This page contains information about the policies regarding user comments that are submitted to the G-Loaded Journal and also general information about how these comments are processed in order to maintain a high quality discussion.
Please, read the definitions page before continuing.
Overview
Comments are very welcome on our web site and we have traditionally used the internal comment system of WordPress in order to let readers freely express their views about the published articles.
Technically, this web site is private web space and, therefore, Freedom of Speech does not apply to it. However, we always try to provide our readers with the opportunity to freely publish their opinion about our work, either positive or negative.
On the other hand, parasitic user behavior such as spamming, stalking and trolling, and, also, automated spamming by bots are known problems for all web sites which permit user comments.
In order to keep providing our readers with the ability to freely express their opinion about our work and at the same time maintain the quality of the discussion at a high level, we have always utilized manual or automatic methods of comment moderation which is based on our policies and general terms of service.
We’d like to thank you for reading this document and also thank you for your understanding.
Comment Moderation Statements
On this Web Site, we reserve the right to moderate individual comments or comment threads as we see fit.
At the same time, we make clear that we are in no way obliged to moderate any comments and any decision about comment moderation is a decision made by the moderator after subjective evaluation on a case by case basis.
Moreover, whenever comment moderation is required, we do everything humanly possible not to alter the expressed opinions. In case this is not possible, the whole comment is discarded without warning or notice. Please read more about the parts of comments that might get deleted or modified by us in the following sections.
We also reserve the right to edit comments in order to fix any issues of invalid HTML markup within the content of the comment or add extra HTML markup in order to make any submitted code snippets or commands more clear to the reader.
How are comments processed?
Once a comment has been submitted to our system, it goes through various levels of moderation as outlined below:
- Very strict automatic spam filtering. If a comment is caught by our spam filters, it is either discarded right away, in which case it is never seen by the moderator, or placed in a spam queue, in which case the moderator may or may not see it and reevaluate it.
- Very strict manual moderation. All comments must be approved by the moderator before they are published. Except for very rare cases, if a comment is caught by the spam filters and placed in the spam queue, it is very unlikely that it will ever be approved for publishing on the live web site.
- Very strict after-approval monitoring and moderation. Even if a comment is approved and published on the live web site, it is still subject to moderation or even removal, if we later decide that it violates any of our policies.
Types of comments we do NOT approve
The following list contains types of user generated content that is not welcome on the G-Loaded Journal. Comments with such content are never approved and are either permanently deleted or placed in a trash bin.
Your comment is very likely to be edited, moderated or deleted, if it contains:
- racist content (based on nationality, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, interests, etc),
- personal attacks or threats toward another commentator or the article author,
- content that is entirely unrelated to the topic of the article,
- poor syntax, grammar and spelling,
- a portion of copyrighted work that exceeds the amount allowed by “fair use” or its use violates the terms of the license under which this copyrighted work has been released,
- spam links, such as links to web pages that are entirely irrelevant to the topic of the article and add no value to the discussion,
- an unacceptable amount of nonsense and paradox, including self contradicting or unnatural claims,
- aims solely at spamming, stalking or trolling and adds no value to the discussion.
Comment fields
This section describes the expected data in the various fields of the comment.
- Name: Your real life name is expected and highly recommended. Alternatively, a nickname may be used. If a sequence of characters that looks like a unique ID is entered in the name field, your comment is very likely to be deleted.
- Email: Your email address is expected and recommended. Please check our Privacy Policy for privacy concerns. Using an email address that looks invalid or appears to belong to a third party, your comment is deleted.
- Web site URL: All web site URLs are deleted, except for the cases the moderator subjectively judges that the URL refers to a personal web site related to computers and open source software. URLs to web sites of any other industry are considered unacceptable and are deleted.
- Comment content: Comments in the English language with proper syntax, grammar and spelling are expected. Comments in the Greek language are also acceptable, in which case stricter syntax and grammar checks apply. Content that is spammy, off-topic, specially crafted for SEO or is nonsense as subjectively evaluated by the moderator will result in your comment to be deleted.
Parts of the comment that might get deleted
In general, comments that contain spammy content according to the moderators subjective evaluation are never approved and actually get deleted most of the time.
If a comment is eligible for approval, data of the following types might be deleted from it:
- links to external web sites/pages that add no value to the comment,
- sequences of characters that look like a unique ID,
- excessive amount of HTML markup or invalid HTML markup.
Please do not reach us about comments
Please do not try to contact us about comments you have submitted on our web site. As already mentioned, all comments are subject to final approval before they are published on the live web site.
If your comment does not show up after 1-2 weeks, you can safely assume that the comment has been discarded. Any such decision either as a result of automatic filtering or manual moderation is final and is not subject to further discussion.
Replies to comments
We are always excited to receive thoughtful comments that really have something to say or comments that contain constructive feedback aiming at the improvement of the published work.
However, please note that the article author generally does not reply to each individual comment.
Thank you very much for taking the time to comment!
Abuse
We always like letting everyone express their views about the published works. But we have to state the following:
There is zero tolerance for any kind of abuse of our comments system.
Any incidents of abuse of our server resources as a result of manual or automated comment spamming or any kind of stalking or trolling towards the article author or other commentator is taken seriously and further action, including reporting you to the relevant ISPs or even to the Authorities if necessary, might take place without warning or notice.
Please refer to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for more information.
Agreement to our policies
Commenting on our web site is optional. If you do not agree with our policies, please do not submit comments.
The submission of a comment means unconditional approval of and agreement to all our policies and terms of service. Please check the legal section for more details.
This document is under constant improvement, so please check back often for updates.