Comments

If you want to have your comment published, or if you have sent in a comment and it hasn’t been published, it is quite a good idea to read through this little piece.

Our original starting premise was to publish anything that wasn’t illegal, (on the basis that anything which would be illegal if said face to face is illegal if said online) but we soon got to the point now where only about 20% of comments we get are published.  To help you get your comment published you might care to remember these factors.

1: This web site was set up to support the manager, the players and the club because we felt very few sites did this.  We will publish comments that are contrary to this point of view, but only if they contain evidence or logical reasoning to back up their claims, and are not simply repetitions of comments against our point of view, that we have seen before.  We think we are being fairly liberal to allow contrary comments to be published once (more liberal than, say, the Mail, Star, Express, Telegraph and a lot of blogs etc), so once is enough.

2:  We support the use of data,  statistical analysis, the scientific method, and logical deduction in answering the question “Why?”   If you feel that’s not a good idea, you will find vast numbers of other sites that are more to your taste but we’re not moving from that fundamental so simply appealing to common sense and the “evidence of my own eyes” as it is often put, won’t lead to publication.  Also we have people writing in saying “you demand evidence but don’t supply it to support your own arguments” – I kept answering these until someone wrote this in response to an article which itself had a direct link to the evidence.  So I don’t publish these comments unless there really is an issue on which we have never published the evidence.

3: We don’t feel the need to publish what some call “both sides of the argument” since Untold was set up to counter the dominant anti-Arsenal position that exists in much of the media and many blogs.  Such media generally do not give reasonable time and space to our approach, so it seems unreasonable that we should give much time or space to theirs.

4: We tend not to publish any comment that calls the ability of the writer, his/her intellectual honesty or such related matters into question.  Likewise comments that suggest the writer of the comment knows what the writer is thinking (beyond that which is said in the article) tend not to be published.  We don’t believe that telepathy is a particularly well proven scientific activity.  We also try to avoid publishing comments that are abusive.  And we avoid comments which attempt to make fun of people’s accents when speaking English or their writing style and approach.

5:  We try not to publish comments that have nothing much to do with the article in question.  There are around 10,000 articles on the site as of the end of 2019, so we hope you can find an article that deals with your topic and comment there.  If not, write an article and send it to Tony@schools.co.uk and we’ll consider it for publication.  We also don’t publish comments which involve the reader reading an article from elsewhere first to be able to understand the comment.  If you are citing another source that is fine, but please summarise it and cite the source, not give us the link to work it out for ourselves.

6: Please note that we get comments each week saying “to prove your point about referees you need to have non-Arsenal people doing the reviewing, and analyse non-Arsenal games.”  We have done this.  Also saying that “you didn’t put any evidence on your article” doesn’t work either.  We’ve been publishing for 11 years and have vast numbers of articles with huge amounts of evidence.   If you want to argue against us, do your homework, find our original article and argue against that evidence.  We’re not doing your hard work for you.

7:  We don’t publish comments that contain religious points.  They only cause an upsurge of abuse, and to us it just doesn’t seem worth doing. I don’t know why some religious people want to argue so much, but that is how it is.  Nor do we publish comments that suggest Arsenal, its board, players or staff, are involved in anything fraudulent or illegal.  Of course because of the vast number of comments that we get some which involve such points do get through, but I don’t have the resources to stop that.

8: We don’t publish comments that suggest that Arsenal supporters in general, or contributors to this site in particular, are inherently stupid.

9: We don’t publish comments that are just or primarily a link to another site.  We will publish comments with a link in where the link provides additional information that is helpful but only if the comment explains how.

10.  We don’t publish comments that don’t have a valid email address, or involve a correspondent using multiple identities, or multiple email addresses for the purpose of appearing to be two or more people.

11:  We don’t publish comments that have also been published elsewhere, nor any that contain the line “you probably won’t publish this” or “you will ban me for this” or “is this supposed to be funny” or anything similar.

12: We don’t publish comments that question or are abusive towards our advertisers or sponsors.  The only way the site can continue is by having advertisers and sponsors; without them the cost would be too high.

Except that sometimes comments that break one or more of the rules are of themselves so funny or bizarre we do actually publish them, along with the details of the sender.  However if you do break any of these rules it is possible (although not certain) that none of your subsequent comments will be published.

Now if your comments are not published and you think they should be

• Email address sent from
• the user name used
• the IP address (if you don’t know it go onto google and type in “What’s my IP address”)
• the time (roughly) and date sent.

and send me the commentary that you sent in.

Publisher, Untold Arsenal