Revisiting the TOU

Going into a long weekend I wanted to take a moment to lay out some of the changes that I would like to implement to the site through the commenting policy, or Terms of Use (TOU).

The TOU used to be quite lengthy and it was difficult to moderate based on it. It was subsequently shortened to its present version but lately that does not seem to cover a number of problematic comments that I've seen lately.

Please do not discuss the children.

First of all, I think it would be best if we stopped discussing the children altogether. As the TOU states they are innocent and blameless in all of this. Truthfully there is no positive contribution to be made to their lives by strangers discussing them here. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if their clothes are clean, are dirty, are too small, are too big, are too pricey, are too cheap, if they bathed today, yesterday, are bathing now, if their shoes are on the right feet, the wrong feet, or are not on at all. It does not matter if they look happy or sad or sick or well. It does not matter if they eat organic, non organic, junk food, whole food, or processed food. It really does not matter. They are children. More importantly, they are not our children and we know very little about them.

No Personal Attacks

Secondly, in the absence of any interesting content in the past few weeks (or months), there's been an increase in the personal attacks posted here, whether directed at Jennifer, random other internet personalities, or even other commenters on this site. Personal attacks (ad hominem) serve no useful purpose and really create an atmosphere of animosity and nastiness. Recent examples include the many, many comments about appearance and comments with outright name calling, neither of which add anything of substance to the conversation. Wikipedia has a No Personal Attacks policy as well and they do a good job of explaining the what and why (and why not) of ad hominem.

Finally there have been a number of comments about the comments themselves—should we turn them off? Leave them on but moderated? Leave the site completely unmoderated? The answer to the last one is no, by the way, as that would lead to even more commenting chaos than we currently see when people get into a commenting frenzy. Everyone has a different idea about what is acceptable to post and what should be left unsaid; personal commenting filters vary as much as the people posting here.

For now the site will remain open to comments but with the new Terms of Use in place that incorporates the changes mentioned above. As always I am open to suggestions and interested in any and all feedback; it's been helpful to hear what readers have to say on the topic.

Thank you.

Edit:
As with anything new, some clarifications are always going to be in order. I posted this in reply to a comment from last night, but I'm also re-posting here in the hopes that it will clear up some confusion.

Regarding the policy of not discussing the children, I think there's an incredibly fine line to walk and most commenters have been failing at it lately. For example it's one thing to say, "I really wish Jennifer would put helmets on the kids while they're XYZ," and it's another thing to say, "Why does so-and-so always look so dirty?" or "They're going to be so XYZ when they grow up" or "Why does so-and-so look so sad?" The first type of comment is okay because it's not discussing a child as much as discussing Jennifer's parenting choices (and subsequent decision to photograph that choice and display it online). The other types of comments I feel are off limits. Children get dirty; children get scrapes and bruises; children are kids, simply put. It's not right to make disparaging remarks about their appearances or their behaviors, or make a statement about them that's based solely on a photograph, and I'm trying to limit that.