We looooove our blog comments — but we’re also very firm believers in the value of online civility and respectful conversation, and we’re all too aware that conversations about homes can quickly devolve into subjective arguments over what qualifies as “good taste.” We find these kinds of discussions a boring waste of time.
While we fully support every reader having strong opinions and aesthetic visions, anything less than complete civility is unacceptable on Offbeat Home. Our comments are moderated carefully.
We reserve the right to delete or edit comments that strike us as:
- rude
- judgmental
- ranty
- attacking
- off-topic
- self promotional
This doesn’t mean, of course, that you can’t disagree with people here. You just need to do so constructively and with respect. You also need to do it with integrity, which means that if you want to be constructive, you better not hide behind an anonymous comment. We have a very itchy moderation trigger finger with anonymous commenters.
Maybe this policy seems harsh, but ultimately it boils down to this: We think online bitching and snarking is a waste of everyone’s time. Since we pay the bills to keep Offbeat Home online, we’re pretty clear about the kind of conversation we’re willing to host.
We understand that this comment policy won’t be a good fit for everyone’s communication style — and we’re fine with that. Thankfully, it’s a great big internet out there, and we heartily encourage you to share your thoughts and opinions however you might like via your own blog or website, or on another site that matches your communication style.
We believe in respectfully agreeing to disagree and moving on to the things that really matter — like living in our homes in the ways that work best for each of us, acknowledging that how that looks may be different for different people.
Sponsored post commenting policies
Our sponsored posts are paid content from a business we’ve chosen to partner with, and if you like Offbeat Home, we ask you to show a little respect for the businesses who keep our websites online. We reserve the right to remove any comments from a post that we don’t feel is in the sponsor’s best interest. We don’t do this often (usually, sponsors respond to negative comments on posts about them) but we do reserve the right to do so. These sponsors are how we are able to publish Offbeat Home.
Business owner commenting policies
While we love having business owners involved in the discussions here on Offbeat Home, the comment section is NOT the place to promote your business. If you’d like to promote your business on Offbeat Home, you’re much better off joining us as a sponsor.
- Please do not use your business name anywhere in your comment — not as your name, not in the body of your comment, not anywhere. You may use your website in the URL field, but if you use a name like “Seattle Interior Designer” or “Affordable Feng Shui,” your comment will be deleted.
- Don’t leave meaningless comments. We see a lot of businesses who come and leave comments on dozens posts that say things like “Very unique!” “Love this!” or “Awesome home!” This is a half-step above spam, and we delete it.
- That said, if you place an advertorial, feel free to respond to reader comments to your sponsored post!
Again: we understand these policies won’t be popular with all readers — and that’s fine! Thank goodness it’s a great big internet out there. 🙂
Offbeat Home Commenting Policy by Ariel Meadow Stallings, Offbeat Home is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.