submission guidelines

Now that I have an idea how to run this thing, I'll post the ground rules for paging books:

• I've set the comments to "moderate," which means if you try to post, it won't actually go up until I check my email and allow the comment. This is not because I'm a control freak, but because 45 seconds poking around on blogger convinced me that spamming blogs in the comments is a big problem. I don't want my comments all to be "good blog i added it to my bookmarks :) check out my blog its really good and you too can start you're own busines form home," etc. If the moderating of comments becomes too great an annoyance, we can try opening the comments up later.
• I want to talk about books on this blog; that's its main purpose. However, since it isn't an author- or series-themed blog, I don't think we can assume that everyone reading it is familar with any book. Not even one you're sure everyone in the whole freakin' world has read. No matter how popular it is, or how long it has been out, do not put spoilers in a comment. I will define "spoiler" as any information that you reveal that isn't on the books dust jacket back cover, even if you don't think it's that relevant or surprising.
• If people do want to have more in-depth discussions and talk about the details of a particular book, we can form a yahoogroup mailing list so that anyone who doesn't want to have a book spoiled can just choose not to go read the posts there.
  
• I want everyone who might find it to feel comfortable reading this blog. Slurs or any generalizations about a group of people's abilities or behaviours will not go up in the comments. No comments along the lines of "well of course the character does that because she's a women / a Jew / an Inuit and that's how they are, " please. Comments about defining characteristics of a system of belief are fine ("Most Roman Catholics believe that Jesus Christ, a Jew who was born during the time of the Roman Empire, was the Son of God") as long as they are not worded in such a way that they're inflammatory. I've had this policy for years in my classrooms and it's worked well, so I'm going to institute it here.

I'll post again in a bit with a more on-topic post.