Woman Tribune Comments Policy

Blog comments are awesome. Everyone loves getting comments on posts they have worked hard on; you have never, ever seen a blogger write that they got too many great, encouraging, intelligent comments and that they hated getting such a positive response from their hard work. What you will see, probably quite often in fact, is bloggers complaining about the amount of blog spam they receive. As much as bloggers love great feedback, they equally despise blog spam.

Spam comments are annoying–they are annoying to sift through and delete one after the other after the other. We have received so much annoying spam repeatedly here on Woman Tribune that I installed the Simple Captcha WordPress plugin to try to alleviate the spam that was falling through our spam plugin. As spammy comments continue to pour into Woman Tribune, I thought it was high time to enforce a distinct comment policy, and so here it is.

• We love comments!
  As we have already established, comments are awesome and we love them. We strongly encourage you to feel free to voice your thoughts, opinions and insight. We love exploring new ideas and insights on a particular topic and just because we write about something in particular, does not mean that we are experts by any means; we are just merely putting it out there and opening up a particular topic for further discussion.

• Spam comments will be deleted.
  There are several methods we have in place to catch spam automatically as soon as the ‘submit button is pushed. However, even technology errors at some point and it is possible that spam comments will wind up being visible on Woman Tribune. Comments are moderated several times throughout the day and whenever spam comments are spotted, they will be deleted immediately.

• Links in comments–what to do and what not to do.
  Contrary to popular belief, we actually encourage relevant links of interest in comments on Woman Tribune. If we feature a post on co-sleeping and you recently saw a study on it that you feel would add to the conversation, feel free to link it in your comment without worry of your comment being deleted. On the flip side, if you are simply link-happy and leave a comment that adds nothing of substance to the conversation or has nothing to do with the post you’re commenting on and you merely write something like ‘good post, [insert link here]‘ it will be deleted as soon as comments are next moderated.

• Respect and tact is key.
  While Woman Tribune does aim to be a light and cheery place for women to explore and discuss, we do often feature articles that deal with politics and issues that are naturally divisive. For this reason, we strongly enforce tact and respect in our comments. You have every right to disagree with what was written in a particular post or to disagree with other commenters, but when you respond, please remember to be respectful.

The reason why comments policies exist on blogs is because there is a tremendous amount of work that goes into a blog each and every single day and to leave comments for no other reason than to plug your website or business without adding anything of substance to the conversation is completely disrespectful. It’s very much like going to a new friend’s house and putting your muddy shoes on their couch, so thank you for not putting your shoes on my couch.