We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view. We only delete those comments that are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language, or include ad hominem attack We pre-moderate comments on our blog posts and post-moderate comments on news stories.
Writing comments
The first thing to remember when writing a comment is that it is going to be read by other people. Personal attacks are strongly discourage If you disagree with what someone is saying, express your disagreement, but don’t go directly after the other person. Because tone of voice and facial expressions are lost in online discussions, it’s easy for something to be taken the wrong way. Flame wars do nobody any good.
First comments
On many sites, such as Atrios, it is a tradition for the first commenter on a new thread to post a message of ‘First’ or similar. That tradition is not followed on CarGuyz. Posting a ‘First’ message here is likely to get your comment hidden and/or yelled at.
Diary pimping
People sometimes post comments urging people to read some other diary. This practice is known as “diary pimping”. It is a legitimate thing to do under two circumstances. Firstly, when the subjects of the two diaries are closely related. Secondly, pimping is accepted in open threads, generic storyless diaries posted to the front page at regular intervals.
Anonymity
Many people chose to post to CarGuyz under pseudonyms, keeping their real names confidential. There are many reasons why people would choose not to reveal their real names. Revealing the identify of someone who has chosen to remain anonymous is a bannable offense. It is also a morally reprehensible thing to do.
Dealing with trolls
Trolling is a sad reality of internet life. Most trolls tend to be blatant, posting comments or diaries that are clearly intended to provoke an angry response. Other trollish messages are posted simply to disrupt the conversation in a diary.
Directly replying to trollish content is a waste of time; trolls tend not to be interested in actual debate. The community relies on a number of other methods to keep the community as troll-free as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I posted a comment. Why can’t I see it on the site?
The volume of comments on the site has grown rapidly, and sometimes we have trouble approving the comments fast enough. To address this problem, we are working on a system where trusted, regular commenters will be able to post without this delay.
Q: Why am I blocked from commenting on Sedition?
There are a few scenarios in which a comment might be blocked:
A comment is abusive, off-topic, uses excessive foul language, or includes an ad hominem attack.
If a commenter has previously posted comments that are abusive, off-topic, used excessive foul language, or include ad hominem attacks, a moderator may decide to ban the commenter’s IP address. This means the abusive commenter is banned from commenting on the site in the future, even if the later comments are not abusive. We ban IPs because the sheer volume of comments makes it too time consuming to individually delete comments written by someone with a pattern of abuse.
If a commenter shares a computer or IP address with someone who has written abusive comments, it could result in a comment being blocked even if the commenter has never posted anything abusive. In the future, we plan on introducing a user log-in feature that will help mitigate this sort of situation.
Q: Can I include HTML in my comments?
We remove all html from comments to preserve formatting consistency.
Q: If you don’t allow any HTML, how can I include a link in my comment?
If you include a URL in you comment, it will be converted to a link.
Q: How can I include a paragraph break in my comment?
Empty lines in the body of your comment will be converted to paragraph breaks.
