I have adopted the same comment policy as the one written by fellow marine scientists at Southern Fried Science. Upon consultation, the groupers decided it was one of the best blog comment policies around.

The original text has been modified slightly.

Grouper Luna reserves the right to moderate any and all comments. The groupers do not censor comments for content and they welcome dissenting opinions. Comments may be removed for the following reasons:

  1. Obvious spam – Advertisements, off-topic comments with e-commerce links, computer generated text.  Please note, link-heavy comments get flagged by the spam filter. The groupers will find them and approve them, but if you don’t see it appear immediately, please send us an e-mail, don’t repost it 7 or 8 times.
  2. Revealing personal information for the purposes of causing harm – Some of our blog friend are anonymous, some are not, some have nothing to do with this blog. Revealing personal information about anyone commenting here will not be tolerated.
  3. Parroting – i.e. if it’s your 8th post on a topic and you haven’t added anything new or responded to any critiques raised concerning your previous posts, we may get bored. Tedious repetition doesn’t further the discussion.
  4. Sock Puppetry – One person posting under multiple names. Don’t be an ass.
  5. Profound Stupidity – obvious troll (as defined by the blog owners), adds nothing to the conversation, insults directed at other commenters.
    5a. LOLspeak, TEXTspeak, and generally irritating abbreviation (i.e. coz for because, ppl for people, using elipses instead of periods, etc.) will result in me translating your comment into some archaic language, haiku, of folksy downhome saying, with no promise of accuracy.
  6. Comments longer than 500 words – Seriously, if you’ve got that much to say, get your own blog. This will be regulated at the groupers discretion and will be pre-empted by a warning. Occasional long comments are fine, but don’t make a habit of it.
  7. Pedantry – People make typos. If it’s so bad that it changes the meaning of a post or comment someone will fix it, if it’s minor, who cares? Pointing out random typos is both irritating and counter productive.

Sometimes the spam filter latches onto a real comment for indecipherable reasons, and spams it instead of holding it for moderation. If you comment doesn’t appear within a couple of days, send the groupers an e-mail and we’ll take a look.

Comments are community moderated through Like/Dislike buttons. Comments that receive 10 net http://en.gravatar.com/ will be highlighted so that new readers can find the best comments. Comments that receive 10 net dislikes will be placed behind a link wall so that spam, off topic, and incomprehensible comments won’t clutter the discussion. If you do dislike an otherwise legitimate comment because you disagree with it’s content, we encourage you to leave your own comment explaining why. Comments that contain 2 or more links will automatically be held for moderation.

Anonymous comments are welcome, but please come up with a handle at least slightly more creative than “anonymous”.

Avatars are randomly assigned and keyed to individual IP addresses. For a custom avatar, check the Gravatar Network.