Image Courtesy Istock Photo
This is not going to be the most exciting post you’ll ever read here, but in my book, it may well be one of the most important… so I hope you’ll read on.
As this blog has grown, I’ve become more and more aware for the need to develop some sort of commenting policy to protect both my own personal information and that of my readers. I have also recently become concerned about a popular new widget known as FEEDJIT which I will be addressing here as well. But first things first. Here are the what’s and why’s and how’s of my Comment’s Policy which will be accessible by link through my ‘About’ page after this post goes up…
In The Life Of A Child’s Comments Policy
- Using The Comment Form: The comment form must be filled in with a proper or legitimate sounding name and URL. Comments using keywords, spam or splog-like URLs, or suspicious information in the comment form will be edited or deleted.
- Email Privacy: Email addresses are required for commenting, and they are not published on In The Life Of A Child, nor are they shared. They may only be used by myself to privately contact the commenter.
- Commenter Privacy and Protection: All email, snail mail, phone numbers, last names, references to exact locations, or any private or personal information posted in any comment will be deleted as soon as possible to protect both the privacy of the commenter and that of my family. To prevent such editing, please do not share this private information within In The Life Of A Child’s comments. If you need to contact me using data of a personal nature, please do so via email and I will be happy to respond.
- Language and Manners: In The Life Of A Child is “family friendly” blog and I work hard to keep it that way. Comments which include offensive or inappropriate language, or those that I consider to be rude and offensive, will be edited or deleted. Please play nice.
- A Comment Is Conversation: A comment which does not add to the conversation, runs off on an inappropriate tangent, or kills the conversation may be edited, moved, or deleted.
- Limit Links: In The Life Of A Child is setup to automatically hold any blog comment with more than two links in moderation, which may delay your comment from appearing. If your are legitimately commenting on multiple posts, please be patient as I respond to comments requiring moderation as quickly as possible. Any blog comment holding more than four links may be marked as comment spam.
- What To Do If Your Comment Does Not Appear: If you leave a comment on In The Life Of A Child and it does not appear in a reasonable time period, and you know that it does not violate these Comment Policies, please feel free to contact me via email.
- No Personal Attack Comments Permitted: In the interest of fair play, no personal attacks are permitted in In The Life Of A Child’s comments. You may question or argue the content, but you may not personally attack either me, my family, nor any other commenters. Failure to respect fellow participants at In The Life Of A Child could result in removal and blocked access.
- Comment Spam: Any comment assumed to be possible comment spam will be deleted and marked as comment spam.
- Commenters Blocked: Anyone who willfully violates this Comments Policy may be blocked from future access and/or commenting at In The Life Of A Child .
- All Rights Reserved: I reserve the right to edit, delete, move, or mark as spam any and all comments. I also reserve the right to block access to any one or group from commenting or from In The Life Of A Child entirely.
- Hold Harmless: All comments within this blog are the responsibility of the commenter, not myself. By submitting a comment to In The Life Of A Child, you agree that the comment content is your own, and to hold In The Life Of A Child, and all representatives harmless from any and all repercussions, damages, or liability.
- Trackbacks Are Comments: All trackbacks will be treated inline with the Comments Policy.
This policy was adapted for use at In The Life Of A Child from a sample Comment Policy posted at Blog Herald.
I will begin working my way through archived comments this week and making sure that they are inline with the policy above.
Ok, now about FEEDJIT… FEEDJIT is a popular new widget that looks like this:
Note: I have intentionally fuzzed out the blog addresses in this photo.
It has been popping up in sidebars like crazy over the past few days. It’s function is to log visitor’s IP addresses and display them with the title of the visitor’s blog along with their city and state. Call me paranoid, but this makes me more than a tad uncomfortable. It has an option at the bottom of the widget to supposedly allow the visitor to select to have their IP address ignored on future visits, but here’s the deal… it seems to only ‘ignore’ you for 24 hours. I have made sure to use the same browser, made sure my cookies haven’t been cleared and all that jazz, but no matter what I do, 24 hours later, FEEDJIT develops a sudden and unwelcome renewed interested in my IP address.
