Posts Tagged ‘open threads and commenter posts’

Comments policies

Overlawyered is lucky to have a valued set of commenters from whom I often learn things, and it’s been quite a while since our comments section has suffered from any outbreak of bad commenter behavior, flame wars, or that sort of thing. I was reminded of our good fortune since several bloggers have recently added guidelines on comments moderation or otherwise outlined their views. At Volokh Conspiracy, known for its busy and high-quality comments section, Orin Kerr has posted a “Clarified Comments Policy” which with perhaps a slight change here or there could also serve as a comments policy for this site. Meanwhile, the site I helped launch a couple of weeks ago, Secular Right, from almost its first day attracted a high comments volume (more than 2,000 comments in the first two weeks) including more than a few that were contentious or uncivil — not an unexpected consequence when there are sharp disagreements on the topic of religion. After one blowup I noted the following:
Read On…