Moderating User Comments
Since we began publishing user comments, we've struggled to maintain a balance between making this as open a forum as possible and keeping it relevant for people who'd actually like to have a reasoned, non-aggressive conversation about the things we cover. (We'd like to have reasoned conversations all the time.)
For the record, this has never been a democracy; we've just been very conservative with the use of the delete button. But as the comments have increased, so have the number of trolls–people who are clearly here not to engage in any meaningful way, but just to derail conversations with ridiculous, occasionally offensive bullshit. They drive the readers that we'd like to have here–even the ones who hate what we're doing– away. We believe that the reasonable readers–even those who hate us–don't like the trolls, either. We will follow this advice, and hope you will, too: Don't feed the trolls. Responding to somebody who's simply trying to annoy you is giving them exactly what they want.
We don't like to delete anything, and we'll continue to be quite conservative about what gets the axe. That said, we reserve the right to delete the following:
— Racist, homophobic, sexist posts. If your argument or joke requires the use of such things, your argument or joke sucks.