Comments Policy

Writer Beware® actively monitors comments on this blog. If you make a comment, we will see it, even if it’s on a post from 2005, when we first started blogging.

However, because we want to foster discussion and acknowledge alternative viewpoints, we have a very liberal comments policy, and don’t do much moderating. Anyone is welcome to comment, including people who vehemently disagree with us.

We like it if you comment under your own name, but we allow anonymous comments because we know that people who speak up about fraud or abuse are often afraid (justifiably) of retaliation.

We delete comments ONLY in the following, extremely limited, circumstances:

  • If they dox someone. We do not condone doxing under any circumstances–even of bad actors.
  • If they’re spam.
  • If they’re obvious self-promotion. If someone told you that leaving a link to your book in blog comments was a good marketing strategy, you probably shouldn’t be taking their advice about other things, either.

Our anti-spam widget sometimes flags genuine comments for moderation–if they include html, for instance–in which case your comment may not appear immediately. We stay on top of these notifications, so any delay is usually brief.