest that the victim "had it coming" in a civil liberties/human rights thread unless you have some evidence to support your claim.
• We are primarily ad supported, but advertisers have no editorial control. Please don't make passive-aggressive insinuations or other tiresome, generalized accusations to the contrary. We are transparent about our relationships with advertisers. For more on that, please see our advertising policy.
• Please ROT13 spoilers.
• Please don't include e-mail addresses, physical addresses, or phone numbers in your comments for the purpose of self-promotion, or for the purpose of harassing or publicly exposing the private data of others. Such comments will be redacted or removed.
• Please don't drag topics from one post to another. The content of a post is the responsibility of that author, nobody else.
• Please don't "hijack" comment threads to controversial topics.
• Please don't make the same comment in more than one thread or repeat yourself (or anyone else) in the same thread. If you accidentally double-post, don't worry, our moderators routinely try to tidy up those sorts of errors.
• Please bring meta-commentary, technical problems, etc. to this thread.
Anonymous Comments
• Anonymous comments are approved when a moderator is available to do so. If you comment anonymously in the middle of the night, it may be 12 hours before anyone gets to it. If you comment anonymously when the moderators happen to be sick or on vacation, it may never be seen or approved. For this reason, registering as a user (which one can do without disclosing personally identifying information) is strongly encouraged.
• Anonymous comments are not necessarily approved in chronological order.
• Comments by registered users are given more leeway with regard to the aforementioned guidelines than those of anonymous commenters.
General notes
• Please note that comments are automatically renumbered as approved anonymous comments fall into queue. Instead of referring to a comment by number when replying to that comment, you may wish to refer to the commenter by name or by pulling a quote from that comment in italics or blockquote format.
• Please note that using the left-arrow/less-than sign initiates unintentional html and the text following it will disappear up to your next line break. If you Unicode it and preview your comment, go back to the previous page before submitting or the system will strip your code.
• Please note that the only html that is supported in comments is italics, bold, blockquote and links. (see link policy)
• The eye icon in the top right-hand corner of messages tells the
moderator to look at that particular message. Please don't try to use
the eyeball to post comments.
• Offensive or spam/commercial (website) user names may be banned.
• If you give us a non-working e-mail address when you register, please don't complain that we didn't contact you if your account is suspended.
• Please forward personal service requests such as display name changes to Antinous.
Link Policy
• Links are allowed in comments as long as they add value in the form of information, images, humor, etc. It's generally OK to link to large information sites (such as Wikipedia, IMDb), news sites (NY Times, Yomiuri Shimbun, local TV stations), general technology and interesting-stuff sites (Mental Floss, Gizmodo, Neatorama), maker sites (Etsy, Make) if they're relevant to the topic at hand.
• Links to opinion pages on news sites are okay, but we'd much rather that you coherently voice your own opinion here.
• Links to the front page of your personal blog or website are not okay (you can add this information in your user profile, instead). This helps us prevent the abuse of the comment threads for spam. You may link to a specific post on your site if it adds to (rather than repeats) the post/thread.
• Links to commercial sites are okay if they are on-topic for the post/thread or likely to be interesting to fellow readers.
• Links to NSFW (including gore/violence) sites are okay if there's a good reason for them to be part of the discussion. As a courtesy to your fellow commenters, please label them with "NSFW," or similar.
• Mislabeled links are not okay and will be treated as spam.
• Unidentified links (urls pasted without description) are not okay.
• Links to offensive material such as racist, anti-Semitic, etc. websites, images or videos are not okay, unless the topic at hand involves a discussion of this material (example: comments around a BB post on newly-discovered early 20th century photos of Klan rallies might include links to similar collections). If the intent is simply to shock or offend, it's not okay. If the intent is to broaden discussion on a given topic with your peers, it may be okay.
• Unwelcome links will be redacted.
• Full URLs (http://...) are automatically hyperlinked, but you may also mask URLs. Long URLs (over 75 characters) should be masked, please.
Errata and attributions
• We welcome alerts about typos, incorrect names, factual errors, and the like.
• We generally do not correct quoted text.
• Factual errors will be corrected if verifiable documentation is available. The correction is at the discretion of the post editor and may not happen immediately.
