This page is dedicated to outlining the guidelines for commenting on posts on Fun with Liquid Nitrogen.
First, let me say that I encourage commenting, especially if you have questions about anything or if something I wrote doesn’t make sense. Like any good scientist I make errors far more often than I’d like to think I do and, furthermore, I’d much prefer those errors be fixed than to labor under the delusion that I’m correct. I try to fact-check anything I put up as best as I can but every now and then something might slip through the cracks or I might have unwittingly used a less-than-reputable source that I mistakenly thought was legit. So if I get a fact wrong, please, tell me. If you disagree with any opinions I put forth (and I try to keep this space as apolitical as I feel is prudent) then you may also feel free to have a discussion. I’ll cover the tone of discussion momentarily.
Before that, though, I will say this: there is only one type of comment by which I do not abide and that is spam. Let me put it in bold, italic caps so you know how serious I am: I HAVE A ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICY FOR SPAM. What this means is, if you’re selling something, I don’t want it. I will block your comments from being viewed. I get tons of spam on this space and a lot of it takes the form of links to dummy blogs set up to look like regular folks praising a product that are really just a lousy bit of viral marketing. There’s so much of it out there that the term “spamosphere” to describe it all – the blogosphere made of spam – has started to come into use more and more now. Most of these are ploys so thin that they couldn’t fool a first grader for a second (a lot aren’t even in English) but some are relatively clever in that they sort-of-almost tangentially address the topic but are still spam.
You’ll note I do not have advertisements on this site. I want to have it continue that way for as long as possible. As long as I’m not presenting you with people trying to sell things I want you to do the same for me. So, while I will allow comments with links to sites for not-for-profit foundations, any comment featuring a link to any site selling anything, period, will be blocked, regardless if it was generated by a human user or a spambot. Therefore, the only reason I will ever block a comment is if it is trying to sell something. So, don’t do that.
Now, as for all other comments, while I’d appreciate it if the tone is kept civil, I understand that these are the Internets and tempers do tend to flare every now and then, so I hope I never have to close off a post to comments. If I feel a user or multiple users is getting to the point where comments are so full of vitriol that it’s crossing the line of legality, I might have to do that, though. I will sincerely try to avoid that ever happening, but I do not labor under the delusion that civility is in the Internet’s nature.
Finally, if you do chose to comment and say something ill-thought-out or downright ignorant, I will be more than happy to point out just how ill-thought-out or downright ignorant said comment was and will not prevent anyone else from doing the same. This includes using proper punctuation, spelling and grammar to the best of your abilities. Once again, I give you the best writing I can produce and I expect the same back from you. This doesn’t mean I’ll be enforcing a tone of hyper-formality in the comments section (far from it). It does mean that if you want to be taken seriously, please write in a manner that is becoming of serious conversation. I will be more than happy to refer users who do not abide by this to this page.
So, to sum up:
- NO SPAM
- Keep it real
- Write like you were taught to write
Got it? Good.