Expungable

Posted on September 8, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

I just expunged a comment on the previous post where someone posted an advertisement for themselves which was totally irrelevant to the post in question, and then about a week ago I expunged a comment that was nothing more than hyperlinks to porn sites (made somewhat less effective because I’ve turned off html in comments), so this is a not-so-gentle reminder to everyone:

Comment threads are for comments at least tangentially related to the original posting.

If the comment doesn’t have anything to do with the post, I’ll yank it. I say so in my Comment Thread Rules, so I don’t feel bad about doing it. And if you keep at it, I’ll ban you from posting, because clearly you can’t learn and therefore must be treated like a dumb animal.

I rather regret to say I suspect that comment threads are the next frontier for spam, and it’ll be another example of assholes ruining a good thing for the rest of us. All the more reason for all spammers to be dismembered, painfully, and spitted upon pikes as a warning to other spammers. Nothing like crows feasting on the rotting flesh of a penis-enhancement pill salesman to make an impression. But short of that, I’ll police my comment threads rigorously.