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Election 2004

"SFist" has won the name election with a commanding 52 out of 81 votes. Pundits say the low turnout likely has to do with voter ambivalence. SFist was largely considered the most 'presidential' of the names, and coasted to a majority of all votes as well as the necessary plurality. Supporters of EssEffist think that if ranked choice voting had been in place, they may have done better at the polls. Look for the SFist administration to purge the ranks of appointed proper names with political patrons more in line with SFist's goals.

--Ombudsperson Jackson

The Trouble with Comments

Several readers have contacted us, either privately or publicly, to complain that they feel we're enforcing our comments policy semi-sporadically, and that they feel we delete comments less for policy reasons and more because we just don't like what is being said.

The current SFist policy on comments is that individual contributors monitor comments to their individual posts. Some of us will delete anonymous posters, some will not. Some of us will delete off-topic posts, some will not. Some of us only delete offensive posts, flamewars, and spam -- and some of us will probably also just leave the spam up as well. We do not have a policy, either stated or unstated, of deleting comments that writers or the editor disagree with.

That said, it does seem to this Ombudsperson that the way we've implemented our comments policy ends up creating the appearance that deleting comments we disagree with is what we're doing. Many of the deletion decisions have been made because the postings were anonymous, since it seems that people tend to be less likely to post negative comments under their real name, or because negative comments make it more likely that a discussion will degenerate into a flame war. But we also agree that being too quick on the trigger with the "delete this comment" option on the blog editing software isn't productive either. Others should have the chance to read negative comments and respond to them, either to agree (we hope not) or stand up for us (we wish!). However, we’d like to add this caveat – all comments, even the negative ones, should be relevant to the post on which the comment is being made. "This post is poorly written" is a relevant post; "This site sucks" is not. For your "this site sucks" concerns, please use the email addresses listed below.

Negative commenters among you, please rest assured that we've had some long discussions about the consequences of our comments policy enforcement, and have agreed to dial it down in response to the concerns we have received.. (We also decided in response to create this Ombudsperson column in the first place -- truly rewarding your pain with more punishment).

We do want to hear what you think about our site, and we're big boys and girls, we can take the negative feedback (really we can). This site would be nothing without you, our readers, so we want it to respond to your concerns, and hope to provoke some kind of response from you as well. We do read all the comments we get, even if we don't post a response ourselves. And if you'd like an individual response, please remember that you're always welcome to email us privately with concerns, and we will endeavor to respond quickly and thoroughly to you (some of you who have emailed us privately are probably still trying to get through the War and Peace-length email responses you received). You can always reach our editor at jackson@sfist.com, our associate editors at eve@sfist.com and cheshire@sfist.com, and this associate editor and acting Ombudsperson at rita@sfist.com.