We’ve been listening to our readers’ criticisms about our blog, and without a doubt, the 1 complaint that I’ve heard more than any other regarding the blog is that people are displeased with our decision to disable the ability for readers to post comments. Well, we’ve heard your complaints and since we want our readers to enjoy their stay here, we’ve decided to once again allow readers’ comments.

However, there’s a condition: instead of all comments showing up immediately like before, from now on all comments will need to be approved by us before they’ll be published. It’s just a precaution, you understand. It isn’t that we don’t like you guys or don’t trust you, we just don’t want this place to turn into a circus like it was when we first started it. The reason we disabled the comments in the first place was because we were tired of getting trolled; it had gotten to the point where we were receiving more troll and hate comments than legitimate ones. Having said that, here are Da Rules for readers’ comments:

1. All comments must be on topic. They have to be in some way connected to the subject of the article. Any and all off-topic posts will be rejected and deleted, no questions asked. So if all you have to say here is something along the lines of “I remember you; you annoyed me in 2005 on TV.com!” or “I know who Lord Dolmus is!”, or “I’m studying to be a lumberjack, can you give me tips on how to chop down trees?” or “Lose weight now, ask me how”, then don’t bother typing it, because it’s not going to get published. It’s very simple: if your comment doesn’t in any way pertain to the blog posts in question, then your comment will be rejected or marked as spam and will not be published.

2. All comments must be respectful. Both to us and to the other people wishing to comment. We don’t expect everyone to share our unique perspectives on things, and it’s perfectly OK with us if you disagree with something that one of us says, just as long as you do it in an intelligent, mature, responsible manner. However, if you’re just posting to insult us or to troll the site, your post(s) won’t ever see the light of day, so don’t bother typing them. If you want your comment to be approved, then it should be something other than “I hate this site!” or “You guys suck” or “You’re pathetic”. Be on-topic, polite and mature about what you post or your comments will be rejected, no questions asked. We promise to keep our comments polite, respectful and professional, so we expect you to do the same. Fair’s fair.

3. Only registered users may post comments. No anonymous comments will be published. It’s nothing personal; just business. This is just a way to ensure that we only receive legitimate comments here, and a way of preventing hate posts from Internet Tough Guys who hide behind the anonymity of a computer screen, spam posts from trolls and kids whose posts scream “I’M THIRTEEN AND UNSUPERVISED!!”

4. It goes without saying that no racist, sexist, political, religious or homophobic comments will be tolerated. Any such commentary will likewise be rejected and deleted, no questions asked.

Basically, we ask that you keep your comments clean, be respectful and stay on topic. We also reserve the right to end comment threads at our discretion.

We look forward to hearing your comments in the coming weeks and months.