Hello, everyone!
I just wanted to post a quick note letting you all know about TMP’s new comment policy. Recently the site has had a few novel-length, rude comments on very old posts. The most recent instance, which occurred tonight, was the last straw for me. The commenter attacked me, as a person, because I wrote that I didn’t like their favorite character in one of the books featured in my Book vs. Film series.
I’m all for discussion surrounding my posts — in fact, I highly value the opinions of TMP’s readers. When someone sees a film differently than I do, I’m always interested in reading their thoughts, and seeing how we interpreted things differently. My mind has even been changed completely on a couple of occasions, thanks to these discussions. Art is subjective, and should be talked about!
But these discussions need to be courteous. Attacking someone (the blogger, or another commenter) simply for disagreeing with you… well, that type of behavior crosses the “courteous” line by a hundred miles, and I will not tolerate it on TMP.
From here forward, the policy will be to delete the offensive comment, as well as block the IP and email address used by the commenter. (Thankfully, WordPress offers these features built-in. I’ve always required name/email for comments by non-WP readers, and I just found out in about 2.5 seconds how easy it is to block someone. Thank you, WP!)
Additionally, I have set the comments sections up to close automatically, 90 days after the post is originally published. This will stop random, angry people who find the blog through Google from tactlessly expressing themselves (which I believe was the case tonight).
Those of you who catch up on my blog every once in a while, maybe a few weeks after publishing, will still be able to comment as you have been doing, as will (of course) those of you who visit the blog frequently. If you wish to discuss a review/post older than 90 days, feel free to email me — the address is published on my “About” page — or contact me on Twitter/Tumblr.
I hope everyone will find this policy to be acceptable. If you are reading this, you likely are not the problem, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up — particularly regarding the new time restriction on comments. Thank you for understanding!
-Lindsey
(PS – This doesn’t count as a daily post! It’s just an additional announcement. I’ll be back in the morning with a recap of my most-recent Redford Theatre visit.)
The Motion Pictures 
Luckily I haven’t had these problems (yet), but I’m with you on this. It’s why I moderate comments first before posting, just in case. And like you, I don’t understand the point, except that these particular commenters must feel safe from getting their teeth kicked in, and believe they can say whatever they want. It’s like when I’m out bike riding, and idiots in cars scream at me as they go by; they feel safe from retribution. That is, until I catch up with them at the stop light.
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I’m glad you haven’t had any problems! I’ve always moderated mine, too. The auto-delete + 90-day time limit will be the only differences — it’ll just save me a few headaches, since these problems only tend to pop up on super-old posts, from people who don’t read/subscribe to the blog.
The funniest part is, the person totally misinterpreted my post. The character I wrote a sentence or two about disliking wasn’t even the same character they were defending. All of that meanness, and we weren’t even truly in disagreement! Regardless, they’re better off blocked.
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Ah, everything in moderation, heh. Try not to take the crazy posts personally, L. Some people love to spread their bad day around to others. I moderate as well as block anyone who even tries to rain on my parade. I do keep old posts open for comments, as once in a while someone reads something ancient and wants to chime in with a nice note. On the other hand, the spam attempts usually occur on ancient posts, but I can tell as soon as I check my inbox that the reply to a two or three year old article is going to be one that snuck past WP’s spam filter…
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If I find that I’m getting a lot of emails about old posts, I may open them back up (or perhaps increase the limit to six months). I only get normal comments on old posts once in a blue moon, though, so I figured I’d try this for a little while. Thanks for the comment!
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I can totally understand why you have done that!
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Thanks for understanding!
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I must add that WordPress and the spam control has improved massively in the past few years as well.
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Yeah, the spam filter does a really good job most of the time! According to my admin page it’s saved me from something like half a million spam comments, haha.
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Sorry to hear that someone could be so needlessly cruel and uncivil over such a matter. It’s a shame that while the internet is such a wonderful tool for creating communities and opening avenues of communication it also breeds that rare species of utter twatbuckets who shouldn’t be allowed the privilege of oxygen. >:(
At least you’ve faced the issue head on and not gone into a self-imposed exile over this so keep up the good work! :-)
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Thank you! My experiences with blogging have been overwhelmingly positive – I’m about to start my fourth year, so it’s taken that long for a problem like this to pop up. I kind of expected it to happen sooner! I won’t let it stop me, but I do think it’s a good idea to take a few preventative measures.
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