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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!