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Blog policy on feedback and anonimity

author: www-data

It was a deliberate choice that this blog does not have a "comment"-facility. A number of reasons lead to that decision:

1. Comments increase the complexity of the framework. From a simple CGI-interface, one has to involve more complex database-backed PHP scripts. We are programmers, and we do understand our job, so that's not the problem. But we purposely try to keep things simple -- both for the reader and for us, and a state-of-the-art dynamically managed content system is just too much for what we had in mind.
2. Comments need to be validated, for example by captchas. Comments also pull a whole infrastructure in user managment (or non-user-management) behind them. This further adds to the complexity of the system (see aove).
3. Comments may be illegal. In every country there are laws, which forbid posting certain kinds of material -- pornography, nazi-material, political issues, it depends from country to country, but every country has something that it's not allowed to post. In some countries (like Germany), even linking to illegal material is considered a breach of law, making things even more spicy. As we don't want to play blog/forum-police in our own blog, we don't want to allow 3rd parties to post here. Whatever we post we stand up for, but we're neither going to stand up for other people's ideas, nor are we going to be put in the situation censor other people's oppinions or go to jail for not doing it.
4. Last but not least, comments to blogs tend to either be very trivial ("yay, you're right!", or "nay, you got it wrong"), or tend to be very elaborate discussions. While the elaborate discussions might be nice and fruitful, a blog is not the correct place to have them. A properly community-moderated forum might be a better idea... there are plenty on the internet, go figure.

However, we do like feedback to our articles. If you choose to disagree (or agree) with a particular posting or aspect of a posting, or if you wish to add something, please drop us a mail. You will find the e-mail address of the person that wrote the blog post at the bottom of each article. Copy-n-paste that! We are really looking forward to feedback, and we are particularly looking forward to disagreeing feedback :-)

On interesting ideas, we will respond publicly using this blog, quoting the original feedback aswell as our own answer to the issue. In particular, we promise not to censor feedback just because it happens not to agree with us -- on the contraty, we are always looking for a serious and fair discussion here, even if it means that we loose. In doing so, we will follow these privacy guidelines:

1. We fully accept anonymous e-mails, and do co-operate with you to keep your anonimity, if you wish.
2. We do reply to one-time-email-addresses, like those of Mailinator, if you ask us to.
3. We will not post or divulge any e-mail addresses in your response, unless the owner of the respective address explicitly asks us to do so.
4. We will use the name you sign your emails with (i.e. the part after "Sincerely yours, ...") as the public name that we will refer you to. If you want your name not to be called out in public, please explicitly say so.
5. We take the liberty to use whatever web links (i.e. starting with "http://...") we see fit when/if replying to your comment, unless you ask us not to.
6. At our will, we will treat whatever content reaches us via e-mail in reply to a post of our blogs as public domain, i.e. we may choose to post it; do not send us copyrighted or restricted material, unless we have explicitly agreed to receiving it beforehand!
7. We will (try to) give credit to 3rd-party content wherever possible, i.e. whenever we use your feedback, it will be quoted and we will cite you, and whenever we use sources you point us to, we will accord them the due credit. However, this is to be understood as a getlemen's agreement, and we will NOT assume any responsibility for that, therefore we will NOT be legally liable in any way if we fail to do so!
8. We will protect your privacy as good as we can if you ask us to, but we will not go to jail for you! That is, if something you send us happens to be of interrest to law enforcement authorities whose jurisdiction we are subject to, we will fully co-operate with them. If you want to send us something and want to remain truly anonymous, please take your own measures to keep your identity hidden, do not rely on us!

That be told... happy reading and replying :-)

2009-01-20 13:48 | www-datarootshell.ro | [/meta] | permanent link