My Comment Policy

First – I want to say I haven’t had any problems with real-honest-to-gods people comments. So far, you’ve all been a great bunch of people and I thoroughly enjoy reading your comments. Keep them coming!

Second – Because I believe in full-disclosure and open business, I need to tell you that I monitor my comments. All of them. If this is your first time commenting on Evil Machinations, your comment will be held for my approval. I try to get to my comments at least every other weekday so your comment doesn’t have sit in limbo space too long. After you’ve had one approved comment, your next comments will appear immediately. But I review even comments that have been automatically approved. If I find something that violates my rules, I reserve the right to edit or delete it as I see necessary.

Why do I monitor comments? This is my blog. It’s my name on this blog after all. As it is, I only delete comments that are spam or encourage hateful behavior.

I will delete spam and any comment if the intention was to attack, denigrate, diminish, harm or cause upset to an individual or group or the intention was to troll or hijack the conversation.

That includes flame wars. However, I don’t delete comments just because the writer disagrees with me. Disagreement is positively encouraged. Unless it’s rude or offensive — that’s when I step in. As I said, this hasn’t been an issue yet; I just like to be prepared.

I use Akismet to reduce spam. Most days works very well, but sometimes it’ll get a little overzealous. It seems some comments have been mistaken as spam for some reason. I do go through my spam comments folder at least once a week, but if you’ve submitted a comment and it still hasn’t appeared after 3-4 weekdays, drop me an email (jade[at]rpggm[dot]com) and I’ll look into it ASAP. Usually it’s just been wrongly flagged by Akismet.

To summarise:

• Please comment. I’ve never published a post I didn’t welcome comments on. Share your thoughts, disagree, or otherwise add to the conversation. Tabletop RPGs are all about conversation — and it’s where I rip off collect my best ideas.
• On-topic links are encouraged. Just be aware that all comments with links will be held for personal moderation by me. I don’t mind if you put a link back to your blog or website as a signature file, but links that have no relation to tabletop RPGs will be deleted. I use CommentLuv, which will automatically provide a link back to the website you gave when you wrote the comment.
• The name field is for your name, not the headline of your latest post or for SEO-boosting anchor text. Your latest post headline is taken care of by CommentLuv, so you don’t need to include it as your name. Nicknames are fine; blatant keyword-grabs (”Custom Kitchen SEO Paris Hilton San Diego Hotel”) will be edited to match your email name or marked as spam. Which means your next comment will be caught my Akismet and will have to wait until I look over my spam folder.
• Be polite, courteous and stick to the topic. As Lazarus Long said:

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together.

• If I delete your comment by mistake please submit it again and tell me, either in a private email or in the comment itself. It’ll help me track down any problems with Akismet or the site.

That’s it. Basically, it’s the same behavior I expect from my gaming groups: play nice or I’ll take my sandbox and go home .