In order to better facilitate discussion on this blog, we’ve recently updated our commenting policies to include a limit on the length of comments. Comments can run to no longer than approximately three hundred words (1900 characters, including spaces). Multiple-part comments are not allowed; however, we continue to encourage back-and-forth conversations between commenters as long as the discussion remains civil and relevant to the original blog post.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013, 4:32 PM
January 16th, 2013 | 6:54 pm
I’d merely like to voice my displeasure at this new policy. I’m sure this will lead your readers, like myself, to follow these blog posts less frequently.
The best posts have always attracted the longest comments from your readership and, more often than not, helped distinguish this blog above most others for its discourse and depth of information.
January 16th, 2013 | 11:13 pm
Eh. I could do without the limits, but no biggie.
However, if we’re going to have limits, could it be calibrated to however Microsoft World does its word/character counts? As others have remarked, we edit our comments to fit the 300 word/1900 character limit, as measured by Microsoft. But when we finally post our comments, we discover that they still don’t fit!
January 17th, 2013 | 7:04 am
Most of what any of us have to say that means anything at all could be done in less than 300 words. No problem.
January 17th, 2013 | 8:56 am
I would have suggested a comment limit of two – an opening and closing argument – but see you want to keep the back and forth. Perhaps, though, the most frequent commenters might have a page where they write up their standard replies and can then just refer to them by number? That would save us from wading through the redundancy.
January 17th, 2013 | 10:03 am
@nobody.really — Yes, we’re aware of the discrepancy between Word and this combox’s limit; I know that’s frustrating. We’re working on remedying the problem, most likely by eliminating the discrepancy or by displaying the character count as you type in the combox itself (so you won’t be cut off unexpectedly).
@SteveP — We’ll think about that!
January 17th, 2013 | 12:24 pm
Character count would be helpful, but what about just a ‘preview comment’ button? At least that would alert the writer that he was about to post something that would be sliced in half!
Also can you clarrify a bit about how your moderation works? Is every comment approved manually? Do they auto-approve if a moderator doesn’t touch them? It seems I have sometimes lost comments for days to moderation and I’m not sure if it was me, my tone, or just quirks in the system? If moderation is active then a little feedback from moderators would be helpful even if it can’t be given for each rejected comment.
Finally let me say I don’t object to the limit. It’s frustrating when a thread has multiple people on one side and I’m tring to cover each argument they make, but it has helped me trim down my arguments and make them more concise and biting!
January 17th, 2013 | 12:38 pm
@Boonton, we’ll consider a preview comment button. To answer your other questions:
Moderation is almost 100% manual — the only automatic component is the spam-blocker, which sometimes is over-zealous (automatically blocking posts with too many hyperlinks, explicit language, or other common features of spam). But every comment is reviewed by one of us before it is posted.
Because moderating is a duty shared by several staff members here, and because our standards (civility, relevance, and substantially advancing the engagement of the topic) can mean slightly different things to different people, quirks and inconsistencies like the ones you mentioned can arise. If a thread is devolving into unproductive and unilluminating arguments, or if it gets too far afield of the topic of the blog post, we may raise the standard of what we allow. However, due to time constraints and other reasons, we cannot explain individual moderating decisions.
I hope this is helpful!
January 17th, 2013 | 1:57 pm
I don’t mind the commenting length standard because it is objective. Likewise a no curse word standard is objective as well. As would be a standard of number of post limits per day (like 2 or 3). I don’t like the unexplained, arbitrary factor and have seen a few of my posts not put through, for what I see as not a good reason. Though it’s not something that I care too much about to make a big deal over.
January 17th, 2013 | 2:01 pm
I’ll reiterate my suggestion from some time ago, that we ought to be required to start every posting with a one-sentence statement of the circumstances under which we’d consider ourselves to have been proven wrong.
January 17th, 2013 | 3:12 pm
Since the contributors’ original posts are always well researched, cogently argued, and highly persuasive, comments agreeing with them are necessarily redundant. So only comments disagreeing with the original post should be passed through moderation.
To be fair, comment length should be equal to the length of the original post. Limiting comments to a 600-word post to 300 words puts commenters at a disadvantage.
Comments written during business hours should contain a brief description of the work the commenter is neglecting in order to express his or her opinion.
Boldface and italics sometimes do not covey the desired degree of emphasis. Despite the fact that it is not standard HTML, some way should be found to code text in comments so it will blink blink blink.
Under no circumstances should facetious comments pass moderation.
January 17th, 2013 | 3:21 pm
Thanks Anna,
I too get the feeling that sometimes comment moderation feels arbitrary or random…maybe moderators could agree to step into comment threads periodically and warn commentaters that their getting close to the line. This way we can get a sense of just where the line is. Or if nothing else do an autoemail alerting us that a comment was rejected. Even if we don’t know the reason we can get a feel for what does and doesn’t make the cut.
January 17th, 2013 | 3:56 pm
Alternative idea, create a page for rejected comments. Just nothing more than a dumping ground. If a moderator dumps comments in there because they are ‘too good’ in refuting a favored cause, it will be very clear and obvious. On the other hand if they are all really poor comments dumped in there then no need to think about the issue anymore.
January 17th, 2013 | 6:08 pm
Alternative idea, create a page for rejected comments.
Boonton,
I have it on good authority that some of the comments that do not pass moderation really should never see the light of day anywhere. I like the idea of an alternative outlet, but asking the moderators to publish rejected comments elsewhere would put them in a position of deciding what’s fit for First Things, what isn’t up to snuff but is just okay, and what is so profane, libelous, crackpot, etc. that it will turn people against the Internet.
I do have an unused web site that I am thinking of opening up to be used for continuing discussions that begin elsewhere. Of course, then I would become a moderator and have to go through the same kind of suffering the moderators do here.
January 18th, 2013 | 8:46 am
A far simplier solution I think would be to leave a placeholder behind for comments deleted by the moderators. Provided the commenter wasn’t spamming the thread with hundreds of posts, the message “Post from X deleted” would speak for itself.
If the moderator was going overboard, it would make that publically visible. If the writer is known as a trouble maker, no one will think anything of it. In cases where the writer may have just let the tone slip away from him, he will be able to know he went beyond the line and would be able to adjust inhis future posts.
January 20th, 2013 | 11:25 pm
Thanks for giving us some clarification. I’m curious what the problem the word limit is expected to solve. There’s many a long comment that I simply scroll past, but I’ve never felt that long comments prevented good exchanges. In fact, I think that many of the lengthy comments encourage deeper conversation.
I wonder whether you have chosen to wrong tool to solve a problem that you haven’t articulated yet.
It helps to know that there are several moderators, each of whom has different standards. It appears that I’m not alone in being puzzled that some of my comments have not been posted for no discernible reason. It is frustrating to craft a cogent reply and not be able to guess why it wasn’t posted.
Two years ago, when a comment wasn’t posted, I could reread it and tell immediately where I had gone over the line. I could reword the comment and it would get posted, but that doesn’t happen anymore, and frankly, I no longer take the trouble to reword a comment. I figure that it is my ideas and not my wording that has been rejected.
A few weeks ago, my comment was posted and then taken down later that day. The comment was a short sentence. It was neither insulting nor crude, but it criticized the premise of the article.
There’s a shift in the moderation policy and more deeply in the approach to commenting that still hasn’t been explained.
Over the years, I’ve learned much from the commenters as well as from the essayists. It’s shame that this door to free dialogue has narrowed.
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