How Not To Comment On Articles

After yesterday’s post and the questions I was e-mailed with regard to additions to the list of how to comment on articles I thought I would post on how not to comment on articles which is applicable both on this website and other websites too. Let’s face it there are a multitude of idiots, trolls, griefers, tossers and wankers who have nothing better to do than waste everybody’s time with their irrelevant and inane chatter.

I think it is important to write about this subject because it seems no matter what’s obvious to the rest of us, there’s still a few – though it seems like there are a lot more – people in this world that just don’t understand how a polite, functional society actually works.

1. Do Not Troll Or Grief

You know you’re a troll. You know why you’re a troll. You know how to troll. Anybody with a modicum of intelligence has you figured out. Don’t bother doing it, in fact, just don’t bother showing up. I’m not expecting you to "get it" but whilst you’re off wasting time everyone else is making money, experiencing life and getting things done.

With regard to this website every comment on here is moderated and if your comment even hints of trollish-ness I’ll delete it. Letting a comment through doesn’t mean you beat the system because I’ll also retroactively delete comments and all related comments to it if the conversation devolves because of something posted earlier. Trolling, it’s just not interesting to anybody with half a brain.

2. Do Not Use “l33t speak” Or “txt msg spk”

Biff died of a brain haemorrhage in his last year of high school caused by a thousand angry English teachers hitting him repeatedly with the latest edition of the OED. Nobody mourned Biff’s passing. Leet speak wasn’t c00l in the 1980’s during the heyday of the warez “scene” and BBS’ and it’s second generation in-bred retarded cousin txt msg spk isn’t any better. Nobody of any intelligence wants to read it and nobody of any worth wants to bother with you if that’s how you write. Enjoy collecting your social security cheques for the next 40 years after McD’s pwned you and refused to hire you because you aren’t literate enough. L2write nub.

3. Do Not Feed Trolls

You don’t need to buy expensive bottles of TrollBGone to rid your comments section of trolls. Just as flowers live on sunlight, trolls and griefers live on attention. When you take away the food source they whither, become weak and eventually die. The easiest way to kill a troll is to ignore it.

4. Do Not Be Mean

Being mean at another person’s expense may make you feel big for the moment but to everyone else around you it just points you out as someone who cannot hold their tongue (or their writing) in check. I’m the first one to admit I am a quick draw on the zingers, the quips, the comebacks and the put downs but there is a time and a place for everything. If you want to be included in a conversation of your peers being mean is a sure way to get yourself ostracized.

5. Do Not Be Offensive

Someone will get offended by something that you and I think is either the funniest outburst or the most boringly mundane statement we’ve encountered all day. Ignoring the outlying fringe for a moment that can detect Muslim propaganda in a video game when you want to contribute to a conversation, throwing in name calling, profane language or other taboo subjects that to a reasonable person would be offensive is a sure way for people to dismiss your opinions and input. So just don’t do it, even if it is for shits and giggles.

6. Do Not Post Your Life

Few people can tell a story, but many people attempt to. The only story most people know is their own. The surest way to bore someone into not paying attention to you is to info dump your life story. Tell a story, any story, even if it is about you, but make it a story. Terry Pratchett and reincarnations of Mark Twain may freely ignore this advice.

7. Do Not Be Anonymous

Your comments say a lot about you. If you want to be taken seriously stand by what you say. Online you are judged by only what you say and how you say it. Being anonymous will make people overlook your opinion, devalue your data, flunk your facts and just be demeaningly dismissive.

8. Do Not Comment For The Sake Of It

I mentioned this in my previous article but knowing when to speak and when to be quiet are important conversational skills. Shh, don’t talk.

9. Do Not Be Demeaning

Race, gender, country of origin, sexuality, age, social standing, employment status, living arrangements and career choice is completely irrelevant when a person’s opinion and conclusion is utterly valid. You may disagree with the argument, you may find logical flaws in the statement, you might have evidence that contradicts the claim, but calling in to question someone’s parentage is just juvenile and invalidates anything you have to say in response.

10. Do Not Rebut The Argument Point By Point

Tedious.

Tedious.

Tedious.

Conversation is not a high school debate. Top marks for the ability to nitpick.

11. Do Not Be A Grammar, Punctuation Or Spelling Nazi

Congratulations on the ability to find every misplaced comma.

Kudos on your ability to properly use a colon or semi-colon.

I know I stated it earlier about not wanting to read someone’s QWERTY version of mongoose on a keyboard with a piece of popcorn but there is a wide margin between a moron and someone careless enough to use “their” instead of “they’re.” The little text box provided for entering comments is not a modern day word processor so spelling and punctuation may not be perfect in all entries. There is no Pulitzer Prize for blog comments and you are not the awarding judge.

12. Don’t Be A Think-You-Know-It-All

You write code for amazing software systems all day long and now there’s an article about trademark law that you just need to comment on with your dazzling insight in to how the law works and how it should work!

You practice business law all day long and now there’s an article on engineering that needs a response in how to build a better relational database debugging tool!

Oh happy day! I shall answer right away!

STOP.

Slowly back away from the keyboard.

Having an opinion about a subject is one thing, trying to be a know-it-all about a subject far outside your realm of expertise probably means you shouldn’t be commenting on it. When everyone else is having a discussion about orbital mechanics and you begin quoting from Disney’s Big Book of Facts for Curious Children about special and general relativity just makes people’s brains itch and look at the floor in embarrassment whilst they pretend not to have heard you.

