Comments - Where have the guidelines gone?...

[davesmith_au]

Pretty self-explanatory from the subject line, I remember before the site revamp there was a reasonably comprehensive comments policy regarding the comment sections on Universe Today stories.

Since the site makeover, there doesn't appear to be any way of consulting guidelines before posting comments. Upon reading some of the insulting comments there, one could easily be forgiven for thinking the rules have been dispensed with. Is this the case?

[MarkB]

Things quiet over at Thunderbolts Dave?

[davesmith_au]

Things quiet over at Thunderbolts Dave?

Nah not at all Mark, quite the contrary. However, there are many outlets I frequent to sus out their space-related news and views, and UT is one of them. I also offer the odd comment from time to time, but they're not usually answered in any meaningful way. Though I am particularly careful NOT to mention EU/PC (for example), I get replies relating to being an 'EU nutter' instead of addressing my query which is usually directly related to the story. They used to have guidelines on site regarding the comments section posting norms, but these seem to have disappeared in the site revamp.

Though I personally have a very thick skin and don't care about the 'nutter' type remarks, I do see that the comments section seems to have been largely taken over by posters commenting on each other's various views or levels of competence or (lack thereof), instead of on the topic of the article they appear under. This is not only contrary to the guidelines which used to be available, but also detracts from the quality of dialogue which whilst I may not agree with much of it, nevertheless used to at least be of a reasonable quality in the main.

Since my email to Nancy Atkinson regarding the same topic remains unanswered, I thought the next best thing would be to bring it up here, in the appropriate forum. Alas, it still remains unaswered.

If I've maid any spulling erors, I apologyze...

(Mods - if this is a duplicate post, please delete one of them.)

[Van Rijn]

This was the only thing I could find on comment policy:

http://www.universetoday.com/29902/c...the-crackdown/

I didn't see anything after that suggesting the policy had later changed.

[davesmith_au]

This was the only thing I could find on comment policy:

http://www.universetoday.com/29902/c...the-crackdown/

I didn't see anything after that suggesting the policy had later changed.

That's all well and good VR, but as that page is not linked from the home page nor anywhere else on the site, as far as I can work out, it's about as useful as a hip-pocket in a t-shirt.

There would be little point in telling someone (especially newcomers) they're breaking the rules, or not to break the rules, if the rules cannot be found. They used to be linked from the main page, or otherwise easy to find IIRC.

No-one new to the site would have a clue that there are any rules under current circumstances, especially in view of the current content of some of the comments threads. It's not that difficult to create a link to them, it could be done in about a minute or so by someone with access to the workings (it ain't rocket science...), which leaves me to wonder if they've made the comments section 'open slather', as it were. If it was an oversight, could someone please FIX IT!

[Van Rijn]

Apparently, I misunderstood your intent. I thought you were asking what the UT guidelines were, so I googled it and posted that link. If you want to request a change to the UT pages, you probably should send a note through the UT contact page. I don't think Fraser looks at this section regularly.

[davesmith_au]

Apparently, I misunderstood your intent. I thought you were asking what the UT guidelines were, so I googled it and posted that link. If you want to request a change to the UT pages, you probably should send a note through the UT contact page. I don't think Fraser looks at this section regularly.

Thanks for that VJ, I'll give it a whirl, though the contact page is where I started my search for sensibility .

I considered that as Fraser's "info@" likely gets bombarded with stuff a specific email to Nancy (as Senior Editor of the section where comments are posted) would have been more likely to get the appropriate response .

When that failed, I came to this board titled "Universe Today Website Feedback" which I thought would be an appropriate place for feedback for the Universe Today website, and that as such it would be frequented by Fraser, or Nancy, or someone in 'authority' there . Guess not...

I didn't want to 'bother the boss' without first going through the proper channels. Looks like it's back to square one .