This is another reason (of so many) why I love your site so much. I love to learn about K-entertainment (including Drama and Pop) and love to hear comments, too. And to have so base rules just to remind us that even though we only virtually exist, being honest but still respectful always comes first.

Thank you, thank you and thank you very much.
Your admirers.

oops! I am guilty if not using caps if am using pc. I guess I should be more considerate :p. thanks for giving us this 'home'. I feel safe in expressing my embarrassing love for the crush of the moment and my occasional rants here :)

LOL at the punishments. :D

So spoilers do count as "Report this comment" material...

But is it ok to mark paragraphs with [SPOILER] [/SPOILER] or something equally attention-grabbing?

Sometimes we need to mention a possibly spoilery bit in a comment when discussing things. Specially in the OT.

Or does the spoiler rule apply to (i.e.) an ep13 spoiler inside the ep12 recap only?

Thank you for laying out the rules and trying to keep things sane down here. :D

Can we comment on the commenting policy, or is that too meta? In any case, thanks for clarifying your commenting policies. I'm sure they will contribute to the conversation. I'll do my best not to violate them! And I appreciate the "no 'first' rule, as that was rather annoying. Can you consider a no "thanks" rule, too?

Thank you for putting up the rules over here, specially because I so much love your website but I stopped reading the comments altogether to avoid being spoiled, reading people bashing other people comments and most recently the amount of debates about the "First" or "Thanks" comments.
But you should have warned me not to read it at work, I laughed so hard at this one in specific "Spelling, plz. If u rite like dis, ur commt wll git delet’d. also, lee minoz will nevur luv u back. u duns want dat, do u?"
Hahahaa, Sould've known that you make everything funny.

Wohooo!! Cool beans! At least we get to be more civilized in commenting and getting rid of the trolls.

Great...just the punctuation bit might be difficult sometimes...thanks!!

javabean and girlfriday getting arrogant eh

"Spelling, plz. If u rite like dis, ur commt wll git delet’d. also, lee minoz will nevur luv u back. u duns want dat, do u?"

LOL. I usually skip over comments like this, but sometimes one too many like that can get irritating and gets on my nerves. ;) The punctuation thing too. I know that the "first" comments have been banned way, way back, the "thanks" thing doesn't really bother me, but I've always wanted to comment on the queue-cutters for being douchebag queue-cutters. Haha

Is it okay if I click report this comment on #11? ;)

Hey there today is my anniversary with Dramabeans its been a whole year ! Omgaaah 365 day where ive never stopled refreshing these pages ! You guys are the best community ive ever been I andi dont see my self get out in so much time !! Till I cant read haahah !
As for the policy im so confused ! Why would any one commentt badly C'mon ! This is the best thing ever !!!! Love you guys ! Love you my family

Thanks for the guidelines... I haven't posted here because some people can be just downright mean! It spoils the intention of Dramabeans, which is sharing and constructive criticism--just simple fun and appreciation of the recaps. Thanks JB & GF... I'll always be a fan.

Haha! Can I be honest for a minute and admit that the "first" and "thanks" totally fooled me for a long time and I just recently figured out what people were doing? The "firsts" have been around since before the comments were threaded. I remember during BOF there would be at least 20 people claiming "first" and I would just shake my head and think "dummies." So I just aimed that some of those dummies were still around.

With the "thanks" I honestly gave people credit for being polite. I thought it was I little superfluous to do it every time but a nice gesture nonetheless. It wasn't until IHYV came along and I've had a lot to say about a drama for the first time in a long time that I realized I was taking my time to write well thought out comments, only to have them buried under a mountain of monosyllabic filler

hehehe I totally love the last one. thanks for this awesome reminder! every site needs this. such a cool role model. keep up the good work :D

This was a very good idea. With a community so big (and plain awesome), I believe some rules are needed to cut off (following your metaphor) the drunk guy at the party. It kind of amazes me you guys didn't establish a policy up until now.

Keep up the good work ladies!

Thanks ladies!!!! Needed this safety tool. Been a while since things have been going off hand :)

I've seen some comments on different threads every so often questioning what sort of comments are and are not allowed here, so having this list of rules is great! Clears things up once and for all. The rule about "firsts" reminds me of another thing I see happening in the comments that I've never really understood: piggybacking one's own (often lengthy) comments on someone else's, even if it is unrelated, just to be near the top of the page. I guess it doesn't really hurt anyone per se, but I've always found it a bit disrespectful, another form of queue-cutting. Just an observation.

Oh no! D: I feel horrible about the 'thank you' comments I've made... I really thought that people were expressing their thanks until now :(
But still, thank you for the guidelines! I now know how to be mindful of other commentors :D yay! :D

This is as civilized a site for discussing Korean drama as it gets.
There are a few stars who have some extremely aggressive fans, who will go after people who speak ill of Their Precious, or criticize the dramas that the latter appear in, such that no discussion is possible. I honestly fear and loathe such fans in equal parts. I hope these new policies will take care of their acts of internet harassment and verbal violence in here, and we can speak freely again. TQ, I mean, Thank you.

