Here at Prometheus we are approaching our second anniversary. Our weblog started out as a student project (Thanks TSR!), which became an experiment in outreach, and now more-or-less a fixture of our Center. The good news is that Prometheus has a wide readership and many valuable comments from thoughtful and appreciated visitors. But at the same time, as our reach has grown, there has been a recent increase in less thoughtful comments, some in the form of hijacking posts, and some in the form of simple anger directed at me and often directed at another commentator. Given these recent events and in order to maintain a high quality site I propose the following guidelines for comments:

1. We’d prefer that you identify yourself in your post. There is a very high correlation between quality posts and people who identify themselves.

2. We’d like discussions to focus on the subject of the post. There are plenty of open thread discussions online elsewhere.

3. Make arguments supported by data. We think that the value of this site is that in enables communication among people with different perspectives to share views and learn from one another.

4. It is OK to disagree with posts or other comments. We discuss a lot of complicated and political issues here on which people will inevitably have different views on. We can learn from people coming from different perspectives.

5. All perspectives are welcomed here. We do not censor or otherwise filter comments, except for the ubiquitous spam and very rare profane submission. I’d like to keep this policy in place, which will be most likely if there is collective sharing in the value of these guidelines.

6. Above all, be respectful to each other in your posts. Don’t make comments personal, don’t sling insults. Do make forceful, well crafted arguments.

7. Help us maintain these standards by explicitly policing one another.

These guidelines are obviously subject to change and we’d welcome your suggestions for improving them. We are very happy with our growing readership, and want to continue to maintain our same high standards. For my part, I will seek to avoid engaging with commentators who chose not to follow these guidelines.

Thanks!