13. Don’t Be An Actual You-Know-It-All

You know how to write killer software applications, you’re an absolute whiz at games design, you design revolutionary computer circuits that break the laws of physics in your head whilst eating breakfast, your 1,000 person company that you are the CEO of – which requires no managers whatsoever and you personally boot-strapped from $2 and change – is a globally recognized leader in technology, you have combination law and business degrees from both Harvard and Yale because you couldn’t decide which university had the better sports teams which you captained simultaneously, and you’ve passed the bar exam in five different states simultaneously, all this and more makes you someone whose opinion is to be reckoned with. Did we also mention your estate on Sand Hill road is the nicest and most eco-friendly (but also the largest) there is and the fact that at conferences other people on the panel with you are just there to nod in acquiescence with everything you say while you monologue about your personal life for two hours (though the panel was only scheduled for 45 minutes but who cares about the next panel of rubes talking about some inane topic you solved all the problems too years ago?) because who the hell would want to listen to their obviously inferior ideas that are clearly unfeasible and will never actually work in the real world. Everyone around you is a supporting cast member to your ego and your opinions, opinions which of course are completely valid, justified and provable through your mighty experience. You might know it all, and you aren’t afraid to let those around you know it all too. Quite apart from the extremely detailed fantasy life you actually lead there are a few things you don’t know: The art of conversation, politeness, communication skills, and when to shut the hell up. You might “know it all,” but it’s pretty much guaranteed the guy standing on your left knows more about it than you do and the guy standing your right is bored witless.

14. Avoid Run On Sentences

See above.

15. Avoid Over Aggrandizement of Your Achievements

See the previous one to the one above.

16. Don’t Drink And Deride

I’ve given everyone at the office an unbreakable rule: “When Justin (that’s me) starts drinking, he’s not allowed to rewire any portion of the network.”

Trust me on this; this is a good rule to have.

The last thing we want at the office is a rewired network that seemed to make perfect sense on Sunday night but on Monday morning nothing actually works and the e-mail, web and messenger servers are all offline. Not that this has ever happened at our office. No, never.

In the same vein, drinking, getting stoned, getting high or any other activity involving psycho active drugs (which can be somewhat interesting) that impairs your judgement followed by posting commentary on a website is the fastest way to alienate other people, have you appear as a complete arsehole and make your company not look so good either.

17. Don’t Be Irrelevant

There are few things worse in this life than people who are irrelevant to the conversation but insist on taking part in it. Irrelevant people are a waste of time, resources and mental bandwidth. Making yourself relevant adds value to everyone’s life.

18. Don’t Be A Tough Guy

As odd as this may sound nobody really cares what weapons you own or have fired or how many black belts you have in various esoteric martial arts. The surest way to mark you out as someone irrelevant and immature is to act like the eponymous Internet tough guy. Chuck Norris is tougher than you and he lives in my basement so just knock it off already. Also, no Murloc movie references.

Things Not To Do That Are Specific To This Website

Every public forum and website that allows commentary has its own set of rules that need to be followed. This website is no different and has a few special caveats about it too.

1. Don’t Use Links

I’m sure the link you’ve just gotta share with everyone is the hottest/funniest/bestest link since Digg was founded but it doesn’t belong in the comments on this website. I didn’t set up the website to share links about: your latest hobby, promote your company, discuss your product, or share your particular political point of view. If you post a comment with a link in it, I will most likely just delete the comment without approving it. If the comment is particular insightful and stands on its own without the link I may let the comment go through with the link removed.

But usually, I’ll just delete your comment.

2. Don’t Post Personal Information

It goes without saying but unless you are utterly devoid of common sense, avoid posting personal details in comments. There are enough weirdos and griefers out there in the world that you don’t need to be encouraging them or giving them fuel to throw on your funeral pyre.

On this website posting personal info is a big no-no. Personal information is anything that will enable someone possessed of a modicum of intelligence and internet smarts to identify you as you. Some examples of personal information are e-mail address, phone number or mailing address. Yes, believe it or not, all of these are considered personally identifying information. Who would have thought it?

3. Don’t Post "me too" Comments

Completely agree with the article or some previous comment posted? Cannot think of anything to add to the conversation? Good, now be quiet. "Me too" posts are the equivalent of mental dryer lint.

4. Don’t Be A Slashdot Commenter

Posting "First Post" or anything to that effect just marks you as a loser. There’s an entire website dedicated to people that do this, I suggest you go visit it. You know the one I’m talking about.

5. The Three I’s Of Comments

Inappropriate, irrelevant, in violation. I can and will delete your comment if it has any one of those characteristics. I’ll also delete your comment if the name of the day begins with a consonant.

6. I Don’t Have to Explain Myself

If your comment is deleted or never posted and you don’t like that, that’s just too bad. Fortunately on a private website such as this I don’t have to explain myself. If you don’t like these rules, or you don’t want to abide by them, I suggest you go visit a different website.

7. You Do Not Have Freedom Of Speech On This Website

Unbelievably people have a real problem with the whole concept of "Freedom of speech." One of the central tenets of basic human rights in the United States and still people don’t understand it. When posting on a private forum or private website (such as this one) no matter which country you live in, the freedom of speech laws do not actually apply. I don’t care what you think the law is, I don’t care about your opinion on freedom of speech, and I don’ care about the laws of your country halfway around the world from me and my server, my ball, my pitch, my rules, my game, you don’t like it, tough cheese. Even if I write an article on freedom of speech and I then censor your comment, do not bring up your freedom of speech as a defence.

Whew! What a long list of how not to comment. Strangely longer that the list on how to comment. Anybody ever noticed that the list of things of what not to do is always longer than the list of things you should do, no matter what the subject is? We need more “don’t” for the stupid people than we need “do’s” for the smart people.