BTW, if BTW is OK, is TQ bad form?

the "no firsts" rule was long overdue! i never fully understood why people did it—simply thought they wanted to be first. after awhile, i just sort of guessed for myself why it was done. i guess on here, it works as a placeholder too.

hopefully the people who do this will understand that it encompasses "thank you"s or "thank you for the recap!" comments that i've frequently seen, and other variations that weren't really written so much with the motive of thanking the author as to use as a placeholder?

that said, at the same time, i've never seen anything wrong with simple comments like "thank you for the recap!" that are genuinely appreciative. because that's really all a poster might want to say for that particular recap.

it just gets a bit suspicious (and obvious, seeing how the comments are time stamped) if a recap post goes up and barely a minute later a "thank you" goes up as the first comment. one minute is nowhere near enough time to read and chuckle over your recaps!

I've been reading your site since... 2007/08? Which is pretty much forever in internet terms.

Thank you for being a sane and safe place for all to read and comment.

God knows I been to enough sites with comments that makes me questions the sanity of the commenters there.

And love your wicked humour... "that belligerent drunk guy who drinks all the tequila and is trying to make snow angels in potato chip crumbs". Lol...

A word to queue-cutting folk:
for me it doesn't really matter if your comment is on the top of the page or not. I normally go by commentators' names, since many of them are frequenters here and I'd like to know what they think, no matter on what page they post.
I also read short comments, since they are short and easy to swallow.
I check if anyone replied to my posts, which is normally somewhere in the end, because I'm a bit late. So, see you guys on the late pages, OK?

Hallelujah!

I've been a follower of this site for a long time (6 years! well... it's a long time for me :P). I remember I used to spend just as much time reading everyone's comments to an episode as reading the recap itself. I loved seeing what everyone else noticed, and discovering new things about the episode that I hadn't realized on my own!

I've found, though, that I've been more and more disappointed with the comments. People being unnecessarily rude to others, people piggy-backing their comments, people vying for attention... I found myself being upset rather than having fun. Eventually, I've just stopped reading comments.

I'm hopeful that these rules will improve our comments section! I know that people here are intelligent and fully capable of having polite conversations, whether they be healthy debates or squee-fests of our favorite stars.

Thank you for setting up the Commenting Policy! I'm looking forward to reading comments again!

I wonder if Reply Notification system could be introduced here. Also, a Thumbs Up button, perhaps?

There are so many reasons why I love dramabeans - and top on the list is - you gals have such class - in your recaps and in who you are - even when you are "ranting" or giving warnings - you still do it so nicely with such style cum good manners and wit ^^ You are all classy cool babes and reading all the inputs on this blog always make me feel so much especially laughing out loud and wanting to hug you at the same time to thank you for such an enjoyable ride - it's like being with good friends all the time when I'm here - for me - being at dramabeans makes the doctor go away -there is never a day I go without making many long pit stops here - sarangheyo, mani...

And that's why this blog site is the only one that made stay.Javabeans,you are one funny bean.You can take it seriously but never forget the "puns".
Thank you for laying out this rules."First" comments for me is not as bad as trolls because trolls make me skip reading everything altogether.It's nice to have a discussion or even arguments about someone but there's a fine line between saying an actor doesn't suit the role or it doesn't bring out her best, and saying she had her face done and you don't like her.

the only rule i don't agree with is the one about using capitalization. i use punctuation but tend to not capitalize when i'm commenting online. this is the internet and it's an informal forum, and i like that. plus, it's sort of an ode to a poet i like--bell hooks who eschews capitalization. and as a journalism major, it gives me a break from remembering the thousands of rules of ap style and all that other jazz that i usually have to remember when writing.

Thanks for introducing the comment
Maybe it's just me, but I haven't seen any hateful comments on any post, so I'm not quite aware of what other beanies are talking about when they mention the bad apples.
I only started commenting and reading comments a few weeks back even though I've been here for almost two years because I'm normally very late to comment and I thought that there would be no use commenting since nobody's going to read into the next page. So when you stated that you do read everyone's comments later, I felt much better! At least someone will read my comments haha.
Also about the language rule I recently wrote a few words in Korean because I didn't know the exact English translation so sorry guys if you didn't understand some Korean words! I will try to keep my comments all in English, if possile although I know there are alot of Korean readers here.
The spelling/grammar rule is really getting on me, I now think I have to have apostrophe's (wait, is there an apostrophe in that??!) Whereas I normally can't be bothered with them.
Sorry for the long comment but are abbreviations allowed? Like btw, imo, atm stuff like that?