Blog Comment Policy

The BfB blog is a hoppin’ place lately!

We’ve had guest posts-galore, new volunteers writing (thank you!), and some great celeb interviews lately.

We’ve also had to moderate some comments.  We’d like to share with you why we’ve moderated in the past. We’ve also put in place some guidelines that we can all follow going forward.

Your comments here are fabulous, Babes! We are continually floored by the emotions and stories you’re willing to share; by the support you’ve offered one another; and by the Booby Traps you’ve all beaten.  This is one amazing group of women!

Sometimes, though, it’s too easy to be a little more harsh via the keyboard than we’d be in-person.  There’s a certain amount of of humanity lost through the screen and that’s evident in some of the comments we’ve had to moderate.

We LOVE a good discussion. We WANT to see awesome discourse and a variety of opinions here. Our site would be less without that!

What we don’t want to see, are comments that go from disagreeing with the author of the post, to calling that author names.  Please keep in mind that the majority of our writers are volunteers.  They’re sharing their time and talents with us out of the goodness of their hearts (something for which we are so grateful!).  So when their posts get comments that go beyond disagreeing on the content, to insulting them…it’s truly hurtful to them.

Civil, respectful discourse is always welcome here.  Name calling and generally insulting, disrespectful comments are absolutely not.  In short, if comments move from civil discourse to rude or insulting, they won’t appear on our site.

The Best for Babes Foundation blog comment policy:

1. We love hearing what you have to say! Please do leave comments. =)

2. The “Living Room” rule: Let’s pretend that we’re all sitting in person, chatting away in BfB’s living room. If you’re leaving a comment here that you’d be unlikely to speak aloud to someone in-person, it’s probably going to be deleted. (Example: You might say, “I really disagree with X, because…”; we’d certainly welcome that! But you’d be unlikely to say to someone, “I really disagree with X, you’re an awful writer, and this blog post is crap!”; that would be deleted.)

3. Comments with links are moderated. Relevant links are welcome, but comments with links that are exclusively for self-promotion, spam links, and irrelevant links will be deleted. Signature links are welcome, assuming the comment in which they are included is relevant and adds to the conversation.

4. Self-evident, but we’ll say it anyway: Comments that are spammy will be deleted. That happens automatically most of the time, but if any slip through, they’ll be manually deleted.

The “Living Room Rule” is the big one. Comment here like you’re carrying on a conversation with the post author, with the celeb we interviewed, or with the other commenters, and we’re golden.

We love hearing from you and what you have to say is every bit as important as what we have to say. We just need to make sure that we’re being kind and respectful of one another along the way.

Thank you, Babes, for making this space such a wonderful place for ALL moms!

 



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6 Comments | Last revised on 07/15/2011


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6 Responses to Blog Comment Policy

  1. I recently had a comment moderated that I would have ABSOLUTELY said to the person in question if I had the opportunity to meet them face to face. In fact I would welcome the chance to engage with her, as much as I felt she insulted women who did not agree with her worldview.

    Having said that, I understand the need for occasional censorship after having some major issues on my own blog, and it is totally within your rights. I apologize if my comment seemed too rude to allow. I don’t mind that you deleted the comment, but I still think that my reaction - which was echoed in the more moderately worded comments that you did allow on the post - was justified.

    I suppose my words could have been less snarky, but quite honestly, I was really hurt by the post in question. I was hurt that an organization I respected for supporting ALL women, in contrast to most lactivist groups I’ve encountered, was putting someone with such judgmental and cruel opinions up on a pedestal as a “champion for women”. It felt like a smack in the face.

    I worry that BfB has turned a corner, from being a place of support and guidance for all women who were interested in breastfeeding - whether that be exclusive breastfeeding for a year, or partial breastfeeding for a few days - into being a much harder-line organization. That is where my anger is coming from, and I wish you could have responded to the comment and had a dialogue with me (even if it was off-screen) rather than deleting my words without letting me know why. I also (still) wish that you would edit that interview to sound less offensive, b/c I would hate to see you guys booby trapping women by scaring them away when they need help, you know?

    • Jeff Watson says:

      I read FFF’s original comment before it was deleted and have since read your new “Blog Comment Policy” and have to say that FFF’s comments did NOT contravene your “Policy”. All she did was to disagree with your veiwpoint, but in a respectful way. So why did you really delete her comment?

      • Jeff, thanks for your perspective. We felt that the original comment left by FFF was overly harsh toward the celeb we’d interviewed, and thus we moderated it. That’s well within our policy, but if you have any questions about it, please feel free to email me at amy@bestforbabes.org.

    • FFF, thanks for expressing this. I appreciate that you would have expressed all those things to Laila in-person, but we still felt that it was too harsh to leave up as a public blog comment. While Laila is a celebrity, she’s also just a mom, as susceptible to the Booby Traps as any other mom. She expressed a point of view that’s drawn some major criticism, but she’s also got a lot to offer as a role model, something that was being lost in all this. I am so sorry that you were hurt by the Laila post.

      I should have contacted you via email from the get-go (but on the other side of that issue, I certainly won’t be able to email every commenter whose comment is deleted). If there’s anger surrounding any of this, I absolutely want to discuss it and work it out. We value your support here; I promise that BfB is as committed as ever to our support of ALL moms and ANY amount of breastfeeding (or none at all!).

      • Liz R. says:

        I commented on the Laila article before I was fully aware of the recent events. Full disclosure: I am an avid (although currently slacking) reader of the FFF blog. I just wanted to add that I can understand wanting to keep comments constructive. At the same time, the response to any article can run the gambit from overwhelming enthusiasm to rage-stroke anger. We can’t ignore the negative end of the emotional spectrum. Laila seems to be a strong woman with strong opinions. That strength seemed to be featured in the article. It seems a non sequitur that she had to be protected from critical comments.

        • I totally agree! We’re not moderating to protect Laila any more than we’re moderating to protect other commenters when people get rude. There’s just a certain decorum we’d like to maintain here, so that’s what the policy stems from. Comments can be on either end of the emotional spectrum and still be constructive and respectful, so that’s what we’re aiming for. Any comment attacking another person, rather than an idea, is just outside of what we’d like to see published here.

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