Wednesday 5 March 2008

The Hand Mirror's Comment & Link Policy

We want this to be a safe space for women, and indeed for those who are Other in an internet (and political) culture dominated by white heterosexual men of comfortable income and right-wing politics.

To that end we have established the following ground rules, which we expect commenters to kindly respect:
  1. Comments that are abusive or link to abusive posts will be deleted. We're not keen on bigotry here at The Hand Mirror.
  2. Disagreement should be written in a manner that does not demean either party. Although if you embarrass yourself we will probably just leave it there so everyone can laugh at you.
  3. If you are unrelentingly obnoxious you may be banned. To date no one has been banned, although a fair few comment deletions have been made.

  4. When we say "unrelentingly obnoxious" we include the distasteful practice of trying to out someone who uses anything short of their full name, either directly or indirectly, on this blog, be that person a blogger or a commenter. We extend the courtesy of respecting that people who don't blog openly under their own name do so for reasons of their own. For clarity, the only writers here who are currently out for blogging purposes are Julie (Fairey) and Anjum (Rahman).

  5. Discussions about moderation decisions should be sent to email, not continued on the comment thread. You can email us via julie dot fairey at gmail dot com with queries about moderation decisions. Attempts to discuss them in comments will be deleted to avoid derailing from the topic of the post.
  6. We are particularly interested in blogrolling other NZ women who are blogging, regardless of political affiliation (or indeed whether they are writing about politics at all). We will consider blog roll links to anyone who asks but of course reserve the right to decline to add your blog to our roll. This blog is not all about you, it's all about us. So there.
Individual authors can set the rules for their own threads, in addition to these, and moderate those comments to meet their whims.

Thanks for largely respecting these rules to date. We've made very few comment deletions, in the context of the hundreds of comments we get, other than one persistent troll who has gone away now. We appreciate your help with making this a good space for discussion and look forward to your future contributions to The Hand Mirror.

You might also want to check out a post in April 2009 about the nature of this community and what we want this blog to be like.

Last updated May 19th 2009.

Changes to comments policy made in August 2010, please check it out, will be updating this more fully soon.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey all at the Hand Mirror -

This is not a comment but an attempt to get in touch with you all :-)

I'm a journalism student at Whitireia, and I'm currently working on a feature article about the relationship between the blogosphere in New Zealand and the development of public policy. I had a few questions I was hoping you might be able to help me with - and I'm happy to talk to you on or off the record.

Firstly, what kind of impact, if any, do you think the blogosphere had on the last election result? Do you think there are any particular issues/public policy bloggers have been most influential upon? And if so, how does that relationship work?

Secondly, I want to track a case example if possible - if you can think of one that has caught your eye, I'd love to hear it.

I'm happy to talk to you about this rather than email if it's more convenient for you, and I'm really keen to hear your thoughts, or hear of anyone else you think it might be useful for me to talk to.

Thanks,
Sandra (Luddite Journo for short)

Sandra Dickson
Whitireia Journalism School
021 105 5737
(04) 237 3100 ext 3985
sandra.dickson@newswire.co.nz
www.newswire.co.nz

Julie said...

Cheers, I've got a post on this scheduled to go up tomorrow :-)

Anonymous said...

could i make a suggestion that you order your blogroll links to 'last posted' rather than alphabetical?

there are lots of bloggers who haven't posted in months and months on your blogroll.

Julie said...

Good point Anon, and I was just looking at the blogroll tonight too, as I did submissions for the DUFC. I think I've changed it.

I'm kind of loathe to take any blogs off the roll because there is still something to be read even if a person hasn't written for years. And at least one person on the roll has died too. And you never know when someone will pick it up again.

Open to suggestions!

Lillian said...

Here's a link I thought would be good for your links round-up. It's a quick video about fertility awareness. Quite touching.

http://vimeo.com/11214833

Redefining what it means to be a woman and mother in the context of infertility is an important feminist issue.

sas said...

Hello lovely hand mirror,

I thought you might be interested in a post I wrote this week. From the 'words fail me' corner i wrote an open letter to the editor of zoo magazine - the guy who allowed an 'agony uncle' to advise a correspondent who can’t get over his ex-girlfriend should cut her face ’so then no one will want her’.

the editors response is also published.

Julie said...

Just a minor clarification about the comment policy. I feel this is covered by existing policy but want to be clear.

Comments that refer to people as "murderers" or similar for having abortions won't survive long. There's plenty of other language you can use to get your anti-abortion point across. If you do it without deliberately trying to specifically upset women who have had abortions who are reading (and there will be some) then it's likely to stay. It's not about whether you are pro-choice or not, it's about how you express your views.