Life of a Lab Rat

The thing that makes a weblogger's cockles warm is feedback. We might know that people are reading us — I can look at the webserver stats and see all those lovely unique hits, you might bump into me on the stairs and say something nice — but what really gets the pulse going is comments. That someone has taken the time to prestidigitate the keycaps and share their ineffable thoughts on my humble weblog . . . it's better than drugs.

Trackbacks are good, but I'm not going to be greedy.

But throwing it open to all comers can cause problems. And, in theory at least, this particular weblog is under the auspices of the University of Sydney, which might inhibit some of you. And you have no idea what I think about comments or how I might decide what is suitable, because I haven't told you yet.

So, having read Georg's little spiel this evening I'm going to iterate my comments policy in the hope that maybe more people will feel able to natter away, and maybe we can get some good dialogue going.

Most of what follows is shamelessly nicked from the templatedata, and is aimed at protecting me as well as your rights to free speech (do we have such a thing in Australia? Or am I being seditious again?).

Comments Policy

1. I intend to deal with comments in a very 'hands off' manner. If you've taken the time to say something, then I should do you the honour of allowing you to say it
2. Comments will only be deleted in extreme cases and the author of such comments will be emailed with an explanation as to why this has occurred. Examples of extreme cases include personal abuse, foul language or possible defamatory material. If a person persists in posting inflammatory material they may be blocked from commenting. Please note this will occur in extreme cases only. The decision to block a commenter is at the discretion of the blog owner — i.e., me
3. I reserve the right to edit for embarrassing spelling mistakes, or language that I deem offensive. I will endeavour to let the commenter know of such instances
4. Those commenting are encouraged to supply a real email address. This address will not be published (I promise!) but used only in cases such as those mentioned above. If a commenter is found to continually supply a false email address they may be placed in a moderation list that will force all comments they make through moderation before being published. Anonymity is discouraged, although pseudonymity is fine.
5. All comments are associated with an originating IP address. We don't do anything with this information, unless you're being a complete scumbag.
6. There is no rule 6.
7. Spam and commercial advertising will be dealt with without merce or ruth.

So, there. That's about it. There are many like it, but this one's mine.

And to get the ball rolling, how about a naming competition for the little fella (or lassie as she might turn out to be) in the new masthead up there? If that's successful we could do a caption contest too, and I'll buy the winner a prize (even if it is just a coffee at Azzurri's).

I know you're out there. I can hear you breathing.