Comments

Here is my comment policy, and technical help if you want to include equations in your comments:

1) You are welcome to leave comments on old posts—pretend they were all written yesterday!

If you attempt to leave a comment and for some reason it does not appear, perhaps it has gotten stuck in the spam filter.  Please send me an email letting me know and I will rectify the situation.

2) Please make some attempt to put your comment on a topically suitable top-level article, e.g. the one which you are responding to.  (If you can’t find a good place, go ahead and put it somewhere random—I don’t mind the occasional off-topic comment, but it’s awkward if it could have been on-topic had you put it in the correct place.)

3) You can include LaTeX formulae in your comments by putting double dollar signs on either side.  For example, $${\mathrm \$\$\verb|\|frac\{e\verb|^|\{-X\verb|^|2 / 2\}\}\{\verb|\|sqrt\{2\verb|\|pi\}\} \$\$ }$$ becomes $$\frac{e^{-X^2 / 2}}{\sqrt{2\pi}}$$.  If you want to break it out into its own line, just place an “!” immediately after the first pair of dollar signs.  (Don’t try to use the wordpress.com format, since that doesn’t work on wordpress.org blogs)

4) Don’t use the symbols < or > in your comment (unless you use just one), as WordPress may intepret them as an html tag and mutilate your comment!  You can make these symbols by inserting \lt or \gt inside of the double dollar signs, for < or > respectively.  Alternatively you can use the html escape codes $$\&$$lt; or $$\&$$gt; even outside of the double dollar signs.

5) At this time there is no way to edit your own comments to fix typos or incorrect equations.  However, if you write a second comment pointing out the mistake, I usually fix your original comment and delete the correction, so that it looks like you got it right from the beginning.

6) This is a Christian website, which exists for the purpose of glorifying God.  Commenters with other beliefs are welcome to comment on the site for purposes of friendly discussion, but I ask that you refrain from gratuitious blasphemy (i.e. derogatory insults and jokes directed at God which aren’t necessary in order to respectfully state your position).

However, nobody but me is obliged to follow my eccentric canonization policy of referring to other Christians as “saints”.

7) I also ask that you be civil to the other commenters, please.

8) Commenters should provide a valid email address in the comment form, so that I can write to you privately if there is an administrative issue that shouldn’t be shared with everyone.  These email addresses are not visible to the public, nor will they be released to other organizations.

The “website” field is public, but completely optional—feel free to either leave it blank or to insert a link to your own website.

9) Do not simply copy and paste a large amount of text from your own pre-existing web posts into the comments section.  I will be able to tell it was not original by doing a google search.  Comments should be an individualized response to what I, or the other commenters, have said.  (This does not mean that quoting relevant materials you’ve written before is forbidden, but it should be in the form of a link or a short quotation, and you should include an explanation of what it is, and why you are introducing it into the discussion.)

10) If you figure out any other way to abuse the process, I may have to invent some ex post facto rules in a hurry.  But I would rather have a community of people who use common sense when deciding what kinds of comments are suitable.

Last updated Aug 26, 2021.