Q&A Friday #18: Do You Read The Comments?

24 Jun, 2005 by John Hawkins

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Question: “Do you read all the comments? Skim through them? What are your over all thoughts and impressions of the day to day dialogue here.” — cmcnally

Answer: I usually read the first few replies on all the posts and on a good number of them, I read everything. However, this being the internet, a good portion of the posts almost immediately get off topic and they also tend to get a bit repetitive for someone who has been reading them for years like I have (i.e. Some of the people who’ve been around a while tend to find a way to repeat pretty close to the same spiel in every thread). On those posts, I tend to skim to just keep an eye out for new user names I haven’t seen before, since users who’ve been around for months or years without getting banned aren’t likely to be a problem.

Also, since someone will probably follow-up with this, I do ban people, and have actually pulled the trigger more than normal in the last couple of weeks. Here are the general rules for posting at RWN:

“Are There Any Rules About Posting Comments?: Yes, please don’t flame excessively, use an exceptional amount of vulgar language, call anyone a “towelhead” or “raghead”, continually post off topic material, spam, use racial slurs, libel anyone, troll, or make threats.

In short, don’t be a jerk.

If that won’t work for you, I’ll delete your posts and ban your IP. If you are banned and genuinely don’t know why, email me. If you know you were doing something mentioned above and you are banned, please don’t try to get around the ban. Do everybody involved a favor and find somewhere else to post where they appreciate what you have to say.”

Keep those rules in mind and have fun posting…