As you may be aware, I recently started moderating comments as I've had problems with spammers in the past. I felt it might be helpful to set out a more formal set of guidelines for comments so people know what I'm willing to accept. I've posted them to the right. Essentially they boil down to the following:

1. English language only (this is an English-language blog, after all, and I've had a lot of Chinese spam comments on here). I don't care how bad your English is (seriously, I have seen some terrible written English from native speakers, so don't worry too much if you're not good).

2. If you're clearly just spamming and quite blatantly have nothing to contribute to the discussion I will not approve your comment.

3. Finally, I will not accept any comments that are hateful. I've got no problem with colourful language but anything I consider genuinely nasty or unpleasant will not be approved.

As long as you obey those rules, I'm happy to accept your comments here, so please don't be dissuaded from commenting by the fact that comments are moderated.