Comments Now Unmoderated

When I first started this blog, I decided to moderate all comments posted and either accept or reject them before publishing, based on my previous experience with other blogs I've authored. During the two months I've had this blog, I've only rejected one comment, simply because it was a profanity-laced screed. I thought this was a good practice until yesterday when I received an email from someone stating that his comments weren't being published. He thought that I was rejecting his comments, when in fact they never appeared, an error which I attribute to a Blogger glitch.

Therefore, since I've only had to reject one comment in two months and the purpose of this blog is to foster healthy debate, I've decided to set the comment settings to publish all comments to a post automatically without my pre-approval. I still reserve the right to delete any comments which I deem offensive, and if the comments section turns into total anarchy as we get closer to next year's election, then I will change the settings back. Furthermore, any comment left on this blog will automatically be emailed to me, allowing me the chance to rapidly remove any unruly comments, and all commenters will have to complete a word verification step to prevent comment spam.

You might be asking yourself, "Well, how do I make sure my comment isn't deleted?" While the moderating of comments on my blog is completely subjective, simple rules of common decency will be applied. If you still have no idea of what I mean by this, here are some example comments. If your comment is "I agree/disagree with Candidate A because of X, Y, and Z," your comment is perfectly acceptable. If your comment is "Candidate B is an f'ing a--hole" or "Candidate C's wife is a slut," your comment will definitely be deleted. Any comments bordering on offensive but still have some factual basis, such as "Candidate C's wife is a slut, and here's a link to her arrest report for hooking," will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

I hope my rules are simple enough to follow, but we shall see...