BOULDER, Colo. (BRAIN) — Due to a plague of spam in recent weeks, we've flipped the switch so that web comments on this site will appear only after a human has approved them. As a result, there will often be a delay between leaving a comment and having it appear on the site. Sorry about that.
Otherwise, our policy on comments has not changed: We want to encourage productive conversations and will moderate comments that detract from that. We are hesitant to moderate any comment due to content, but will remove posts that:
- are spam
- personally attack someone
- are vulgar
- are known to us to be factually incorrect.
Regarding the last item on the list, we obviously can not fact check every comment. But we are not going to knowingly allow a factually false comment to remain, either. If someone says a certain bike supplier is owned by Mickey Mouse and we know that's not true, we are going to moderate that comment. As the man said, you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.
We have banned commenters who consistently try to discourage useful conversations with negative, non-productive comments (ie, trolls).
Currently we use the Facebook commenting plug-in. We don't love it. Because we don't love Facebook. The company occasionally changes the code, which it hosts, and messes up our page (at best) without warning us. Facebook could stop offering the plug-in at any time and we'd be out of luck. On the other hand, Facebook has 2.9 billion active users worldwide, so most people do not have to create yet another new user ID and password to log in to our comments. Facebook accounts are generally associated with real humans who are part of a community of real people who are also on the platform, which encourages some civility. The Facebook system allows us to moderate comments so they are only visible to the posters' Facebook friends, if they have any, but no one else. Which seems fair.
Occasionally some members of the industry who refuse to have a Facebook account have reached out, and we've offered to post their comments under our account. That offer stands, as long as the comments are worthwhile. Feel free as always to email the editor at sfrothingham@outsideinc.com.
