How to Use Our Comments, and Not Get Banned
Want to know the correct way for using the commenting system on Tom's Hardware and Tom's Guide? Read on.
Up until very recently, we've been very relaxed and pretty much turning a blind eye towards commenters and what they were posting. Users were generally free to post whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and not risk much. In fact, they wouldn't really risk anything since only the forums were patrolled and not the comments.
That ends today.
We will actively monitor comment threads in an effort to clean up the site. Clean up the site of what, you ask? Here's the short and concise list:
Spammers, trolls, racist comments, insulting comments, off-topic discussion, and general idiocy.
The comments are here so that people can provide feedback to the topics in the articles, and even provide constructive criticizism. They are not here to provide an avenue for people to misbehave. We don't mind--but we sometimes care--if you don't like what we reported on, or you don't like even how we reported. But we certainly do care if you start taking an offensive stance and just being an outright *sshole.
We posted an article today here, about Steve Jobs and Jonathan Schwart. Jokingly, I laughed and thought the article would be a perfect roundup of people who don't know how to control their behavior in a community. Turns out, I was right.
After a commenter posted an insult without perspective, I warned the commenter to be nice. Then, they insulted me saying:
"tuannguyen why don't you go back to the communist country where you belong."
Lest there be any confusion, that kind of comment gets a banned, no questions asked. I won't name names ("etichi"), but they were swiftly shown the door. That kind of filth has no place here.
Here's how to not get yourself banned or your comments deleted
Stay on topic. Try to stick to the topic of the article. If you want to discuss something else, take it to the appropriate section on the forums. If there's no appropriate section for what you want to talk about, it probably doesn't belong.
Stay civil. Don't be a douchebag. Insulting another person's background, race, religion, political stance, directly or indirectly, and other things that could be deemed offensive is grounds for immediate comment deletion and even banning.
Don't troll. Instigating a flame war by insertion of an offensive comment is grounds for immediate comment deletion and even banning.
We have a full Terms of Service for the site that misbehaving commenters should read. Until then, here are some examples of DO's and DON'T's:
DON'T: "This article is trash.[end of message]"
DO: "This article is terrible. Here's how to make it better..."
DON'T: "You're [some insult]."
DO: [just don't say somethings like that at to begin with]
DON'T: "First!" or "But can it play Crysis?"
DO: "I want to play these types of games and was wondering if anyone knows how well these games run on X CPU/GPU?"
In all honesty, there's not really that many "DON'T" things to keep in mind. Just have common sense and general decency.
Again, I reiterate that it's fine to express your opinions, as long as it's not offensive, insulting, or attacking. Despite what some commenters may think, we're not a large field of grass under a bright blue sky in the middle of nowhere, where commenters can wail whatever they want because no one's around. We're a publication that has chosen to provide an avenue for feedback for those readers who wish to provide it.
A free-speech forum doesn't mean an open invitation to be a jerk.
For those who are concerned that we're policing the comments "too much," then we encourage you to help promote an intelligent and even light hearted community, and maybe we'll loosen up a bit. But until then, this is the way it's going to be.
You're not in your own backyard where you can do whatever you want. You're visiting our website and therefore must adhere to the rules. And heaven-forbid, the rules are pretty darn simple. It's amazing that some display conduct worse than some school children. Please follow these simple, simple rules, and everything will be grand.
/ Tuan
Tuan Nguyen
Director, News Operations
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I am so tempted to write a really sarcastic comment, but in the interest of continuing to chime in with my 2cents I will restrain myself.
I think this policy sounds fairly reasonable just so long as you don't go too hardline on things. Keep watching the watcher. As they say power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
To be more clear as well could you staight up tell me if swearing is bannable purely because of the use of an controversial adjective? I mean there is a difference between saying "WOW!!! that looks sh!thot" and "hey you **explitive deleted** dirt munching son of a (BLEEP) g*damn mother(redact) etc etc."
Thanks for the warning...
But can the comments system run crysis?
In all seriousness I agree with this. It's not right that comments just be an extention of 4chan. So long as any mods are reasonable and consistent, we should be able to keep a happy community going.
Yea i noticed. The .co.uk site is far cleaner.
sounds reasonable, however shouldn't you concentrate on keeping the news up-to-date instead of 3-4 days out, and scrap the non-tech related news you guys seem to spamming out at the minute? sure you can say i just shouldnt click the link to read it however this is a tech site and has always been, these articles shouldn't exist here. one last thing before i go the co.uk and .com separation is becoming a massive nuisance, can never find the same article twice at work i seem to get .com and at home im constantly redirected to .co.uk, ive pretty much moved completely over to HardOCP for these reasons and more(including the stupidity of some of the comments made here and in the forum)
Well i dont understand this bit at all "DON'T: "First!" or "But can it play Crysis?" Seriously im not trolling etc i just dont get whats wrong with asking tounge in cheek if a new piece of tech can run crysis ?
Im also a bit dissapointed that it took a personal insult to get the idiots cracked down on. Makes it seem personal and have no perspective.
We generally keep things civil and by and large the mods do a good job.
Mactronix
Agree with the article, agree with the comments. We keep it pretty civil and my complaints about typos definitely fall into the "constructive criticism" category!
LOL Rab1d-BDGR
is where I post too
To be honest I'm rarely offended by anything at all. I just bear in mind that if these morons are dumb enough to say what they say then their opinion is irrelephant. It only matters when people are dumb enough to listen and give these comments credence.
