Comment Registration: "Say What?"

I can see from the comments on the post about comment registration that I need to clarify the options. I'm sitting in a frequent flier club Charlotte at the moment, but will offer some clarification tomorrw. In the meantime, check out TypeKey's authentication / registration service, and be sure to read the extended FAQ.

New Contributor: Nathan Hamm

We've had a number of new contributors join us recently, one of whom is Nathan Hamm. Nathan co-publishes The Argus weblog, which focuses on Central Asia in its content. Stop by and check it out.

IP Banning Policy

We've had some questions about our banning people from commenting on the site due to violation of our comment policy. Our policy is pretty straight-forward: we expect spirited debate, but we expect that debate to be both respectful and civil.

With over 80,000 comments on the Iraq page alone, our volume is such that we can never read all comments from all quarters, and certainly many comments which violate our policy (or at least, that do in our eyes), slip through the cracks. Nonetheless, the policy is our aspiration (to read more on the policy, go here).

We can also say that with well over 100,000 comments across the entire site, we've banned fewer than 40 people for policy violations, and never--not in any instance--did we ban someone for articulating a particular point of view. In each case the issue was their method, not their perspective.

Still, we want transparency related to our policy, so one of the ways we'll be using the Publisher's Desk is to make a public accounting of who we ban and why. So here's our promise: whenever we ban someone from commenting, we will post on this page the comment we felt violated the policy, without exception. That way (1) we'll have a record of those with whom we took this measure and why, and (2) we and you can get a better sense, through discussion over time, of what is and is not over the line.

Feedback Wanted: Comment Registration

We're interested in your thoughts on comment registration, and would appreciate your response to the poll in the right-hand column (on the main Publisher's Desk page). Thanks in advance.

Welcome To The Publisher's Desk

Welcome to our new sub-page: The Publisher’s Desk. Michele and I have found we need a forum to keep readers posted on changes in the site, to address questions, forecast changes, etc. … and “voila,” The Publisher’s Desk is born. Michele and I will be the only contributors to this page, and it won’t necessarily be updated daily … but it will be the place to visit to keep current with our administration and production of the site.

We'll be futzing with the templates and such for a while, so don't expect everything to look perfect for a few days. In the interim, keep checking in, thanks for visiting, and as always, thanks for reading The Post.

Advertiser Policy

The Command Post welcomes advertisers of all perspectives. Our decision to accept an advertiser, however, is not an endorsement of that organization, individual, or product, and we reserve the right to refuse all advertising that we believe does not reflect the civility or respect we require for participation in our forum.

To adverstise on command post, click the avertising strip in the right-hand column of any Command Post page.

Comment Policy

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: We welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.

Our History

The Command Post is not a professional news service … it’s a news resource published by a group of bloggers from around the world trying to post the latest professional news that we have seen, heard, or read related to our topics of focus. In doing so we always cite, and where possible provide a link to, the original source, and we encourage readers to follow those links and see the original sources first-hand.

The Command Post was created at 8:02 A.M., 20 March 2003, the first full day of hostilities in the Iraq War (you may read the first post here). The genesis was this post, written earlier that same morning, by Michele Catalano at A Small Victory:

the warbloggers corner? So many of us are blogging minute by minute about this war. We are all basically posting the same news links, with our own comments added in.
We should have come up with something like The Corner to blog this war together.

Alan read that post, and having a relationship with Michele, quickly set up the first iteration of Command Post at blogspot (you may see the original URL here). We welcomed all comers as contributors, and quickly enlisted over 120 bloggers from around the world in the effort. We exceeded our blogspot server capacity in four days, and on Sunday, March 23rd 2003 we registered www.command-post.org and moved the site to a new hosting space at HostingMatters.

The site quickly became a means of tracking the war for readers, and a tip sheet for journalists, around the world. Glenn Reynolds noted that Command Post was popular PC screens in the CNN control room, and within one month we passed over 2 million unique visitors.

As a means of keeping the Iraq page focused on news and not opinion, we created the Op/Ed page on 24 March 2003. Noting the demand for a deep source of global news items on a narrow set of topics, we decided to add two other pages to Command Post: the Global Recon page (which originally focused on North Korea and Iran, on 3 April 2003), and the Global War on Terror page (on 12 April 2003). With the ramping up of the 2004 presidential election we decided to devote a page to news about the campaign, and added the 2004 page on 8 June 2003. Because the mission of the Command post is to provide deep news content on a few narrow topics, we’ve added no news pages since June 2003, but did add the Publisher’s Desk on 30 June 2004 as a means of posting administrative items, contests, and other Command Post-specific information.

