Blog comment rules
If you haven’t commented before, read this.
This blog is moderated. You can contact webmaster Ralph Maughan at rmaughan2@cableone.net. The other webmasters are Ken Cole and Brian Ertz.
Your first comments to this blog go directly into the moderation box and must be approved by the webmaster. Every day new people are approved. About every two weeks someone is disapproved.
After your first comment is approved, your future comments might appear automatically. Permission to comment might be revoked for any reason.
Due to the controversial nature of the issues discussed, hard experience tells that a completely open forum would be a string of insults. We don’t want this to be a forum for free floating emotion. There are quite a few strangers who show up and post a troll. They are usually removed unless posting them would seem to bring the embarrassment they deserve.
It is probably not a good idea for your first post to ridicule or insult the readers and editors of this blog. Comments such as those are common and usually their authors are blocked from making future posts. For obvious reasons it is especially unwise to make such comments from a government owned computer.
We also frown upon the use of Nazi analogies when speaking of wildlife issues. To understand this it is recommended that you understand Godwin’s Law.
We can see your email address, the screen name you use, and your IP number. Readers can only see your screen name and any link to your web page you elect to provide. Although potentially libelous comments are removed, you are legally responsible for them should we fail to locate them.
Please use a valid email address. If we find it is a fake, you will not be able to post anymore. We sometimes try to email new commenter before their comment is allowed through to see if it’s a valid address. Do not try to fool people by using different screen names and fake email addresses, your IP number doesn’t change. We can see what you are doing. The same is true should you issue a threat to someone.
We’ve found that people who think their comments won’t be let through are more likely to use a fake email address. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ever since stronger moderation has been used to guide this blog, readership has gone up (doubled), so it appears to be effective.
Note too that spam, which you will rarely see, is an ever present problem with all blogs, especially those with more readers like this one. Hundreds of spam posts are often received here daily. WordPress (the host of this blog) uses a routine (Akismet) to automatically try to detect spam. Akismet yields more false positives than false negatives. In other words, your comments can unintentionally end up in the spam queue. The best way to avoid this is not to have more than one hyperlink in your comments. Multiple hyperlinks are a leading characteristic of spam sent to blogs.
We try to go through the spam and pull out valid comments, but when faced with reading through a couple hundred unpleasant attempts to take you to porn sites, lead you to web pages that try to download a Trojan horse, or sell you dubious products, this task is often beyond our patience.
While Ralph Maughan is the primary webmaster; Ken Cole and Brian Ertz frequently moderates and posts. The Wildlife News is supported by the Western Watersheds Project by the partial provision of two employees. The Wolf Recovery Foundation also participates.
Ralph Maughan
We moved the rules for commenting on the blog to this separate page so they would not be so intrusive.
We hope to keep it here unless it looks like those who want to comment are not aware of them.
Note. If you comment on this page, please keep your comment on the rules of the blog rather than other matters.
Ralph
Could you change my name to reduce confusion. Thanks.
Rancher Bob,
Thank you. It is a good idea. There are some other folks with common names who comment. I’d be pleased if they made a modification of their name a bit to avoid similar confusion.
Webmaster
Dear Dr. Maughan: I so admire your dedication to wildlife. I was just curious why there is no info on the Butch Otter campaign trail last week in North Idaho. I wish I could have been there. Just heard it over the radio. Some “wolf people” as they were referred to brought two adult wolves to his campaign speech. It seems the crowd’s attention was focused on the wolves.
Just a note that since we begin this news site (mid 2008), we have had close to 5-million page views.
I assume that is “unique” views?
Kudos Ralph, Brian & Ken!
Hello,
Hello,
I read with interest Kathie Lynch’s account of the inter-pack conflict between the “breakaway group” and the Lamar Canyon Pack. My university class witnessed the attack as well as the activity of the Lamars for two weeks during our study in the Park. We have hundreds of still photos of the event, rarely witnessed by biologist much less ecology students. Those interested in seeing these may contact me and I’ll provide the links.
Dr. Maughan,
didn’t know where to put this comment, but the time\date stamp and also the gravatar pics have disappeared for me on this site….awefully confusing to keep up with the threads now, not knowing when a comment was posted. How can I fix this?
Mark L (feel free to email me also)
Despite what gets posted, know that we all appriciate your blog as well as keeping it as clean as possible.
One thing I will bring up is your comment about IP address, they do change and can be changed if you have knowledge to do so, also many of us travel quite often, so will have a different IP quite often.
Just wanted to bring that up, but again, IP can and do change quite often.
Invaluable information! Whole lives may be dedicated to Aldo Leopold’s vision, “The land does not belong to us, we belong to the land.” This article states, with impressive research, our need to understand and care for the natural species and land upon which our species and future depend.
i am new here, a wildlife management student at sokoine univercity,tanzania, this blog realy rise my interest in wildlife.