• Requests for credit or attribution may be honored if verifiable documentation is submitted. This modification is at the discretion of the author/editor of the post and may not happen immediately.
RSS Feed
Mod Policy: neat, tidy, concise. Even better than the old one.
"Please bring meta-commentary, technical problems, etc. to this thread."
It may be kind of early to make comments, since it may be that you're still wrestling with technical details of the style changeover, but I'd like to make the following comments:
Where is the permalink for a post now? They appear to be gone on the restyled pages I've looked at.
Please bring back the "older post" / "newer post" links. I (usually) read Boing Boing by going from one post to the next, in order, without ever going to the front page. This is especially useful when I'm catching up with old posts.
The Lookatthis icons appear to be gone, too.
Otherwise, I like the new look.
Those things are on the to-do list. The old eyeball system didn't support captcha, so I was getting hundreds of spams per day. We'll have a new system in place soon. In the interim, you can e-mail me. My e-mail is my name at this domain.
I would prefer a less bubbl-icious font, but I'm sure I can find a work around if you insist on keeping it. It looks cool, but i find it hard to read.
Thanks!
And look! We can reply to a specific comment. Cool!
...although it will only lead us to ask for a threaded view with nested indentations for comment replies...
1) It's really, really great that you have a reply button next to posts. It solves an issue that I know many people raised time and again, so thanks for making a wonderful improvement.
2) BUT, when you read this post, did you even notice that I was replying to the post above?
I've been reading lots of comment threads recently, and when people reply to others, you simply have no idea. The little "SamSam replied to" is really not noticeable in the post, unless you're looking for it. I might just be me, but I don't think so.
The "standard" on BB, at least in the past few years (as long as I've been reading) has always be to start out a reply with
@SamSam:
I know I should ask for an improvement to something that's already been improved, but many forums and commenting systems do something exactly like this. When you click "Reply" it adds some verbiage, like @ So-and-so, with a link, to the top of your comment box. Most even support automatically quoting the text.
Any thoughts about doing something like this?
Thanks! Love all the rest of the changes!
Typo correction: "I know I shouldn't ask..."
Loving the new site, especially after I trashed my Comic Sans font once and for all!
Stupid question: why are some commenters' screen names grey as opposed to the standard hyper-linked red?
They're commenting anonymously. We've now set it so that they also just appear as "anonymous," too, to minimize confusion.
Adding @user to the start of reply posts is a good idea. I believe we're also thinking of having IDs back in.
Is the "favorite this" link gone? Is it coming back? I often don't have time to read all the posts in one sitting and sometimes "favorite" to read it later. I guess that's not really what it's made for.
Maybe. I'll check on it.
I'm not sure whether this is a technical problem, perhaps it's just a design one, but I don't quite see the point of the Recent Comments box on a particular thread bearing just the recent comments for that thread. I mean, I can read the recent comments just by scrolling down to the bottom, and in the right order, too.
I agree with Nelson C above. The recent comments box shouldn't only show the comments for the article you're looking at, but instead for all articles, like it does when you're on the home page.
BB used to work like that. BB Gadgets worked/s the way this new version does. I always just thought it was a bug in BBG's design.
That was intended to make it easy to scan the latest comments on long comment threads, but it does kinda suck. It's probably going to go away (or go back to the old way)
Our favoriting plugin doesn't work on the latest version of MT. Eventually we'll figure out what's wrong with it.
BB is losing great people today.
To quote the disclaimer text just above the comment box..."Please don't cuss or harass other commenters!"
Its now clear who that applies to, and who it doesn't.
To celebrate my last comment evar on BB (due to Xeni's calous comments, insulting long time clickers just expressing an opinion, we just can't take the BBBullshit treatment of free speech anymore) I must warn you all, you just can't speak your mind. Don't you all get it? Its glowing compliments only, people!
I (and a great number of my compatriots)(and, btw, we were all long time readers, some from the zine era) had quite a brew ha ha last night to discuss something that has been bothering us for some time. The environment/atmosphere here has just become something...well...unwonderful(you all noticed that BB no longer claims to be "a directory of wonderful things', because it insults its most loyal viewers.
Its just far far too easy to take our clicks elsewhere.
