The comments are an extremely important part of the success of Slugger. Many sites are turning off comments as they are a pain in the neck to moderate but we believe it is important to give you all a chance to give your views.
We are currently getting over 10,000 comments a month on slugger which I think you will agree is quite a lot. Trying to moderate so many is like trying to take a drink from a firehose.
The moderators do an excellent job but as you can imagine it is hard to monitor all active discussions all the time. This is where we need your help.
We are encouraging all readers to report problem comments wherever you see them. To report a comment all you have to do is click on the flag icon next to the comment. Some of you may feel a little uneasy about reporting comments but don’t worry the person who made the comment will not know who reported them. Do not reply to a problem comment, just report it.
Reporting a comment will remove it from the site until a moderator can check it and deal with it. We will take a dim view of people falsely reporting comments to stop a viewpoint being heard.
With this new change, we are empowering you all to help us keep the conversation on topic and constructive.
A quick reminder of the type of comments that should be reported. This is from our comments guidelines:
Libel or things that are plainly untrue. Self explanatory. When making a controversial claim, please take some time to verify your own view with linked research. It will help you banish weaknesses in your claim and strengthen your argument.
Spam. This is usually ads, gibberish, bots. Also long sections of cut and pasted text.
Incitement to violence. This is a criminal offence and we reserve the right to enforce an outright ban in these cases.
Foul language. Usually an indication of weakness in your argument. Often Disqus will tag such a comment automatically and put into a ‘pending’ folder for moderator approval. Most of these comments will end up deleted.
Man/woman playing, including personal attacks and insults. A rule made internet famous by Slugger – play the ball not the man/woman. To facilitate plain speaking and robust criticism, argumentative strategies which focus an opponent’s character rather than their argument is treated as pernicious rule breaking. Persistence usually ends in exclusion.
*NB this also applies to public figures.
Going hugely off topic. Self explanatory. Conversations with purpose usually require focus and engagement. Sometimes divergence can be enlightening and entertaining. It’s a matter of degree.
Trolling. Provoking people, spoiling for a fight. Especially by sockpuppets.
Crass generalisations. Applying stereotypes to an entire section of the population. “All unionists/republicans/Brits are X” type comments. Remember there is a difference between a political party and the people that vote for them. Consider whether your argument is straying into the ad hominem (aka ‘man/woman playing’) non arguments.
Excessive and circular whataboutery. Sometimes it’s necessary to bring in “but what about” for context and counter-point. But this gets stuck in an endless feedback loop of evasion and can bury other more valuable conversations.
Volume. If a commenter is making an unmanageable quantity of comments a day, particularly argumentative, trolling comments, this buries and derails real conversation and a sanction may be applied.
Negative comments that bring nothing to the conservation. Our writers give a lot of themselves to this site, for free. By all means critique their ideas. But comments like “this is crap and you’re an idiot” may be moderated.
Part of a thread that contained a more serious infraction, and therefore no longer makes sense. If a thread goes “you’re a troll”, “no you’re a troll” and you weigh in to say “let’s not call each other trolls” we may remove the entire exchange, even though there were no problems with your individual comment.
I am happy to answer general questions about comments but please don’t ask me specific questions about why your comment from 2 months ago was deleted. We have over 1.2 million comments on Slugger and as you can imagine trying to look back at a specific comment is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Photo by Pixabay is licensed under CC0
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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