Commenting Guidelines

Although our commenting guidelines have existed since 2013. There hasn't been a need to point these out to people. 

However in recent months the number of offensive comments has increased to the point that these need to be highlighted again. 

99.9999999% of you are kind and considerate people. You appreciate all the hard work that we do to maintain this site. 

However, we will not tolerate personal insults made by anonymous commenters. 

For now and until further notice you will have to have a Google account to be able to comment on the blog. This is a pain I realise, but it will flush out the abusers and stop these abusive comments. 

Here are the guidelines: 

Commenting Guidelines

Debate/banter is fine. Personal insults, flippant attacks and derogatory comments are not acceptable. Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or ageist comments will also not be tolerated.

Please keep potentially offensive religious remarks out of comments. We appreciate that there are many words in everyday use that only upset fundamentalists. These we consider acceptable in the right context.

Any comments deemed inappropriate will be deleted at our discretion, and we also reserve the right to delete replies to deleted comments, entire threads, or close the comment section for entire articles at any time.

Try to keep comments on-topic to the post in question in which you're replying to.

If you see a comment that you think breaks our code of conduct, please email philofaxy at gmail dot com Philofaxy is a place for all Filofax users of all abilities: try to help one-another.

Grammar is not an exact science, commenting about bad grammar on the blog is also taken as being a personal insult. If it really matters to you that much, can we suggest that a polite email is the best way of addressing the issue.

These rules are non-negotiable and may be amended at any time. The commenting code of conduct can always be found at http://philofaxy.blogspot.com/p/commenting-guidelines.html Please feel free to refer to this if you see anyone breaking the guidelines.

This year we will be celebrating 20 years of Philofaxy, help us to continue this friendly community. 

Thank you.

Guest Post - Adding Links to Comments

A big thank you to Ray for this Guest Post... you can try it out on FFAF (Free For All Friday)


If you’re a regular reader of Philofaxy, you can’t help but have noticed what a helpful and informative community of commenters visit the site. In the regular Tuesday and Friday ‘Free For All’ topics, dozens of questions are asked and answered every week. Often, the commenter will add a web address that gives further information or serves as an example. Here’s an example of one:

 

I made that comment before I knew better, so the web address is not a hyperlink. That means you can’t just click it and be taken there. What you have to do instead is copy and paste the link into your browser bar. No biggie, but compare with this example:

Note this time that you are offered not a long web address, but simply some highlighted text. Click anywhere on the highlighted text (although not as it appears above: that’s just an image) and you’ll be taken to the address to which it’s linked.

Hyperlinks like this are easy to create and make it easier for readers of your comments to go and have a look at the page you’re recommending.

To insert a hyperlink into your comment, you just write a very simple piece of HTML code. Here is the format for a hyperlink:
 
<a href="http://yourlink.com"> your text </a>

When this is included with your comment, you’ll see a piece of highlighted text that simply says: your text and is clickable.

Let’s see an example. I want to add a link on FFAT to a great cartoon that I think is very fitting to the spirit of asking and answering questions. Here is the address: http://xkcd.com/1053/

Notice that I’ve included it here as a hyperlink so you can just click it and go there. Now I want to add it as a link in a comment on FFAT. What I want to say is this:

Here’s a cartoon I think is very relevant to this community.

I want the words ‘a cartoon’ to be clickable and to take readers to the relevant web address.

Here’s what I’ll need to post in the comment box:

Here’s <a href="http://xkcd.com/1053/">a cartoon</a> I think is very relevant to this community.

So here we go...

Hit the ‘publish’ button and here’s the result:

Next time you want to include a web address in your comments, why not try hyperlinking?

Thank you Ray, I forget that people don't necessarily understand HTML, it is a second language to me!