I want you all to know that I adore everyone on my blogroll. I absolutely do… and my intent here is not to step on any toes, cause hurt feelings, or tell you what to put on your blog, but FEEDJIT is just way out of my comfort zone. My solution to this problem will be to continue to follow any blogs on my blogroll that utilize FEEDJIT through my Google Reader via subscription and send any of my comments to the authors via email. I completely understand the appeal of this widget - it’s fun to see where in the globe your blog is being read. If you scroll down to the bottom of my blog you will see a widget called ClustrMaps that acts like a virtual push-pin map of blog hits for this site. I think one of the nice things about ClustrMaps is that it doesn’t single out where any one Blogger is coming from and just serves as a virtual representation of the reach of a blog’s readership. I want to be clear though, that I respect that people have different preferences, and am not intending to tell anyone what to do here. I’m just sharing with you the best way I know to work around my concerns with this widget as they pertain to life here at In The Life Of A Child, and that will be for me to change the way I communicate with authors of blogs utilizing FEEDJIT. I truly hope that everyone reading this understands how very sincere I am here in stating that I do not intend for anyone’s feelings to be hurt over this post.
We will now return to In The Life Of A Child’s regularly scheduled postings. 
blogging community comments policy
Never heard of that widgit. Don’t worry, I won’t be using it.
Do you have lots of bad comments coming in? I have yet to have issues with that….luckily. Hopefully not jinxing myself.
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Hi Marla - Mostly lots of spam and abused trackbacks and quite a few with some inadvertent disclosure of personal info. I’ve had one or two verbal attack comments that I just deleted… with 99.9 percent of my readers this isn’t an issue at all. You’re all just too sweet! And I’m really fine with people having whatever widgets they want to have on their blog… it just changes the way that I will be able to contact them. I just wanted to be sure I didn’t hurt any feelings on the subject as there are a number of my readers currently using FEEDJIT. I hear that just having a comments policy posted can help with the spam and trackback issues. Here’s hoping!
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I haven’t seen the FEEDJIT thing yet, but I agree that it seems a bit…. worrisome. Sort of a privacy violation. Many bloggers do not post in their blogs where they live for good reason and this thing does not keep with that little bit of safety we allow ourselves.
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
You are just so organised and eloquent
Hope you’re feeling better, my dear.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:03 pm
oh, oh, how do you get that edit comment option? That rocks, I get so fed up of being unable to fix my comments once they go up.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Seems fair enough. I’ve actually seen that Feedjit thingy & wasn’t sure what it was. Thanks for educating me on it. Agreed!
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I had some odd comments in the beginning before I got set on private (and unsearchable via the Blogger thingy at the top) and now I just get our lovely visitors.
I actually got rid of the Feedjit today because I prefer my Clustr. But I’m glad to see that there is a way to block it, even if temporarily when you see it on other sites.
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:05 am
you are right to set bounderies and I did read this post thoroughly.
All the best,
Sophie
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:58 am
I didn’t know that - very interesting - it always shows mine as places 30 mins or more away from my actual town.
I must check it out more.
Thanks for the advice.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Oh is that what that thing is in people’s sidebars? I never even paid attention to it!
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I’ve seen that widget around too, and it makes me rather nervous as well. Most of us go to various degrees of trouble to stay anonymous in some fashion or another - and that just seems to completely defeat the purpose… Good for you for taking a stand!
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Kim - I probably fall into the rather cautious category of blogger, but yeah… it makes me nervous. I mean, I totally trust the folks on my blogroll, but I just can’t stretch that to extend to everyone on the internet who might be perusing through every blog… you know?
Jo -
Thanks… wish I could say I was! Jacqui was up all night with a 104 fever and she has pneumonia and an ear infection now 
It’s week of the living dead around here. The edit comments option I have is a Wordpress Plugin called Edit Comments XT - I fell in love with it over at Tiff’s place - Three Ring Circus. It’s a fabulous plug-in! You can download it here…Edit Comments XT
Angie - Glad if it helped
Hi Ursula - We had sort of an odd cluster of comments, emails and post hits here recently, which was the heart of the thought behind this post. I just love your place and I’m a loyal, loyal fan and would have kept reading even with FEEDJIT up
Hope you didn’t change it on my account!
