The blogging platform we use allows remarks from regular commenters to go up without moderation, but newer commenters’ offerings sit in a queue until they’re approved. Discerning between a comment that should be approved and one that shouldn’t is nowhere near as easy as you’d think. We like differing points of view, and we’d like this place to be a forum for off-the-beaten-path ideas. But when is a commenter stridently dissenting and when is she just trolling?
PostBourgie really hasn’t needed a commenter’s policy so far, but as our readership has spiked, so has the volume of the comments we get. While a lot of those new commenters have been smart and insightful, a lot of them are, uh, not. We’re all imperfect arbiters of fairness (for instance, I want to reflexively delete any comment that has “stop hating” in it), but I think in the interest of fairness and transparency re: how those decisions get made, we’re probably gonna codify those guidelines in the next few weeks.
Any input is appreciated.