Could we maybe have the numbers back? It's not perfect, but it helps sort out which Anon is being replied to. There's an added advantage of being able to easily return to a comment if you want to reply come back to the same spot in a long thread.
Having problems logging on today- can't seem to post anything under my user name and I end up being "anonymous". Re-created my account to no avail. Any suggestions?
What happens when you try to log in?
It doesn't give me any error message, just the comment page like this:
"Name
Anonymous
Email address
Remember personal info "
This has happened for several days now and it won't work with either the old or new user account. Nothing new on the computer here beyond usual scanning and security updates.
Thanks!
I've sent another message but I will reply with the correct button now- When I try to sign in I don't get any kid of error message, just the annonymous comment page. Since I created a new user account and the same thing is happening, I'm not sure what else to do. Maybe just get a job and stop commenting so much!
The system thinks that you're entering the wrong password. I'll try to reset it.
I see numbered posts today! Thanks, BB!
I am quite concerned that Boing Boing has fallen into the trap of espousing the politics of the editors and moderators. And while this has been happening in the MSM for quite sometime, this is also the reason that the MSM is losing credibility, and in the case of the newspapers, massive circulation drops. Your new policy seems to be telling me not only what to think, but also how to think, and I find that highly offensive. If you are bothered by a few words, you have given too much power to that person. It's your fault, not theirs. We are all responsible for our own actions, shortcomings included. Political correctness sucks, and is a counter productive influence to real opinion derived from actual thought, not some rote recitation of the current trendy line of what passes for thought these days, spewed forth from the television and other forms of media.
It is sad that Boing Boing has fallen to this level. I can only hope that common sense will eventually prevail.
Boing Boing is the personal blog of the editors. Why wouldn't they espouse their own opinions on their own blog?
It is supposed to be a directory of wonderful things. For ALL of us. Including you and I. Try to include everyone instead of alienating them, like you have tried to do with me?
You should feel absolutely free to create your own blog representing your interests and opinions. Boing Boing isn't a public utility.
Sea Daddy, I think you may have fallen into a trap of your own there. Good luck killing all those windmills.
Well then, g'bye. Too snooty for me.
I'm not sure I even understood your complaints, Sea Daddy.
Antinous-
Please forgive the contact in this way, but the link to contact you personally isn't working. I need to revise my account details (specifically, it's linked to a no-longer working email address) and I wish to fix it. I'm not quite sure how. Instructions can be relayed to the new email, namely [redacted}
Thank you for the attention.
As far as I can figure, your e-mail address has no function in the system, so it shouldn't make any difference. But I'll switch it. If I have to reset your password, I'll let you know.
Blogging, photosharing, videosharing... when it does contain someone else's content, if used appropriately it falls under Fair Use. You can't recreate a large portion or entire work, but you can still use screenshots, excerpts, clips, low-res photos etc. - which is already how just about everybody uses copyrighted material. It's also for the copyright owner to dispute fair use.
This would and could only target copyrighted materials used in full without the express permission of the owner. Which anyone in their right mind knows is a crime, and is usually easy to identify.
I don't so much agree with forcing ISPs to "proactively" monitor, but there should be clear guidelines that they shouldn't ignore or condone - which I'm sure they already have in their own agreements. If not, seems fair that ISPs should be required to have "notice and takedown" rules.
The only real problem here is ISPs grossly misinterpreting copyright as it is here.
Dude, wrong thread.
How will government health care workers pick which people to treat? My guess it'll be about as fair and effective.
What's up with short posts not having any fold / link / way to comment under the new format? I don't have any scripts blocked and I do see the necessary objects in every post longer than a few sentences...
The link to comment is above the postette.
Under general notes, it says
(Emphasis mine.) It's no longer an eyeball icon, but the word 'Report'. While long-time commenters know what is meant (because it's just where the eyeball used to be), this might confuse the newbies.Visually it’s too close to ‘respond’ and in a location that further lends itself to that mixup. I reported a comment the other day that probably made no sense to whoever sees those reports. I looked around but could find no clue as to who I might send a ‘disregard’ message to.
I struck out that section.
I reported a comment the other day that probably made no sense to whoever sees those reports.
That's normal. The larger problem is that you send the report and the system shows you the exact same form with a fresh captcha, so I frequently get three or four reports on the same comment all at once.
Mark