Comments enabled on AFL-CIO blog
Just happened to be glancing at a story on the AFL-CIO blog and noticed that comments have now been enabled - I'm pretty sure they weren't the last time I checked!
Anybody tried posting a comment yet? I'm going to sign up for an account and try it out when the inspiration strikes me.
Folks might also be interested in the comment guidelines from http://blog.aflcio.org/guidelines :
Guidelines for Submitting Comments
Thank you for registering to comment. After you have submitted your comments to the moderated AFL-CIO Now blog comment forum or Working Families Vote 2008 Forum, we will review, but not edit, your comments. We reserve the right to post/not post based on adherence to posting guidelines. Please honor these guidelines:
* No foul, discriminatory, defamatory, libelous or threatening language.
* No invasion of privacy; no racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable language.
* Do not post material in violation of trademark or copyright laws or other laws.
* Comments should be relevant to the blog post or Forum thread. Your comments will have the greatest impact if they are brief and clear.
* No attacks that identify individuals, companies, unions or other organizations.
* No spam, flaming, flooding, advertisements or solicitations.
These forums are for comments on AFL-CIO Now blog posts and Working Families Vote 2008 Forum threads only. The Working Families Vote 2008 Forum is the portion of the AFL-CIO online voter guide that encourages union members and others to post comments, experiences and opinions related to the 2008 presidential race. Opinions expressed in these posts are the personal opinions of the original writers and do not reflect the views of the AFL-CIO.
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- 4536 reads
I'd just like to point out
I'd just like to point out that our Change to Win blog has allowed (heck, encouraged) comments since Day One.
End of plug :)
The proper form of politeness
* No attacks that identify individuals, companies, unions or other organizations.
Attacks? Reminds me of a nice line by T-Bone Slim:
"Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack."
Interesting rule though, isn't it? Sweeping -- you can't identify anyone, at least in an "attack." Not Wal-Mart, not George Bush, not Union Facts... But, then, that's not the criticism they are concerned about, is it?
Union officials want blogs because blogs are the thing to have; with blogs, they understand, come comments, but... here they get cold feet and try to subvert the critical exchange that makes the whole process alive and interesting. I think their model is still the "letters" section of the typical union newspaper.
Still, a good sign that the officialdom feels obliged to follow the membership into the blogosphere.
The old Unite to Win blog was better about permitting "attacks" that named names, though it has since disappeared, along with all the comments.
What are the CtW posting guidelines? I couldn't find them on the site.
"What are the CtW posting
"What are the CtW posting guidelines? I couldn't find them on the site."
The short answer is: don't be a jerk, a bully or a spammer. As long as you're not one of those, you're OK.
In my experience it's not really necessary to have a lengthy list of posting guidelines. We just say that we reserve the right to remove offensive comments and leave it at that. Only one time has a comment even approached this line closely enough to merit discussion, so there's no evidence yet that a heavier hand is needed.
We believe strongly that open communication should be the rule in this medium, so we don't filter out criticism, even criticism of CtW. See for example the comments on these two posts by our Executive Director, Greg Tarpinian:
Not only did we allow comments challenging our premises, but Greg actually responded to one comment that was particularly critical. The great value of a blog is in fostering this kind of two-way communication...
We do moderate comments before posting, to prevent spam, etc. from filtering through, but as I noted above our default rule is to approve comments unless there's a really compelling reason not to.
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Jason A. Lefkowitz
Online Campaigns Organizer
Change to Win
the happy blog
"No attacks that identify individuals, companies, unions or other organizations."
Yeah that covers about everything I could think of saying, being of the non-chipper-cheerleader persuasion :-)
So we couldn't even say "we must defeat the evil (some political group) effort to do (some bad thing)"? Since political parties would be "organizations"? There's just no fun in being an "activist" if you can't vilify someone/thing :-)
I agree that those worthless use statements just alienate people. Even if the readers were biased in your favor to start with, that kind of top-down high school principle telling us what can get into the school newsletter flavor is anger-provoking.
And verbiage certainly doesn't keep out the bots.
I'm seeing a lot of activist web sites with blogs/wikis etc getting spammed by spambots spewing drug and porn spam. Here's a solution I saw that looks very interesting. Anyone try this? http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/