I want my blog to be a place for respectful and honest conversation about history so I love to receive your comments. All comments are moderated by me so that means I have to approve a comment before it is published. This is to avoid spammers and trolls from getting a free ride.
Here are the things that you need to keep in mind when commenting on a blog post:
- This blog is my personal endeavour done in my spare time. I set the rules about what comments are published and what comments are not published
- Your comment must relate to the topic of the post
- Civil discussion: no swearing, attacking people or prejudiced comments
- Different points of view: I want to publish comments showing that you disagree with my post in some way. I don’t always get it right. However, I won’t publish comments where the evidence cited is from anonymous contributors and/or poorly argued.
- No essays as comments: keep your comments to less than 400 words. If you want to publish a longer comment, why don’t you start your own blog? It is really easy through WordPress.com.
- Sharing a link to your blog post or website through a comment is welcome if it is on the same topic as the post and complies with all the other rules listed here.
- No private details published: Please don’t include your private details in your comment such as email addresses, phone numbers or your private address. If you want people to contact you, I suggest that you include your social media profile. If you don’t have a social media profile and you want people to get in touch with you, send me a private comment through my contact form and I will discuss with you, how you could go about getting people to contact you. However, keep in mind that I cannot guarantee that I can help you come up with a solution. I will only help people if the topic you want people to contact you about follows all the other rules in my moderation policy.
- No promotion of products, websites, blogs, social media profiles unless it specifically relates to the topic of the post and I can see that the thing being promoted meets my standards of good use of evidence and is a good contribution back to a community that is interested in history. If you want to advertise on my blog and you think your product conforms to my values listed here, please get in touch through my contact form and we can discuss it further.
- No promotion of political parties or religions: I won’t publish comments that advocate for people to support partisan political parties or to ascribe to particular beliefs such as religions and non-religious beliefs. You will see in my blog that I post about the history of religions and political parties and encourage people to comment on them. However, this is a different thing to advocating for particular beliefs and political parties today. I am really pleased that readers of this blog are open-minded and prepared to read posts about the history of beliefs and politics that they don’t personally ascribe to. I have so much respect for this attitude and so pleased that readers find this a safe space to discuss these things without the fear of certain partisan political positions or religious beliefs being pushed. I have so much respect for my readers!
I want a wide variety of points of views from a wide variety of people in the comments, but I am the final arbiter of what comments get posted. Please don’t argue with my decision if I decide not to post your comment. I will not necessarily contact you if I decide not to publish your comment.
Above all, please keep in mind I write this blog in my limited spare time as a contribution to all the people who are interested in history. There will be some circumstances where I cannot publish comments in a timely manner because life gets in a way, so I apologise in advance for that.