Here is the link to our commenter’s rules. Read them if you wish to comment in the future. We keep our comments area as a courtesy space for civil discussion and teaching. Most all adhere to this, and this makes reading the commenters at TMV enlightening and useful to many.
The comments area is for thoughtful comments about the topic of the post only, not what one thinks of the writer, other commenters, or off topic subjects, or highjacking the topic or incessantly leaving numerous comments that attempt to dominate any post or the entire comments landscape.
It’s not whack-a-mole here wherein each post has to be commented on. Most commenters comment on only what appeals to them and they often illuminate others through their writing at TMV.
Comments that teach and show, link and relate are read by many. Comments that just seem like offhand pique are scrolled past often. It’s just a fact of life that most people appear to read for substance instead of easy and predictable screed.
Vulgarity will get a person’s comment snagged by spam and it will not show up on our site. ‘Civil’ means courtesy to others. Thus, we hold to newspaper standards at TMV. If you wouldnt see it in the print language used by Chi Trib or LAT or NYC, you wont see it here for more than the moment it takes to delete it, and the next moment it takes to ban a repeat of it.
We like that so many read here, and we thank you. As managing editor, I read most comments and often find rich humor, facts, interesting questions many commenters raise.
We every now and then, though rarely, see a comment that attempts to highjack a topic into the shallows re whether TMV is right/wrong or indifferent to whatever. Some very few think TMV might be the place to come spew their daily bad mood. TMV is not the place for either of those. We ask all commenters to stay to the topic of the post only… then all is well and will be well.
This message will disappear in another 72 hours. And, again, the commenters’ rules -simple and few– are listed at the top of the front page.
Thanks for reading at TMV and thank you for reading this post about the TMV commenters’ rules. As you might imagine, some days I/we actually turn blue in the face, but trust on this: we are pretty patient people. Hence this post.
Archangel/ Dr. E
managing editor TMV