Comment Policy

I awoke this morning with my usual lack of alacrity and went through my morning routine with my trademark grumps (shave, shower and shine) when it hit me like a round from a catch bullet magic trick gone awry: FCN doesn't have a comment policy. The absence of such a policy is tantamount to surfing the Internet without virus protection (although that's another story); it invites every manner of conniving, contumacious and spamacious commenters to leave an inappropriate “reply.” And some, we are sure, do.

Thus far, the FCN Team has been faithful in removing this social grime from our site and we have every intention of remaining so. But it does seem a tad presumptuous of us to assume our loyal readers (all four of them) have the exact same standards and criteria for evaluating their comments as we do.

If you think this post is going to explain those criteria, you have another thing coming. The FCN Team uses completely subjective and arbitrary standards when determining what comments deserve deletion. There, I said it. Sometimes the comment is too vulgar (“darn” is a questionable word), others it just don't suit our fancy (any comment that begins with “this was not funny” is eligible), sometimes we are just in a mood for silence and all loquacious comments are removed as a matter of practice.

We scrub the comments away like so many Waste Management employees; fearful of garrulous discourse, we sometimes like nothing better to see “0 comments” at the bottom of our posts.

Scared yet? Worried that your seven page diatribe against tattling on one's sister may be lost to cyber-posterity? Hurrying to backup your hate-speech and thus preserve it for the next Internet generation?

Take a deep breath, a long drag on whatever it is your smoking and another sip of Alka-Seltzer. We haven't actually deleted anyone's comment yet. We are salivating impatiently for the opportunity (as if saliva encourages spammers) to find some incongruous reply or catch an advertiser in the midst of his consumerist gyrations, but no one has met our arbitrary criteria and all comments currently stand as posted.

In case you were wondering, this post does have a more noble purpose than Indian Rhetoric: as long as we have a perfect comment record, we ought to try and keep it clean (pun very much intended). To that end, here are a few things you as a reader can do to repel our collective mice away from the tiny trash icon on your cherished comments:

First, comment without any regard to your thought's potential deletion. If you start thinking about the police, you are more likely to break the law. Police also have a way of destroying creative expression, so put all thought of the FCN Team and our well-honed deleting skills out of your mind as you press the “PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT” button.

Second, try, just a teency weency [insert another childish synonym for “little” here] bit to remain on topic. We probably won't delete it if it isn't. Actually, we won't delete it if it isn't, no "probably" about it. But it is nice for the other readers to have all the comments under a particular post at least somewhat tangentially related to said post.

Third, feel free to link back to your own blog or your girlfriend's blog. Some bloggers are just desperate for traffic. While the FCN Team has embraced the four readers scene wholeheartedly, some website owners feel that “more readers” is preferable. And they also think the best way to attract readers is, like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs, to leave comments on successful blogs like this one with painfully obvious hyperlinks back to their own page. Go right ahead.

Fourth, just because someone got there first doesn't mean you can't post too. When your brilliant thought is stolen by an ugly curmudgeon who just happened to have a faster Internet connection, don't do anything rash; just post your comment anyway. Maybe the first commenter misspelled something or did something else that will get his hasty comment deleted and you'll be the only one left with the brilliant thought. Maybe.

Fifth, please, please, please be polite. Life is always easier when folks are nice (Proverbs 15:1). Please avoid any word or expression that is unnecessarily unkind and doesn't portray Christ-like charity (examples include foul language, abusive writing, ad hominem attacks and any reference to Micheal Jackson). It isn't a matter of deletion, it's our concern for your interaction with the other FCN readers. Although we will delete, too.

Sixth, make it fun. This is, after all, Funny Class Notes. We rarely evaporate all possible rabbit trials of a particular joke (the last time it happened, we got into trouble with our moms), so why not extend the humor a bit? Any two of you are probably as smart as any two of us, so together we'll get to the same place.

Any comment that is removed (isn't that a better word than “deleted?”) will be replaced by a tidy “This post has been removed by a blog administrator.” The author's name and time stamp will remain, leaving you in perpetual state of embarrassment and subject to emails from other readers asking what exactly you did that was so naughty.

Well, hopefully that sums up. To the 99.999% of readers who will never have to worry about this, thanks for putting up with me and my morning grumps. To the 0.001%, you know who you are and, unless you change from your evil commenting ways, everyone else will too.