Housekeeping!

I suppose I should have expected this when I posted several days ago about seeing an offensive sexist shirt at my local YMCA. Some MRAs descended on the post’s comment thread and everything went downhill from there. It’s worth taking a moment to do some housekeeping and lay down a few ground rules.

First, do not flag comments frivolously. If a commenter violates my comment policy, please inform them that they have done so and that further violations will be flagged and could lead to banning. When I see a lot of comments being flagged I try to check up on what is going on and I ban commenters who repeatedly violate my comment policy. On this post, someone went through the comment thread flagging left and right, which then made the ongoing discussion difficult as half of the comments were randomly missing. Please try to avoid this.

Second, this is my personal blog, not a public forum. As such, repeated violations of my comment policy will lead to banning. My blog is like my house. My rules are my rules. If you don’t like my rules, you are free to go elsewhere. If you have not yet read my comment policy, please do so. To hit the highlights, I ask that readers refrain from personal insults and engage other commenters in good faith, and I do not allow sexism, homophobia, etc., a place on my blog. (Commenters are free to discuss sexism, but they are not free to be sexist.)

Third, my comment policy is for everyone, not just for those who disagree with what I write. Please take the high ground and adhere to my comment policy yourself. Calling out comment violations becomes difficult when everyone on both sides of an issue is violating my comment policy willy nilly. Please rest assured that I will ban commenters for sexism, etc., and will issue warnings if things get close to the line, and that I am committed to maintaining a safe space. Feel free to email me if a commenter is becoming a problem and I do not weigh in quickly enough.

I hope this clears some things up and that things will move more smoothly as we go on. I have banned several of the commenters who caused a problem on the YMCA post comment thread.