Comments: A spot of housingkeeping

A quick note to all commenters (and would be commenters) on LabourList posts. I have taken the decision to change the way in which LabourList comments are moderated. From now on – all comments will be pre-moderated. This will of course slow the pace of debate on LabourList, but if the aim is to have a genuine debate on the site, rather than just arguments and off topic discussions as is sometimes the case, then I believe that this is neccessary.

Please bear with us.

Some commenters will be given the right to post unmoderated – but only if they are regular commenters who have shown themselves willing to behave according to our comments policy. Anyone who breaks the comments policy on a regular basis can expect to see themselves banned from the site.

If you believe that a comment breaks our comments policy you can “flag” it for the attention of the moderator (usually me), who can take appropriate action.

In addition, I have also made the decision that only those registered with Disqus will be able to comment on LabourList from now on. Disqus can link up with many different forms of log-in (Twitter, Facebook etc) so I hope this does not cause undue hassle for commentsers – however it is the only reliable way of ensuring that we have some idea of who is posting on LabourList.

Any questions about the new moderation format, do not hesitate to email me ([email protected]).

Thanks for your patience – balancing a fast past and active comments section with a reasonable debate is difficult, but hopefully something we’re striving to achieve.

Mark