This is a review of our comments policy. Sometimes these things need to be said:
You may not call other people names. You. May. Not.
You are allowed to use strong language. We do. You are allowed to have strong opinions. We do. You are allowed to disagree with us. We disagree with each other.
This does not mean there is room for sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, nastiness towards children, or general rudeness.
We have day jobs that are sometimes extraordinarily busy. We don’t always see every comment. We might miss what’s going on. If there is a problem, you may bring it to our attention. What you may not do is engage in banned behavior in an attempt to “fix” the problem yourself. Please do not feed or tease the trolls.
Remember, be here to discuss the show. Don’t be here to discuss the other Basketcases.
Thanks. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Basket.
9 Responses to “Once in a while, we need to do this”
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So I guess my ironic sexism/racism won't fly, either? (you know, this being the internet, sarcasm's mortal enemy)
Thanks Lipp sisters for all you do to keep this blog a great place to be!
I'm disheartened. I find a lot of the Basketcases to be interesting and worthy of much discussion.
Well they appear to be virtually interesting at any rate.
In a more serious tone, I need some clarification. We shouldn't discuss other commenters opinions about the show? Opinions that may be or display elements of being sexist, racist, et al.?
I would like to reserve the right to politely tell the children to go outside and play. . . or bang their heads against the wall or sumpthin'.
I haven't been on the IMDB boards because of the people there calling other people names, using unnecessary profanity, bashing people, etc.
Mad Men is an awesome show and deserves to be discussed on a mature level. If you don't like the show, don't come on there and start bashing the fans.
Thanks Lippsisters!
"You may not call other people names. You. May. Not. "
Question for ya: given the above, why was it okay that Less of Me called me a psychopath, among other things?
Also, it seemed my comments were put on moderation for a while when some controversial discussion came up around Betty and Don's scene (the whole thing about it being 'hawt' or not, and violent aspects of the scene, ect.) I was a bit perplexed by this as I certainly was not advocating violence in my comments. Yet, it seems that I was censored after making them. If you say you're going to allow strong opinions, then you need to really do that.
I commend your comments policy, seems fair enough. But I hope you'll enforce it better in the future.
Thanks.
#3 no you may not.
not_Bridget, you may have noticed that doing what you were asked not to, in the very post asking you not to, even when you do so in a veiled manner, gets your post deleted. Don't let it happen again.
Rachel: Please re-read the part about we have day jobs blah blah. Instead of whining here about "why was it okay?" like a 12 year old, please bring things to our attention that we miss.
Deborah, I apologize for the last sentence @#3. It was an apparently feeble and failed attempt at Mad Men humor. I'm sorry if it was misconstrued.
Re: comment #5 I offer an explanation. The thread is Rude Awakenings, the referenced comment by less of me is #226. I stand by it. I accused a commenter of trolling, then when asked, I apologized, half-assedly maybe. No names were called but certain comments which were reasonably interpreted as offensive were characterized as such. I felt the majority of commenters policed themselves reasonably well there at the time.
I accept the premise that opinions may vary.
Sorry!
To be clear, absolutely THE WORST strategy in dealing with a troll is to accuse them of trolling. It's throwing meat to a lion.
Now, as blog owners, we have resources you don't have, one of the most powerful of which is to check the history of a commenter, not just by username, but by IP address. If someone says something that strikes me as off, I can look and see, what is this person's history?
In this particular case, I know that Rachel is a long-standing Basketcase who has said many valuable things. I didn't follow this particular argument until it was too late to unravel (I am no longer able to access the Basket during weekdays), but I know that Rachel is "one of us." Other posters have said things that seemed only mildly offensive, but a perusal of their history showed their true colors.
We are not the fierce moderators of TWoP, but we care very much about maintaining the excellence of our dialogue here.