A Slight Change In The Commenting Rules (Don't Worry, It'll Be Fine)

As anyone who has ever spent longer than five minutes around these parts knows, we have the best commenters on the planet. We have yet to make a joke that's funnier than about 10-15 comments that show up in the first five minutes after making a post. We've made our peace with this; we never thought we were that funny anyway.

Well, we're making some slight adjustments in the comments section, some of which you might have already noticed. It'll make everything nice and pretty. So here's how it works.

1. As most of you have figured out already, every commenter now has his/her own page which features all his/her own comments. You can also upload an avatar, an exercise that has already culminated in us being mocked for using a picture of ourselves. (We weren't going to use a Spader picture.) If you haven't done so — or if your picture is blurry because you figured out the avatar too soon — we suggest loading up yourself an avatar, preferably of someone who is not wearing pants.

2. Here's the big one: You no longer have to ask to be approved for comments. That is not to say that the approval-based system no longer exists. Far from it, in fact: There's now a stricter system in place. It's just that, as you might have noticed, you can go ahead and type in comments on stories without having been explicitly sent an invite. What happens to these comments? They go into a little queue, and at the end of the day, we dig through this queue and see which commenters appear to have something to contribute to the Deadspin experience. If you're approved — and we're going to be rather stingy about this — your comments will appear on the site, and you'll be a member of the gang. So if your comment shows, congrats: You're in. If your comment doesn't make it, it doesn't mean you're permanently out of the loop. You just need to keep trying. As we have established, you gotta raise your game around here. Remember The Commentist Manifesto from next week? Let this line be your guide: "Thou shalt not comment without saying anything interesting (Think before thou type, then don't type it, then come back in a couple minutes when thou hast a solid poop joke to add)."

Indeed. If you have any questions, you can drop us a line, but on the whole, it should be fun. So bring it!

The Commentist Manifesto [Deadspin]