Here are a few things you might like to know about comments on Gabriolan.ca.

Your comments are very welcome here
We love hearing from you.
How to add a comment
When viewing the Gabriolan.ca home page, note the linked phrase underneath each entry. It will say something like No comments yet; add yours, or 7 comments so far. Click on that phrase and you’ll be taken to the comment form. Fill that out, click the submit comment button, and you’re done.

If you’re viewing the page for an individual blog post, just scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the comment form there. (If the post is old, comments might be turned off to help us fight spam.)

Everybody can read your comments
Your comments appear on the site; other readers can see them and respond to them. If you’d rather send a private note to the blog owner, please use the contact form instead.
Please be kind
You are welcome to disagree with anybody about anything, but please be kind. Disagree with facts or arguments, provide facts of your own, or show us all a better way. But be polite and respectful while you’re at it, and refrain from name-calling and other nastiness. Attack ideas if you wish, but do not attack people.

Please don’t be snarky.

If you see a comment here that seems nasty or offensive to you, please forgive us for letting it through, and forgive the person who wrote that comment for offending you. We all have lapses in judgment and bad moments, right? If you respond, please be our example and demonstrate your fine manners. Show us how to be kind to people even when you’re disagreeing with what they say.

When somebody annoys you, can you respond politely? Can you be kind, even if you think you’re dealing with a certified idiot or a Canada Grade A moron? If you can be polite, kind, and respectful, then please do post your comments. Otherwise, please don’t.

About those monsters
When you post a comment, a little monster icon monster2will appear next to what you’ve written. The monster is auto-generated, based on your email address. The idea is that every commenter is represented by a different monster – it makes it easier to see who said what at a glance when dozens of people have commented on a post. If you like your monster, you’re set. If you dislike your monster, go to gravatar.com and get a gravatar of your own. Then the gravatar image you create will replace the monster who currently represents you.
It helps if you use a real email address
When you post a comment, you’re asked to provide an email address. This address is visible to the blog owner and moderators, but is never visible to people who read the blog.

We won’t spam you, share your address, or otherwise do you wrong. We don’t send bulk mail and have rarely written to any of you. But once in a blue moon we might like to send you a note to say sorry, your comment can’t be published for such and such a reason. Would you like to modify your comment? Or sometimes a reader says Can you put me in touch with Commenter McGabriolan? I’d like to buy him a beer! Of course we won’t share your address, but sometimes the other guy has given permission for us to give you his address.

If you don’t want to use your main email address, consider using a spamgourmet address instead. Our post How to stop spam and stupid email explains about that.

Still not convinced? OK, we love you anyway. If you’re going to use a fake address, please use one that ends in example.com; then we’ll know it’s a fake and we won’t bother trying to contact you at all, even if there’s something we’d like to tell you. If you use the same example.com address each time, your monster icon will be consistent.

You can add formatting to your comments
You can use bold, italics, or quotation marks in your comments. And if you’re mentioning a website, you can add a link to it if you wish. Here’s how to do that.
You can follow the comment conversation
One way of keeping up with the new comments on Gabriolan.ca is to watch the recent comments section on the sidebar. If you want to use a more advanced method, subscribe to the Gabriolan.ca comments RSS feed. To follow just the comments for a particular post, subscribe to the RSS feed for that post. Here’s an explanation and detailed directions for you.
We don’t publish email addresses in comments
We don’t want to reward email address harvesters by posting email addresses on the site, so we don’t publish email addresses on the site – not at all. If your comment asks blog readers to contact you directly and then gives your email address, that address will be removed by a moderator. We’ll replace it with a link to the site’s contact form – readers can use that and ask to be put in touch with you. We’ll be happy to forward any notes people send that are intended for you, and then you can reply as you choose and continue the conversation privately.
Sometimes comments are closed
The page about closed comments explains why comments on a particular post might be closed.