We do our best to post high-quality material, and we’re grateful to our readers for the generally high level of discussion that takes place in the comments to our posts. If we don’t always respond ourselves, it’s because we’re busy working on the next post.
Recently, however, we’ve had several cases in which readers have inserted as comments entire posts or newspaper articles from their own blogs or publications. This is improper blog etiquette. Such long comments impede rather than encourage discussion, both because they don’t relate directly to the conversation (since they were written for another purpose) and because they are generally very long. If you think a post or article of yours (or a post or article by someone else in some other publication or blog) is relevant to the discussion, please note that and insert a link, perhaps together with a brief quote.
We’re also proud that the comments on South Jerusalem eschew obscenities, invectives, and ad hominem attacks–and we have at times rapped some of you on the knuckles when, in the heat of debate, you’ve violated our rules of decorum.
We welcome all views here, and we are loathe to disallow any comments on our posts. But we do reserve the right to do so if these rules are violated. Please help us keep the discussion at South Jerusalem focused, intelligent, and civil.