While I’m thinking about it, please be sure to erase your posts before you trash them, as some wind up in TRASH by accident. If they look fine to me, I’ll post it thinking it’s in trash due to a glitch in the system which happens.
If you erase the comment and then trash it, I’ll see a blank page and will have nothing to post! That’s the way to get rid of your comment.
Another thing we’ve been asked about: We don’t ban people. We ban posts. There have been only a few exceptions to this rule and this has been over a 15 year period.
It’s happened to people who contribute nothing but criticism, challenging people as a rebuke, as opposed to offering a rebuttal. Rebuttals are encouraged! Welcomed, even! It’s the goading we don’t like and the people we’ve banned do it 100% of the time. It’s a poor use of our space and it makes our readers uncomfortable. It requires more effort on our part so it’s not worth it.
There are also people who lie about who they are (lie about their credentials) and pass on misinformation as an authority figure. We will no longer tolerate this. Opinions are fine, if they’re presented that way.
People who go after other people on the blog for sport are gone, as well. You can comment on ideas or people not associated with the blog but we no longer allow people to bring up unflattering (often untrue) criticism of our readers. It is almost always used to discredit someone. You can say to someone you think they’re wrong, but not bring up something from their past you know but others don’t or call them names. No one cares what you think about someone else. Sometimes we allow it if it’s directed toward George or me so we can address the problem but do not attack the person of one of our readers. What’s happened in the past is fewer and fewer people will comment for fear you will do it to them and they stop reading the blog altogether.
There is yet another who trashes people very “politely” and thinks this should pass. No. If it’s a polite slam of one of our readers, you will be gone if you don’t change your intent.
Again, we’re talking about only a handful of people. 99.99% of you don’t any of this and are fine! It’s just once in a blue moon this stuff happens.
We might tell you to avoid certain subjects. That happens. We don’t want people using our platform for preaching, as an example. Interestingly, it’s not the priests or bishops who do this. It’s usually people who (1) aren’t qualified to preach and (2) probably don’t understand how few people like it when they do. We’re the ones who get the complaints. When that happens, I’ll ask you to stop.
We may do it publicly in a reply to your comment by reminding you that you are breaking one of our rules, because not everyone uses a legitimate email address. We want to give everyone a chance to rectify the situation because often I want to hear from these people again. Especially new people. Just differently. We don’t want to automatically dismiss those who may have something positive to contribute but don’t know the rules. – There are many blogs where this sort of thing is allowed so it’s an easy mistake to make if you’re not familiar with Monomakhos.
Nor do we like our blog to routinely be used as a bulletin board for happenings around town or to send personal messages to a specific reader. You can use FB or some other means to do that. When you post here, you are addressing all of us.
We try to work with people both on and off line first, but if they continue to abuse their privileges, we won’t keep doing it. If this describes you (which it probably doesn’t since there are so few of you), you won’t see your posts on Monomakhos.
I hate to bring these things up but a few of these people keep resurfacing so I have to continue to remind people we haven’t changed our position on any of this stuff. It has served us well over the years and we appreciate your cooperation.