A Note on Moderation

I know we have a lot of active comment threads going on the blog right now, and a lot of Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday regulars find themselves going into the mod queue (or worse, the spam queue). So a quick note: If we put you on moderation purposely, we probably told you. Otherwise, you probably have the misfortune of sharing the same IP address with someone in the mod queue, or using a word in your email address, comment or handle that we moderate out (“poker,” for example, or even a word as common as “courage”).

We ask that you be patient. If your comment has a bunch of links in it, it will probably go to the spam queue, which means it will seem like it just disappears. If it goes into the mod queue, you’ll get a message saying that your comment is awaiting moderation. It may take us a couple of hours, but we will see it and clear it out as soon as possible. I know it’s annoying, and you are welcome to drop me an email if you’re concerned, but please know that we’re doing our best. It’s tough to strike the right balance — we want as many comments as possible to go up when they’re submitted, but we also want to make sure we can moderate out regular inappropriate commenters, and keep spam to a minimum.

Thanks for your patience.