Friday, April 18, 2008

Blog and commenting policy

It is a bit strange to have a policy for a blog I suspect, but I do feel that there is a need in it (if not now then perhaps in the future). This post will be edited slightly from time to time.

Blog topic
It is very easy to see that this blog is not very focused. From its title it appears to be a math blog, but the topics I cover on Math Pages are broader. I often write about physics and computers (mainly about Linux and internet news). There are two main reasons for this. First of all, while I study math I also do some physic courses and I am very interested in physics. The same is true for computers. Secondly, I don't have a list of topics to write about. I just write about what interests me. This blog, together with my StumbleUpon blog cover most of my interests in terms of topics. By not focusing this blog on one subject I make it easier for myself to come with ideas to write about.
I hope that what I write will be useful and interesting for other people, but I blog for myself not for you. So while you are all encouraged to comment or even to ask me to write about specific question, I am not going to listen to claims that I am "too far of my blog topic".

Comments
In math comments should be encouraged, in my opinion. You are all welcome to comment on any post I wrote on this blog as long as your comment is not spam or uses offending words.
To be slightly more specific - comments that contain the following will be deleted:
1. Links to dangerous sites - sites that try to install malware of any sort.
2. Links to sites that are considered dangerous by Google - I know that there are sites in this list that were compromised once, and are no longer infected. But as long as they appear as dangerous in Google database I will consider them as such. I am not going to try and do investigations.
3. Personal attacks. If you disagree with me or with someone else do it politely.
4. Links to sites unrelated to the post topic, unless it is your site and is linked from your signature and not from within the comment itself.
5. Links to adult sites.

Guest posts
If you want to write a guest post on Math Pages, use my email to contact me. Basic rules are as follows:
In the post you will get a link to your blog (or any other site as long as it is not adult or infected with malware), your name will be clearly indicated and if you want a short (one or two sentence) description of yourself (or your site/blog) will be added.