Moderation

Blogging helps me to gather my thoughts. By writing them up you have to make them more precise, which helps to see holes and problems more easily. Another reason I blog is to get feedback that helps to further these thoughts.

Before starting this blog, I sometimes wrote essays on my homepage. While I explicitly asked for feedback, by mail, I naturally never got any that way. That this blog exists is because I value good comments. Please feel invited to write great comments.

However, the main rule of moderation: this is my blog and I moderate however I feel fit.

The main rule for writing comments is: be nice. Nasty tribal comments make people shut down their brain, thus I will not allow nastiness.

Moderation is a lot of work. Thus while I value thoughtful comments, I am not looking for large quantities, but for quality.

If your mitigation skeptical talking point is already on the list of Skeptical Science, do me a favor and get lost. If your comment is just conspiracy theories and nefarious intent, get lost.

Also comments should provide value to my readers. If you have a long argument, write a blog post or publish at medium and give a short summary of the ideas here.

If your comment is related to non-climatic changes and has a good signal to noise ratio (SNR), you have a good chance of getting through moderation. If the SNR is low, I probably have to like you. The shorter your comment is, the more likely it is to be published.

Try to be nice and give your comment some added value for the reader. If you feel the need to be nasty, please be nasty to me and not to my guests. I especially value comments from fellow scientists, they are the most likely to contribute valuable ideas, thus I would like them to feel at home in a pleasant and civilized environment. Below posts that are mainly about science, I will moderate quite strict.

And no, this is not censorship. The coercive power of the state is not limiting you in your expression. I am only exercising my own freedom of expression. You can just start your own blog or write a book with your brilliant ideas. Please make a copy of your comments so that you can complain about my moderation elsewhere.

Please understand that moderation decisions are not open for discussion.