Planet Waves offers an unmoderated discussion area associated with all of our postings. Participants can post freely, though there are a few guidelines that we follow to maintain a trustworthy space — two in particular: self-moderation, and your responsibility to our editors and our community.
The purpose of Planet Waves is to provide a forum for news and opinions about issues influencing all of us, as well as a creative forum for writers, artists, photographers and musicians. Planet Waves, Inc. functions as a news organization, incorporated and recognized as such. I am an accredited investigative reporter and photojournliast and have been an editor since age 14 (read more here). Therefore we set our standards high and ask you to cooperate with that.
We’re interested in your responses to what you read here. It’s extremely rare that any blog has an unmoderated discussion. I believe that as much as possible, an open conversation is a better one. Yet in order to remain relevant to the thousands of visitors a day, that takes some discipline. As the editor of Planet Waves there are times when I choose to intervene, though this does not happen often.
Partly this is a matter of how much in editorial resources we can devote to monitoring the discussion. Remember that the blog you’re reading is the ‘free’ side of a subscriber website. Our small staff is busy with this content stream you read here on what we call pw2 — our blog — and also producing premium content daily, taking care of the clients whose business pays for all of Planet Waves. We are one of the few daily websites or subscriber services that actually answers the telephone when you call.
“What you’re trying to do is be inclusive without being too much of an authoritarian while holding down your writing fort,” is how Fe Bongolan, one of our columnists, described my role. She is correct. Planet Waves is not a democracy. It’s a very progressive monarchy, where you are a guest of the court. Meanwhile, I must attend to my considerable amount of writing and audio, help organize the business and be available to many people.
Let’s go over those two points — self-moderation and your responsibility as a comment contributor to our editors and our community.