However, I do believe that this is a positive step in the right direction.
Can I still be rude to dickheads or will I not see their comments anymore? In fact, can I still say 'dickheads'?
Us Europeans are far more diplomatic, we just find out where you live and kidnap your dog.
Seems fair. I've seen the .com comments and totally agree. I don't think the .co.uk side will require much monitoring though. Obviously we get some.
I don't think "Can't it play crysis" deserves a ban though. Just a netslap. Whatever that is.
This article is trash.[end of message]
I could live with this more or less. I think a warning or 2 with an explanation would be better... with a 48hr or 1 week ban perhaps.....unless it's extremely obvious.
What scares me about this is....
"Lest there be any confusion, that kind of comment gets a banned, no questions asked. I won't name names ("etichi"), but they were ( "swiftly" ) shown the door. That kind of filth has no place here..........
sounds too much like swifty .... LOL...... hope it works out. I really do.
What happens when we spot an article that is misleading or borderline corrupt! Can we express our constructive feelings without fear of the ban hammer?
I remember an extremely pro Nvidia article that used the wrong pricing for Ati in order to justify Nvidia over Ati.
If that's the case you can keep your website/forum/comments as I'l go where the 'FREE' press is...
Tom's should always have a healthy fear of the comments section where people a FREE to express their view without fear of retribution! as this will help to keep Tom's honest!!!
"But can it play Crysis?"
What is actually so bad about this comment that could lead to a ban???
Sure the jokes a little overdone but so what???
Your only hurting your selves Tom's
Full terms of service we can read???
Terms of Service are BS because if we all read them we would never do anything else with our lives!
Bought some software the other day, went to install it and was greeted with 20 pages of terms! Hands up who reads these things?
This is all pretty reasonable. I've been an active member of staff on a few community places, and I can tell you, this is the most relaxed place I've ever seen for staff.
Seriously, just stick to a few deleted posts and a few bans for all but the biggest idiots and it'll be fine. Don't go crazy on the users, it really really turns the majority against you.
As for the spammy comments; just ignore them. Us users just thumbs-down them into oblivion. As for the people who post things like "F*CK YOU FANBOYS", just put them under the banhammer and be done with them.
Also, .co.uk is far more dead, but also far less spammed, and has WAY too many "US & Canada only" competitions posted on it (HINT. HINT.)
"But can it play Crysis?"What is actually so bad about this comment that could lead to a ban???Sure the jokes a little overdone but so what???Your only hurting your selves Tom's
Stop acting like Toms is turning into a fascist superstate. I don't know what it is with Americans and the word "free" but a site moderating itself to remove the **** is not un-"FREE" press. Free press is something a government allows. Commenting like a dbag is something only sites doomed to turn into mudslinging and crowd-pleasing allow.
i wanted to expand a little bit from what I said yesterday. I have this belief that the quality of the comments is somewhat dependent on the quality of the articles in question. For example a well written, relevant, informative piece will lead to intelligent and constructive feedback, where as a badly written non relevant piece such as the youtube adverts(iron man, when you added the games section etc) will lead to silly comments. mainly because you start to attract a different group of people. you can see this trend on a large scale on dailytech, there more scientific articles lead to better discussions than there general news articles.
I think you can decrease the amount of stupid comments by concentrating on improving your site and articles first and foremost, this should lead to less moderating and even better articles as time will be better spent.
P.S
Just looked at the .com version of this article, the .com posters need a good kicking....lol.
...Then maybe keep the sensationlist articles to a minimum. Try to stay objective in all the articles, give balanced opinions and leave out the writers own personal thoughts on such and such.
The news shoudl be 'news' and not 'personal'. But then again, does Dailytech see itself as a full consumer publication type or just a fan page?
I am going to miss the old comments... I always found them extremely amusing!
Good how you wrote the article... It felt as if somebody was screaming at us! (honestly good.. very effective)
Sadly, I have stopped caring about THG a while ago... too late Mr Tuan... too late... And to be honest - could you please at least admit that .co.uk site has been neglected for months / years ? That your team have not even bother to read the content they post here? Not to mention the comments? If your team would read through the comments on your own site - you would know straight away what the problems are and why THG's community is so "anxious" in terms of content, facts and reporting skills... Either way - I am not a regular any more so... I don't care...
I can sort of see were Tom's Hardware is going and I agree with the ethos of clean constructive comments. As an IT professional and a social gamer I use the site to get insight into technology and mainly to see how people respond to it. A good constructive argument on a particular topic speaks volumes in regards to the quality or the article and the type of feeling that is around that topic. I also like Tom's Hardware expand into other areas of IT and that is relating to the people, sites or areas that normally would not be covered.
Good Job and hope to see it expand. I would like to see a competition on a user posting there own articles for Tom's Hardware or provide an interface for user articles.
People react to the news in different ways and they express them to their degree of subtlety in comments section..
I liked the comment from a person who said "I can't post what he is thinking" for the news on Kims parents who fed their baby rotten food and didn't take care of their child resulting the baby's death..
I got cooled after reading that comment and didn't post my reaction..
Still politeness shouldn't get in the way while making some peculiar points, some times it can't be avoided since the news itself was so provocative..
And for articles, I don't know why people should use such a strong language when reacting to others..
Anyways I like the Dailytech's commenting section..
It forces you to read before you post and also gives much freedom to express..
This article is terrible. I would prefer to get a list of GPUs that can play Crysis.
Besides, I'm not even FIRST to comment here.