A Note To New(ish) Readers

Over the last month or so, our readership has increased significantly. If I can speak for Bubs, AKS and NB, I would say that this is a very healthy development for our egos, as well as for the blog itself. It is always nice to have one's thoughts read, as well as have engaging and enterprising discussion follow in the comments section to our posts, whether they be utterly banal or controversial. Trust me when I say I appreciate every visit and visitor to our humble abode in cyberspace. Let's put it this way: two of my top six most-visited websites are Sitemeter links that monitor traffic (three of the others are email, and the sixth is the blog itself).

That said, I think it would be in order to make a couple of things clear about how we generally like to run things. We've always strayed away from formal and juridical rules and tended to rely on norms and self-regulation, so it is worth going over what we conceive those norms to be.

Comments and censorship

We don't have comment moderation and don't intend on starting any time soon. We expect harsh criticism of our ideas and our writing styles at all times. We do not appreciate, but can live with, criticism of who we are and where we come from.

However, there are a number of things that we will not stand, and if you engage in these activities, your comment will be deleted immediately. You cannot personally attack another commenter -- argue with them all you want, but any over-the-top insult (and we are the sole judges of what "over-the-top" means) and your comment gets deleted, even if it made a valid point. You cannot use ethnic slurs or other insults aimed at ascriptive identity markers (religion, nationality, linguistic group etc) against any of the contributors or commenters. Curse words are fully allowed -- indeed, life would be worthless without curse words -- but they should be used judiciously, and never against a fellow citizen of Rs.5land (i.e. you can call Nawaz a fat bastard, but you can't call AKS an insufferable dick...I think).

Remember, it takes us a second to delete a comment and you at least five minutes to write one. In other words, it's a lot easier for us to delete what you wrote than it is for you to write what you wrote. So why waste the effort with some nonsense?

We are bloggers, not journalists

If you would like to see every relevant story in the world covered here, you are in the wrong place. Even if something important is happening, odds are we won't talk about it unless we think we have something interesting to say. When Israel was bombing the crap out of Gaza, some readers complained that we didn't cover it. Well, I can't speak for the others, but I until there was actually something for me to say, I didn't say it -- and when there was something for me to say, I said it. Twice in one week in fact.

Similarly, there have been a couple of comments recently asking us to criticize Altaf Hussain because we criticize Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari. Frankly, this is silly. We don't measure our output by weighing scales: we're not going to balance compliments and criticism of various public figures to make you happy. If you want to hear a compliment or criticism of something you like or hate, I'm sure you can find it somewhere on the web.

There was also a comment recently that said we "hide" behind soccer and episodes of Lost from confronting reality. The commenter, I think, was trying to make the point that we should not advertise our escapist avenues. Again, this is silly. We are four people (for all intents and purposes, we're three; sorry NB) with diverse interests and hobbies. I hate to break this to you, but we are not always consumed by politics. We will publicly engage with other issues that are important or interesting to us, for whatever reason. If you don't like to read about soccer and Lost, you can always scroll down. No worries.

I guess the common thread running through this section is there really is no point getting on us about why we write something or why we don't write something. Get on us about what we write.

Don't be a silent reader!

I strongly believe that a blog's quality owes 50% to the contributors and 50% to the readers. I follow some blogs/columns on the web solely for the interesting comments that follow (any football column on The Guardian is a guaranteed afternoon down the drain because of all the funny and insightful and respectful comments that follow). So make yourselves heard.

By the way, I'm sure our longtime readers (Faraz, Nikhil, Asfand, Farooq, Rabia, Asad, Lindsey, Nabeel, Naqiya, Goc, Moss J etc), all of whom have very frail egos and serious self-esteem issues, can add more to these points. Guys, what are the norms that you think govern this site?