It’s great that you are fighting the good fight..but it might start getting a little tougher down the road if there a tons of comments (or something like 4chan take over).

5B: Comments by Trolls and Asshats:

The Big Picture is my personal fiefdom. Fear my wrath, mortals! I will ban anyone whom I choose from posting comments — usually, for a damned good reason, but on rare occasions, for the exact same reason God created the platypus: because I feel like it.
On occasion, I will “unpublish” a comment if I feel it is too impolite, harsh, ad hominem, inappropriate. Off-topic posts have been rising, and I have taken to unpublishing them en masse. If you find yourself publishing way too many comments, consider this: This humble blog is my forum for expressing my ideas. Get your own damned blog.   
The fastest way to lose posting privileges is to misrepresent your host’s complex and nuanced views in some inane bumper sticker comment. Other fast tracks to getting banned:
- Knowingly posting false or malicious material;
- multiple postings under different names;
- generally engaging in troll-like behavior;
- misquoting your host/overlord;
- being impolite in the extreme;
- using fake/mislabelled URLs;
- ad hominem attacks;
- being an asshole.
Right now, someone is reading this and saying to themselves “What does he mean, being an asshole?” If you wondered that to yourself, well the odds strongly favor that you yourself have sphincter-like qualities. Thus, you should consider it likely that you will be banned as a rectoid from posting comments sometime in the near future.
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/the_big_picture_disclosur.html

I think you’ve done a great job of moderating without censoring.

I’ll dissent from you on this point though: I believe that a majority of the responses to that article were negative. I haven’t done a thorough count, but i’d say the disapproving comments win by 3:2 or 2:1 approximately.

If anything, that only goes to show that you’ve done a good job of letting people express their criticism even if you disagree with them. That’s as fair as it gets with civilized discussions, and you should be commended for it.

Like one of the commenters said, I disagree with you is better than saying I disagree with you B*tch.

I read the article from Mandy three times now and agree, she was keeping the emoitional component out of her article and I think for this kind of topic, leaving the emotional component out is better.

She stated the facts, she made the most money, husband never really contributed to the expenses until she reminds him and she knew that if the divorce happens, it would be a long and tortuous road of being in and out of the court of having to deal with the husband not paying the child support and other expenses.

So setting up a trust fund was a smart thing to do and it showed that she was thinking of the future. It worked for her to put down everything in a spreadsheet to see the whats and hows and she can easily move the numbers around to see what works better for them.

For her and her family, this was the right choice. As one lady commented, she thought she was alone and by reading Mandy’s article, she realized that she was not and maybe she can follow Mandy’s example or at least know what her choices are.

We need to trust JD to put down what he thinks is relevant to his site and keep what is not relevant to his site out and we have the right to agree/disagree with the choices JD made in publishing certain articles on his site. As long as we are respectful, we should hope it would be a long time before we see another article from JD regarding removing the inappropriate comments.

Keep up the good work JD

So thank you for spelling out the comment policy. And please keep up the great site!

After reading the ridiculous divorce post and your apology for it, I think I’ll continue to get my financial advice elsewhere.

After my post I was accused of being bitter about my misfortune because what I had written about coming to terms with my financial loss was left on the cutting room floor. I was accused of not thinking things through because explanations are dropped for brevity. What drives me crazy is not only the mean tone but the ASSUMPTIONS people make to fill in an entire back story and then respond to the strawman, especially when any idiot can see that there is obviously so much more to the story.

It’s hard to put yourself out there, even if a comment isn’t true the venom in it can have an impact if it’s directed at you. The comments I merely disapproved of as a reader took on a whole new meaning when I was the writer. My experience took the fun out of participating in comments. I hope Mandy is less sensitive than I.

Regarding the article, perhaps it was the writer’s tone that set people off. I personally thought it was very rational and a brilliant solution (setting up a trust out of the joint assets) for protecting the children. Obviously there is more to the story but in a finance article the emotional aspects were not pertinent or necessary to share.

Right On JD!!

The number of articles in the PF world that deal with marriage and pretend like divorce doesn’t exist is ridiculous, and the lack of that viewpoint here is one of the reasons I’m still here long after I’ve given up on most pf blogs.

That being said – there is a HUGE difference between disagreeing constructively and making comments like the one in this post. It’s amazing to me what people will post simply because they are hidden behind a computer.

I think you do a great job of drawing the line between what is and isn’t acceptable, and as long as moderating doesn’t take too much time from other aspects of the site, I think you should continue with the guest posts. Even if I disagree with the author, or their financial situation is so different from mine that I can’t relate, I think it’s a good idea to get different views on how people manage their finances.

It’s something that isn’t honestly talked about, sometimes even within families. It’s useful to see what motivates people’s decisions, or how they handled a crisis – even if all I pick up is what NOT to do.

A note about the divorce post: I really enjoyed it and would have liked more detail about how the trust was set up for the kids. I never really understood how that works and it could apply to many different situations, not just divorce. People need to take a step back from judging everyone else’s actions, especially because this is a blog about finance.

Lynn from UT

As a child of divorce, I agree its a tough topic, but nothing in the post brought up strong emotions for me, personally. I thought it was perfectly appropriate for the site (although I didn’t read it closely, as I’m not married)!

Keep up the great work.

Obviously she was not callous about the divorce, she simply chose to focus on the financial aspect of the event instead of the emotional process. Couples who do not share the same values are not going to succeed together. Mandy took the pragmatic, mature route IMHO.

I’m supportive of JD’s deletion of abusive, name calling, callous responses.

Anyway, it is unlikely that the haters who have their comments purged are really fully contributing to your community in a positive way.