It's Good to Be a Reviewer

[alanajoli]

I got a surprise package in the mail today from DAW. Last year, DAW sent me a copy of Red Hood's Revenge by jimhines that I reviewed for Flames Rising. Apparently, I am still on their reviewers list, because today, a good month before it'll hit store shelves, I got a copy of Snow Queen's Shadow! Woo! I do reviews for several places now, and I'm just

Comments

[jeff_duntemann]

I moderate all comments from people who have not commented before, both here on LiveJournal on on my main WordPress site. My personal guidelines for moderating comments are fairly simple:

1. No gross obscenity or clear racial/ethnic/sexual epithets.
2. No anonymous anger. I.e., you can be angry or anonymous in the comments, but not both.
3. No commercial pitches that don't follow naturally from the topic under discussion.

Point 3 sometimes takes a little discernment. I'm not talking about people mentioning their books and articles in a comment thread, but rather people who look for comment threads that might be a loose fit for a (mostly) canned pitch. Much of the discernment lies in being on the lookout for boilerplate, which as a longtime editor I have good antennas for. (In tough cases I google on distinctive passages to see if they've been used elsewhere.) All that said, this issue doesn't come up very often.

I encourage people not to be angry in comments, and I reserve the right to point out to commenters that they're being angry (I think some may not even know it!) and that anger makes you look stupid. My longtime commenters understand this (it's not a new policy) and others either learn quickly or vanish.

I haven't found moderation to be a huge burden. I don't generally take up vexatious topics, and when I do, I make sure I don't take them up in a provocative way. When such topics turn up, I always exhort my commenters to exhibit what I call "heroic courtesy." Mostly, they do--and the scant handful who don't are easily dealt with.

[alanajoli]

I dealt with the anonymity here by just making it so people had to log in -- considering how many log in options there are now! I do think the policy of no anonymous anger makes a lot of sense (and I've been in a number of forums that would have been better for a rule like that). The phrase "heroic courtesy" works well for me, too. :)