On the first day of the site’s existence, Michele posted on A Small Victory:

I see it as a temporary blog, just for war news and thoughts and a bit of banter between all of us - mostly very short posts and lots of links, so you are not taking anything away from your own blog by posting there. There are no posting requirements, no pressure.

It’s become somewhat more than that: As of this posting (1 August 2004,), the Command Post has registered over 4,400,000 unique visitors, and posted over 14,000 news items, and has registered over 133,500 reader comments. We've had the Iraq, GWOT, and 2004 pages added to the Library of Congress MINERVA collection. The site was issued press credentials to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and has been issued press credentials to the Republican National Convention in New York city. The site has also done some good, raising $15,000 in two days for the Tom Family Education Trust.

It’s been a great run … we love the site, and hope you do, too.

To contact the Command Post, email Alan at alan at command-post dot org or Michele at michele at command-post dot org. Note that we have full-time jobs and may not be able to offer a rapid reply, but we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Becoming A Contributor

The Command Post is always looking for new contributors, and generally accept new contributors based on our confidence that they:

• Are good writers
• Will regularly post to the site’s news pages
• Will honor our posting guidelines and our requirement of civility and respect

If you’re interested in joining our ranks, please email alan and command-post dot org or michele at command-post dot org.

Posting Guidelines

The Gist: The news pages (2004 / Iraq / GWOT / Global Recon) are for straight news posts only. No opining on those pages, and no posting items because they further an agenda (e.g., posting only items that trash Bush / Kerry because you want people to “see the truth” about Bush / Kerry). Contributors are free to state opinion in the comments, but must honor the policy of respect and civility. Contributors can post anything they want on Op/Ed, as long as it honors our values of civility and respect. Anything beyond the pale of respect and civility goes on contributor’s home blogs. If contributors post anything that they’ve also posted on their home blog, they must indicate it’s a “Cross Post.” If contributors do link to their own blog, they should do so because it really adds value, not because it's opportunistic to self-link. All contributors must read and agree to the “Grant of Rights” on our posting page, and to join our Yahoo! Group.

Specifics for news pages:

• Our focus is on news and links ... off-topics issues or rants are for the comments contributors’ home blogs

• We ask that all contributors post The Command Post button and link on their home blog

• Contributors should first read current posts to make sure they're not replicating news that's already posted

• To make things easy on bandwidth and our dial-up readers contributors should post large photos on their own blog and link to them from TCP

Specifics for the Op/Ed page:

• Contributors are free to post more detailed analysis, opinions, editorials, etc. on the Op/Ed page

• Contributors should try to avoid totally off-the-wall rants or extended fiskings on Op/Ed … we think your home blogs are a better place for this because they better reflect your personal style and perspectives

• We very much want to establish a forum of respect and intelligence, and will make editorial choices to keep crudity and insulting commentary off the site.

Those items being said, we will delete posts that don't honor these simple suggestions ... they’re much of the reason so many have found the Command Post of use.

Our Values

How We Play: At The Command Post we value:

• Accuracy: We post accurate stories, and when we’ve been inaccurate, we correct ourselves.

• Credit: We always appropriately cite our news sources, giving credit where credit is due.

• Diversity: We offer readers a diverse range of global news sources, posted by a diverse range of contributors.

• Flexibility: We reserve the right to get smarter and change things as we learn.

• Fun: We want readers to have fun visiting the Command Post, and create opportunities for readers to engage with the site and each other in fun and novel ways.

• Participation: We create ways for readers to interact with the site and each other, so that visiting Command Post is an active and not passive experience.

• Speed: We do everything possible to be first to post breaking and obscure news items relevant to the topics we cover.

• Tolerance: People of all perspectives are welcome as Command Post readers and contributors, but we require that all parties treat each other with civility and respect if they are to enjoy the forums we provide for posting or commentary.

Our Vision

What We Want To Be: Our vision is for readers to regard The Command Post as the most valuable news source on the web for the few topics we cover. For us, this means being respected for the depth of our content, the quality of our readership, the tolerance of our forums, and the speed with which we report breaking news. We also recognize that in posting about our topics we are recording their history, and our vision is for historians to regard our archives as a robust historical record of the events we’ve covered.

Our Mission

Why We’re Here: The Command Post is first and foremost a public service. The site exists to:

• Offer readers a deep range of global news sources on a narrow range of topics, and in doing so, give readers an opportunity to “triangulate” the media on specific news topics.

• Provide a forum in which readers can participate in media through comments and dialogue.

• Advance the practice of blogging as open-source citizen journalism.

• Reward contributing blogggers by creating increased awareness of their home weblogs.