Comments, email, and privacy policies

Comments to my posts are welcome, including comments that express different points of view.  I insist that they be civil and reasonably nonprofane (roughly PG-13).  I strongly discourage ad hominem (personal) attacks on other commenters, but recognize that a reasonable amount of snark is an essential part of the blogosphere. 

I don't require that you use a valid email or real name on your comments. If you choose not to use a valid email, I'll have no way of contacting you about your comment other than by a reply in a subsequent comment on that same post.

I reserve the absolute right to delete or edit comments at my discretion, which may sometimes seem arbitrary despite my efforts to act reasonably. If you believe one of my edits has so changed your meaning that you'd rather not have the comment published at all, let me know by email and I'll delete it outright.

My hope is to leave my comments enabled on posts that are of current public interest, but I may turn off comments on individual posts when I make them, and to discourage comment spambots, I will generally turn off comments on older posts that seem unlikely to be drawing much current interest. Feel free to email me to request that I enable or re-enable comments on any post upon which you'd like to comment.

Non-spam emails are always welcome, although I hope that they'll be directed specifically to me or to something directly related to this blog, rather than the result of your having added me to your "my daily musings" mailing list. I at least skim all incoming email, eventually, but hope that you won't take offense if I don't always reply.

Tips and links in emails are great. So, too, are emails pointing out broken links, typos, and spelling, grammar, usage errors, or other more general errors on my part.

In general, I reserve the right to treat emails sent to me as implying the sender's consent for me to republish their contents on my blog at my discretion, but I will endeavor not publish the sender's name without specific permission, and in practice I usually ask confirmation before publishing if you didn't make a preference clear in the original email. So if you're sending a tip and would be pleased to see a "hat-tip" to you by name should I choose to post about what you've sent, please say so.

UPDATE (Sun Jun 5, 2005 @ 1:00pm): Trackbacks from other blogs are generally welcome so long as you've actually linked the post here at BeldarBlog to which you're sending the trackback ping.

UPDATE (Tue Oct 2, 2007 @ 11:30pm): The fact that I may have cited and/or linked to some external source emphatically does NOT imply that I vouch for, embrace, endorse, or agree with that source in whole or in part. Nor do I undertake any responsibility for the accuracy or other appropriateness of links, references, or statements made by my commenters. While I generally make an effort to at least skim those comments, I disclaim any commitment or obligation to respond to them or to otherwise vet them. In particular, I do not uniformly screen links or URLs from my comments to check for objectionable or dangerous content, and I disclaim any responsibility for consequential damage to your computer or your psyche, so follow them at your own peril and use good judgment.

Anyone having a specific complaint or objection about a specific link or comment is welcome to contact me by email.

I permit hyperlinks and TypePad allows some basic html coding in comments, including blockquotes, italics, boldface, underscoring, strikethroughs, and ordered and unordered lists. If you're going to attempt html coding, please study the preview screen before finalizing them, and remember to close your tags!

Because I'm obliged to filter my email heavily to block spam, blog-related email is far more likely to actually be received and read by me if the subject line begins with the word "BeldarBlog."

UPDATE (Tue Apr 8, 2008 @ 6:00am): So that I know what's here, comments must be in English.

(Last revised: Monday, March 4, 2011, at 8:15 p.m.)