What do you know about people who comment on this site?

In addition to the information visible to the entire Internet, I see

• An email address you entered in the “E-mail” field when you made a comment.
• An IP address where you comment came from: it may be either your PC or router if you don’t use any tools to mask your IP address.

What do you do with this information?

I keep your e-mails and IP addresses private. I may use the email you provided to contact you privately, otherwise I won’t let anyone know it without your consent.

Yet I still recommend opening a free email account to deal with these matters if you are concerned about privacy: since I don’t host this site, WordPress can access all the information including subscriber email addresses and IP addresses. WordPress team are terrific guys and respect the privacy of their customers, but they are bound by law and are under obligation to reveal information they possess under a valid court order.

If you are a bit more on the paranoid side I also recommend commenting using tools that mask your IP address: proxy server, VPN (I use and recommend Air VPN) or TOR.

Saying this, I’m just trying to be on a safe side: I don’t do anything illegal and so far have not seen anything unlawful in the comments.

Comment guidelines and censorship

There is one guideline: respect others and don’t be a jerk, but even if you are, I will most likely leave your comment as is, if it is not too gross. I believe that the best way to confront foul speech is more speech.

I do not censor comments based on opinions and language, but I will delete any clearly illegal content (for example death threats). Another category of comments I delete is obvious spam. Lastly, if it is really gross trolling, I may also intervene.

I may redact names, addresses and other identifying information if you are a defendant and don’t yet understand that many trolls are frequent lurkers of this site, and they may be vindictive. Nonetheless, if you insist I may reverse my redaction.

I may edit/remove comments at author’s request (send me an email), yet I will not remove comments that you did not make, even if you ask nicely, including replies to your comments.

If your comment does not appear immediately, it means that spam filter was triggered: it happens once in a while — a legitimate comment is confused with a spam by the software. I usually check the spam folder daily and will eventually restore your comment, but feel free to send me an e-mail, and I restore your comment at my earliest convenience. Update 11/28/2012: Since the amount of spam has increased exponentially (about 2000 a day), I cannot physically check spam folder for false positives anymore, so it is totally on you now: if you don’t see your comment, send me an email with approximate date/time (or, even better, with a phrase to search for), and I will restore your comment. I will be cleaning spam folder periodically, in the mornings, so if your comment is gone forever, don’t be angry at me.