Hi Sophie! Glad you’re still here… and even reading the boring stuff
Hi Trish - Oh, I sure hope this didn’t come across as advice! My intent for this post was to collect and put my thoughts in one place about what I want out of my own blog in terms of what I feel comfortable with for my family and what sort of environment I have for people who come here to read. I really didn’t intend for it to sound like advice for anyone else. I adore your blog as well will be reading as long as you are blogging
Shannon - LOL! Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but thanks for sticking through my rambly post
Deb - Thanks Deb, nice to know I’m not the only one who it makes a bit jumpy
And I hope it didn’t really sound like I was taking some sort of stand… I really just wanted everyone here that I care about to understand where I was coming from on these issues so that the decisions I make on how I navigate the blogsphere and run things here at In The Life Of a Child could be recognized as coming from a place of respect and concern for both my readers and my family.
And I do respect and care about everyone here, most sincerely.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I truly can’t believe that anyone would verbally attack you. You run one of the best blogs around. You have a right to be concerned and your policy I think is dead on.
No worries about widgets from me!!
Thomas
March 4th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Good boundaries. Good information as well. I sure hope your family recovers soon. I am so sorry to here of the hassles
March 4th, 2008 at 4:18 am
I think I need a comments policy too… hopefully that will help with the bucketloads of spam that I’m getting at the moment!
Thanks for a really helpful post!!
March 4th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Awww, Thomas… you’re too kind!
The comments were early on when I first started this blog in response to my position on abortion that I shared in the Jacqui’s Story section. The comments went a bit beyond the “I don’t agree with you” variety. I have since changed the format so that section of the blog is no longer open for comments… because it’s our story and not really a proper forum for debate.
Thanks for the kind wishes Donetta!
Elissa - I wish you well on your quest against spam
… I know the feeling well. (The situation has improved since this post went up!)
March 4th, 2008 at 5:24 am
[…] but definitely not surprising, since the organization was founded by a racist to begin with. 2. Time for a Blog Comments Policy I have my own unstated policy, but I think I’m going to have to put it into words, because […]
March 4th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Thanks for the ping-back, Casey… Glad you found this post helpful.
That’s exactly the position I was finding myself in… trying to operate under some guidelines without coming off as arbitrary. I’m hoping that since this is all down in print now, it won’t feel like some arbitrary whim on my part to people when I make decisions in accordance with an outlined policy. It’s a hope anyway… 
March 4th, 2008 at 5:53 am
As I am very new and slightly paranoid to this issue I thank you that I found your site and information from Randy Alcorn’s blog. I needed the warning and help.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I hope you J is feeling better soon! Did it start a CVS cycle? We are beginning Topomax now. Hugs.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Down with the bots!! That’s why I have my e-mail address listed as it is on my site-it’s bot proofed…for now.
We love having you at our place, too! And no, you weren’t the reason I dropped Feedjit, but more of a reassurance that it was a good thing to do.
Hope you all are feeling better!
March 4th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I like your policy, but I’m thinking I’m going to have to add something about staying on topic and another something about useless comments. <:-P
March 5th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Okay but are you feeling any better????
Hoping that you are.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I have seen my name and exact location shown on FEEDJIT on others’ blogs. I feel the same as you. I will either not comment or do so by email. That’s just to close to home.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I’ve heard it’s good to make up a comment policy such as this–good thinking.
March 6th, 2008 at 4:07 am
I think the blog comment policy is a great idea. I’ve seen it on some blogs and wanted to do one up but I’m lazy. Might finally give it a go though, as I think it’s quite necessary.
Thank you for kicking me butt into (some) action on this item.
March 8th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Hi! I just read your comment on Tammy’s blog (just enough and nothing more) that was directed towards the lady that said homeschooling was a power trip and I wanted to say that what you said was awesome! I also wanted to say how sorry I am that your daughter must deal with health issues like that at such a tender age. That must be so difficult. After reading your comment as well as your ‘about’ page I can see that God has placed in her a great home and that you’re doing a fine job with her.
Anyway, just wanted to stop by and say, “well said!”
April 17th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Thanks…
sera james
http://article.ezedir.com
May 8th, 2008 at 9:38 pm