The comments on this blog are partially moderated.
If you already a member of WordPress, and if I have ever approved a comment from you, then your subsequent comments will be appended without moderation. This may also apply to members of some other blogging systems; the results do not make this entirely clear.
If these conditions do not apply to you, then your comment will be referred for moderation. This involves my being sent an e-mail, and responding to it.
Since I do not spend all day and every day on the computer, there may be a delay of up to several days before I can moderate incoming comments. These delays imply nothing other than my own indisposition.
In general I approve all comments, regardless of their literary or other merit, since I am a firm believer in freedom of speech. I welcome comments which challenge that which I have written, because the resulting debate is often more interesting than the original material.
Because I am not a firm believer in the freedom of advertising I do not approve any comments which consist solely of a link to a commercial website, with or without a smart-ass one-liner, clearly irrelevant to the topic, intended to attract attention. All such comments are deleted and their sources marked as spam.
Were any commenters ever so gauche as to post remarks which I believed to be actionable in law, I should probably feel obliged to précis the comment in a post, explain why it has not been approved, and delete it, but fortunately this does not seem to occur.
