This is a purely housekeeping entry to establish guidelines for the posting of comments. There have been some 2,171 comments posted on this blog since its introduction last January 2010. Some of these will have been generated on this side but most are made by visitors to the blog. With comment volume increasing, and solely for that reason, there’s a need to set out some guidelines.
Commenting versus contacting the blog
(1) Comments will be seen by everyone
(2) You can contact the blog in confidence using the contact form under the About tab or email jagdipsingh2008 [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk
Comment moderation
(1) All comments are pre-moderated the first time a new commenter posts a comment. This may take several hours, but if your comment doesn’t appear after 24 hours, check your email inbox because there will probably have been a problem with the comment which prevents publication. After the first comment is approved their comments are still moderated but they appear on the blog as soon as posted.
(2) If you are a repeat commenter but posting from a different computer (technically a different IP address) then your comment will again be pre-moderated
(3) If there is a problem found with your comment, it may be removed temporarily. An email will be sent to the email address given with the comment, explaining the problem and attaching the full text of the comment which will allow editing and re-posting. There is no editing whatsoever of your comments at this end. If there is no response to such messages within 24 hours, then the comment is moved from moderation and deleted.
(4) If your comment contains three or more hyperlinks then it will be held in moderation, even if you have previously had comments approved without moderation. This is because comments with lots of hyperlinks tend to be spam.
(5) If you have broken commenting guidelines previously, then your comments may be held in moderation.
(6) On occasion your comment may be held for moderation because it contains a word or expression which is problematic.
(7) On occasion, WordPress which hosts the NAMA wine lake blog might incorrectly designate a comment as spam. The blog receives over 300 spam comments per day and it is no longer possible to check individually for “false positives” and the spam is cleared en masse.
(8) If you are commenting for the first time and using a “real name” – first name and family name – then you can expect delays in the publication of your comment, as extra steps have to be taken with validating your email address and computer location, so as to deter attempts to maliciously take a person’s good name. If the email address provided doesn’t respond to a request for verification within 24 hours, then the comment will be deleted.
(9) If your comment hasn’t appeared within 24 hours, please contact the blog directly with details of the comment.
Comment content
(1) Please make your comments relevant, though off-topic is still welcome particularly if there is breaking news which will probably prompt a new thread
(2) If making claims of fact, it is helpful to attach a link to a source. Unverified claims may lead to your comment being suppressed (see below).
(3) The commenter is fully responsible for their comment, and remains fully responsible even if a comment has been moderated.
(4) Defamatory and abusive comments will be suppressed to the greatest extent possible. Some comments will be,and have been, borderline and it will be the blog that decides what is acceptable.
(5) Comments which publicise a commercial product or service will be closely moderated. Commercial advertising is not allowed. This blog does not generate any revenue whatsoever, and indeed might find it difficult to keep the term NAMA in its title if it did.
(6) Pingbacks/links from other blogs or websites aren’t comments but they appear as links under “comments”. Such pingbacks are approved if they are considered relevant to the blog content. Approval of such pingbacks does not mean the source blog’s content is approved and this blog takes no responsibility for the content of websites that may be linked to the NAMA wine lake blog via pingbacks. Frequent pingbacks from the same source are very selectively approved.
Replying to other comments
(1) Up to now the general house style was to greet with “Hi” – that reflected the small population of commenters and the folksy nature of the exchanges on here. It has become a little tedious for some, and so with a little regret it must be said, the house style of address will henceforth be with “@”
(2) Do not use abusive terms when replying to other commenters, it is possible to get your point across without name-calling. This blog is not here to enable persecution of any individual or group; it is a subjective judgment about when comment and opinion become persecution.
Editing comments
(1) This blog runs on standard WordPress blogging software and WordPress has said that it does not offer an edit facility to commenters which it claims would stymie interaction with commenters.
(2) Although the blog has the ability to edit all comments, it never edits your comments, so if one word or sentence is problematic the whole comment is suppressed.
(3) If you wish to delete a comment then you will need contact the blog (see above) and request that comments be deleted
Privacy
(1) When you post a comment, a record is generated of the IP address of the device used to generate the comment together with the email address provided by you. Neither is ever published or disclosed.
(2) There have been requests received for email addresses so that commenters can privately correspond. This is never done unless a commenter explicitly gives permission which has never happened.
(3) There is no personal messaging (PM) facility with the WordPress software used to generate the blog
(4) WordPress assigns commenters a unique symbol with a square design and colour. WordPress call this a “gravatar” and it appears next to your commenter name. Note that WordPress assigns a unique gravatar based on your IP address and email address only, so if you have two different commenter names but each is attached to the same email address and IP address then WordPress will assign the SAME gravatar to both commenter names.
Suppressed comments
There have been 10 comments in the past year which were suppressed. An attempt was made to contact all commenters with an explanation for the action taken. The suppressed emails break down as follows:
(1) 2 made allegations that named or identifiable individuals had lied. The commenter declined to offer evidence.
(2) 1 comment inferred that a named individual had committed an offence against the law. The commenter was invited to provide proof or modify the comment and they chose to modify the comment.
(3) 2 used what was considered on here to be personally insulting language to a previous commenter. The commenters were invited to modify their comments and remove the “name-calling”.
(4) 3 comments made reference to a post which was modified soon after it was made at the request of a party that had provided information which they had, apparently, intended to be confidential.
(5) 1 comment made reference to the personal assets of a developer which was border-line intrusive. The email address provided by the commenter turned out to be invalid when an attempt was made to make contact to modify the comment.
(6) 1 comment (correctly) made a claim about an important financial disclosure that had not yet come into the public domain, which would have been damaging had it been untrue.
NAMA Wine Lake 