The possibility to discuss and comment on blog posts is a valuable characteristic of the Kluwer Patent Blog. The editors of this blog welcome the increasing number of readers and comments on posts over the past months. Questions raised were answered, opinions expressed were welcomed with counter-opinions, some errors were corrected, and relevant discussions were started.
However, where dissenting opinions met the debate on this blog was not always fruitful or informative. At times the more comments were sent in, the more repetitive the arguments became. More importantly, some commenters became personal and, instead of bringing forward (legal) arguments to make their point, just wrote that other commenters produced nonsense, were not to be trusted or were too ignorant to understand what was going on. We have in particular encountered these kind of ad hominem attacks in posts on the EPO and UPC, which led us not to publish certain comments.
In our opinion, repetitiveness and especially any kind of personal attacks are detrimental to the quality and readability of the comment section and its open environment. Therefore, we ask our readers and commenters to follow these guidelines:
- Be polite. Avoid derogatory comments and respond to the argument, not its messenger. Any ad hominem attacks will not be tolerated. If a comment includes such an attack, the whole comment will not be published. There will be no discussion on this.
- Avoid repetitiveness. If you haven’t convinced the other person after commenting twice, you will probably not succeed the third time.
- Be specific and concise. A reaction of 200 well-chosen words is often better than a lengthy exposé.
We want to be a platform for debate and be as open as possible. To streamline and keep the debate going, we have decided to limit the period to send in comments to 5 days after a post has been published. We hope you understand and please keep on posting your comments!
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