What's your EMAIL ADDRESS? Write me at dmiwlog at yahoo dot com. I respond to most email. For a short bio, see my About Me page.
What's your COMMENT POLICY? Simple: Comments are reserved for friendly discussion on posted topics. “Friendly discussion” is broad enough to include disagreement, even pointed criticism, as well as pleasant observations and exchanges. What it excludes is insults, tasteless profanity, copyright violations, libel, threadjacking, trolling, commercial promotion, spamming, and similar social or legal transgressions. I rarely delete comments or ban IP addresses. If you've got a question or a complaint, just email me.
Why won't my comments post? I sometimes use a comment queue through a Typepad feature called "comment moderation." When comment moderation is on, your comment goes into a comment queue when you hit "post"; it does not get posted to the public weblog until I review and approve it. This generally means about a half-day delay before your comment gets published at the public weblog. Be aware that there is no message telling you your comment went into a queue after you hit post. When there is no comment moderation (99% of the time), your comment goes directly to the public weblog.
Why do you sometimes use a comment queue? To eliminate comment spam completely and to catch abusive or offensive comments before they are posted publicly. Or when I have a particularly busy day at work, or when I'm on vacation and don't want to worry about a bunch of junk being posted at DMI via comments. I also turn it on when I post on particularly controversial topic.
Review and approve comments? Sounds like censorship. No, I'm not editing for content — I welcome all points of view in the comments. I just want to eliminate comment spam and abusive or offensive comments (see Comment Policy paragraph above). I have spent a lot of time making my weblog an interesting place where people whose views of Mormonism span the entire spectrum can make comments. It would be unfair to everyone if a few abusive commenters were allowed to spoil the forum.
Why do you require an email address? So if you post a comment that raises one of the issues discussed in the previous paragraph, I have the option of emailing you to resolve it. Leaving a real email address isn't much of a hurdle, folks. For what it's worth, phony email addresses are the best indicator of a troll.
Sometimes my typos seem to magically disappear. Yes, it seems like that happens sometimes, doesn't it?
Before I put the preceding FAQ together, I had a simpler statement. What follows is my original comment policy statement. I think it is still useful.
It is time that I spell out specific commenting policies for DMI. My comment section is for friendly discussion by real people about topics posted. Comments outside this broad range — unfriendly discussion by poseurs with phony email addresses or by generic comments that are just advertising links — may be edited, deleted, or banned. The needs of the many for a friendly and welcoming forum outweigh the needs of the few or the one for a billboard or a soapbox.
I enjoy your comments and discussion. Feel free to email me with other comments or questions at dmiw at yahoo dot com. If your comment was edited or deleted and after reading these policies and you still can't figure out why, email me and I'll explain.
I will close most comment threads after ten days, an anti-spamming necessity, I'm afraid.
Bummer. Several of the books on my behemothic reading list are on your sidebars. I was looking forward to a belated participation. Though it this rate, I might never get to tem anyway.
Posted by: J. Stapley | Mar 12, 2005 at 04:41 PM
Wow, I'm honored to have been one of the elite few to have had a comment edited by Dave!
(I have to say the edit puzzled me, though I didn't squawk about it at the time. I used a certain adjective to describe Quinn, which it was my understanding he himself had used publicly.)
Posted by: Christian Y. Cardall | Mar 12, 2005 at 05:00 PM
BTW Dave somewhat unrelated. But one of the changes to your stylesheet you just made recently has the effect of underlining all your text on Safari. For some reason it doesn't affect Firefox on either the PC or the Mac. (I don't know about IE as I don't use it anymore on either platform)
Posted by: Clark Goble | Mar 14, 2005 at 11:14 AM
Clark, on all screens or just the main screen? Straight underline or as a hyperlink? I suspect the problem is an omitted closing underline or link tag on a new post or comment, but that should cause a problem in IE as well as Safari.
Posted by: Dave | Mar 14, 2005 at 11:33 AM
Dave, it's all the text in the main body and the links on the right. The stuff on the left is unaffected. Also, it appears that I can't do comments in Safari either. I get somehow redirected to Times and Seasons.
Posted by: clark | Mar 16, 2005 at 06:05 PM
Clark, I removed the two links to Times and Seasons which were part of this "Comment Policies" post. Did that fix the problem? Was that a problem only for the body of this post, or for all posts and the main page when viewed in Safari?
Posted by: Dave | Mar 16, 2005 at 06:54 PM