Comment Policy

Posted By P W Laurie On Friday, August 13th, 2021 With 0 Comments

UK Government doesn’t pay for this site, I do.

When I ask for donations, I don’t ask for payments for upkeep of the site – check it out here. As well as anything else, it maintains a boundary whereby no reader has a right to have a comment published. On the contrary, I have every right to not publish a comment as I see fit.

There’s another issue. Because I am not on the payroll of UK Government, it means that this is not a place devised to have room for official public relations wormtonguery. FBEL is a little, hard to find (perhaps even marginalised)  place on the internet like no other, and so it especially needs to be absolutely clear in its message, without dilution from people running disruption.

As alluded to above, I don’t have to publish any comment if I don’t want to, and I don’t have to provide an explanation. However, set out below are guidelines (for now) regarding the sort of comment that is liable for non publication.

By the way, on submission, all comments go into moderation – and this is the way it has always been, basically because I want to read what has been sent it. If I think the comment is from a real person, then it gets approved – or, this is how it used to be. The new guidelines now apply.

Any assertion for or against any part of the content of the body of an FBEL article without providing supporting evidence is frowned upon, but of course there is more sensitivity to a disagreement for reasons given above. So, if you want to argue, support your argument – or else, if I don’t feel that I could or should spare the time to counter (to disarm unsupported material), then your comment won’t get published. All the same applies if you want to introduce something new that is not raised in the article. Completely off topic comments are liable to remain unpublished.

Any comment that I feel would take up space for no good purpose and would be a waste of everybody’s time (and here’s an example) will not be published.

Any comment arguing the toss about these guidelines, or complaining about not being published, will not be published.

Additional, 3/1/22: In an effort to keep this site as free of disinformation and misinformation as possible, on the basis that my time is limited, I reserve the right to leave unpublished any comments that contain information that I do not know to be true, and that I feel should be verified.

Additional, 12/5/22: For those of you who are not public relations on mission to get a talking point published (because such folk don’t take any heed, so telling them is a waste of time [and all that remains to do is to block]) there’s guidance to be had in a couple of what might be called final words on a matter – here and here.

 

P W Laurie