Comment Guidelines

Updated 11/4/2010

Every now and then I find it necessary to delete a comment because it fails to add anything to the debate and is simply an immature or irrational comment whose purpose was mostly to insult an author or another commenter.

Effective immediately, this site’s comments are now being moderated. The way it works is like this:

1. You can leave comments and join or start a debate on anything we post on this site. Feel free to agree or disagree with the topic. As long as you abide by that, you will have no problems and your comments will not be moderated.

2. Any comment that insults another commenter or author, will have their comment permanently deleted. Comments are for discussing the topics at hand, and are not a sounding board to vent your dislike of another individual on this site.

3. Once one of our three new moderators delete a comment for violating our comment guidelines as listed below, all future comments by that individual will go into moderation. That means that as long as your comment meets our guidelines it will be approved in due process. It could take up to an hour for it to post depending on when the moderator checks the pending comments folder.

4. If your comment is deleted and you go into the moderation process, please don’t email the site for a second chance because just as you are being asked to follow our guidelines, I too will be following the guidelines of the moderation team. Once you are placed in moderation, you will remain in moderation for a minimum of thirty (30) days. If during that period your comments had no further problems, you will immediately become unmoderated. However, if it happens a second time, the penalty period is extended to ninety (90) days. Like our National Pastime, strike three and your out.

Comment Guidelines

Because I allow unregistered commenting on this site, I have no other choice than to ask everyone to kindly adhere to these simple rules of common sense and decency when commenting on this site.

• I believe in free speech, so you are free to debate and post an opposing point of view in any manner you see fit as long as you do it without insulting another reader, commenter or writer along the way. I will remove any comment that crosses this line.
• I don’t require that you stay on topic. You can talk about whatever you want, as long as what you have to say has some interest for readers of this blog. What I won’t tolerate is personal attacks or comments intended only to antagonize.
• If you’re a fan of another team and don’t like the Mets, you are free to post and join the debate. However, if your idea of a debate is “Mets suck”, your comment will be deleted and you will be banned from this site. Go vent somewhere else. This is a web site by Mets fans for other Mets fans for the purpose of discussing all MLB topics and issues.
• Keep your language clean. I don’t swear here, and I’d appreciate if you didn’t either. I’d like for parents to feel comfortable having their kids read this site. I’m no angel, so if I can express myself without profanity, you can, too. Be creative.
• Please be respectful. We have fun here disagreeing with each other, but we do it with respect. Hate speech against individuals or groups will never be tolerated.

By posting a comment to this site, you are agreeing to abide by these rules.

MLBTR is increasing efforts to enforce our commenting policy.  The goal is to raise the level of discourse in the comments, part of which involves eliminating inappropriate language and insults.

Comments of this nature are not allowed:

• Attacks or insults towards other commenters, the post author, journalists, teams, players, or agents
• Inappropriate language, including swearing and related censor bypass attempts, lewdness, insults, and crude terms for body parts, bodily functions, and physical acts.  Overall, we don’t want any language that a parent would not want their kid to see.
• Juvenile comments or extensive use of text message-type spelling
• Writing comments in all or mostly caps
• Spam-type links or self-promotion.  Please submit to our weekly Baseball Blogs Weigh Infeature if you have a website or blog.  Currently, permissible links in the comments are limited to MLB.com, Cot’s Baseball Contracts, FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and MLB Trade Rumors.  Comments linking to other sites will be deleted.
• Comments about how you’re sick of this topic or it’s not newsworthy
• No inappropriate avatars or images are allowed
• Anything else we deem bad for business

If you see comments that fit the above criteria, please flag them and/or contact us.  Bans may be handed out liberally by our moderators, without second chances.  Remaining civil is not that difficult, though, and most commenters have no problems doing so as well as helping rein each other in.  We at MLBTR are grateful for long-time commenters and readers, though this policy applies equally regardless of tenure.  This policy is always available at the bottom of the site, and will be re-posted monthly.