Comment management policy and moderation principles

This article explains the policies that Blogger-HAT applies in accepting, moderating and responding to comments.

Comments are one of the ways we can let other people write on our blogs.

Blogger lets us choose whether or not to allow comments overall, and also on individual posts. And it provides options for Blogger administrators to choose whether comments are automatically published, or if they must be approved first. This approval process is called moderation.

The following sections describe the policies that I apply in moderating Blogger-HAT and Blogger-HAT-Lite.

You are welcome to use this as the basis of your own comment-management rules - but please make sure that consider each suggestion, to see how it applies your blog, and acknowledge Blogger-Hints-and-Tips as the original source by placing this line in the footer of your own posted policy

Modified from the comments-moderation policies applied by Blogger-Hints-and-Tips.

Comments Policy

Blogger-Hints-and-Tips welcomes genuine comments from readers.

This blog retains the no-follow option set by Blogger in most default templates. This means that web-addresses put into comments left here will not help to get your site indexed. But if you write interesting comments, I will probably look at your site, and may subscribe to your blog's RSS feed or share it on my Facebook page, which will give you some credit with most search engines.

All comments are moderated, using the moderation policies outlines below.

Blogger-HAT aims to review and act on all comments within 3 days: however there may be delays if time is needed to research issues.

Moderation principles

Only English-language comments are accepted. Others will be deleted, or marked as spam.

"+1", "me-too" and "thanks, that helps" comments may be published, provided the number of them does not detract from other visitors experience of the blog.

Comments that provide specific feedback about problems you have with the advice in an article - or about changes in Blogger etc since the article was written - are especially welcome.

All comments are published, or rejected, as is: I do not edit or alter your comments in any way. (See the section below about copyright for more information about this.)

Comments that are spam will not be published, and Blogger's spam-filters will be alerted.

Comments that do not relate to the article that they are left on will not be published: they will be deleted.

Comments that are "signed" with a blog or website URL/address will not be published, unless there is a direct link between the URL and the content of the article and the comment you left.

Comments that contain email addresses or other contact information (eg phone numbers) will not be published. (This is for your own protection - even if you think it's not necessary, I do not want to be responsible for you being harassed.)

Comments that include personal names will not be published, unless the name is common enough that you are not readily identifiable.

Comments that do not meet Blogger's publication standards (including racism, hate-speech, violence etc) will not be published, and maybe reported as spam at Blogger-HAT's sole discretion.

Comments that conflict with the terms and conditions of Blogger-HATs advertisers (including AdSense and other advertisers) will not be published.

Application of all these principles is at Blogger-HAT's discretion.

Help with your blog:

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I do not provide advice about specific problems on individual blogs via comments on this site: if you need help with a specific blog problem, post a question on the Blogger Product Forum.
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But comments that link to posts in the Blogger-Problem-forum are welcome, and I will try to assist you in the forum if you link to your query ina comment left here.

Why the difference? It's because advice I give in the forum is quality-assured by the other helpers who also read the posts there: If overlook something, one of the other helpers is likely to spot it. Similarly, if your problem needs knowledge that I don't have, someone else may be able to help. As Blogger grows more and more complex, solving problems needs a wider range of skills, and the chance of one person knowing everything gets even smaller.)

Copyright:

The content of all comments is owned by the person who left the comment.

By leaving a comment this blog, you are giving me the non-exclusive right to display your comment here, and to repeat it within blog-posts provided the source is acknowledged.

You also note that my blog has RSS-feeds for comments enabled, so you comment may be published elsewhere too.

Comments submitted to alternative channels:

Messages left on Blogger-HAT's Facebook page or Twitter stream or Google+ page will be responded to in those forums.

Comments sent by email via my personal Google+ Profile will generally not be responded to.

What else?

Are there other issues that you think a comments policy should cover? Please let me know if you think I've missed an important issue.

Related Articles:

Ways of letting people write on your blog.

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