(Last updated July 1, 2025)
Here at [Company] our mission is to help foster a more fair, inclusive, and compassionate space for discussions about our work and the pressing issues that we cover. That includes providing ways for you to bring your thoughts, ideas, and expertise to the table through commenting and other hosted exchanges on our platform. To ensure we can facilitate high-quality and productive discussions, we only allow comments on select stories.
If you decide to participate in our commenting community, there are a few ground rules we ask you to follow or refrain from doing:
Respect: Always be respectful in your dialogue with others.
Stay on topic: Focus on the discussion at hand and steer clear of irrelevant discourse.
Keep it short: We want you to get your point across but keep comment lengths to a minimum. No one wants to read an essay so make sure your comments are clear and concise.
Discrimination/prejudice: Homophobia, sexism, racism, classism, anti-Semitism or other forms of discrimination and prejudices are not welcome here. If you find yourself typing “I’m not racist, but…” or “I’m not sexist, but…” you should probably think twice before submitting your comment.
Violence: Threats of violence or threats to any individual or group’s safety will not be tolerated. You will be immediately banned from the site.
Name-calling: Insults directed at our writers or other commenters will be deleted. If a post is otherwise well-thought-out, we reserve the right to remove the insult and publish the remainder of the post. If a thread devolves into name-calling, we will delete the entire thread.
Trolling: We hope to attract comments that are intellectually stimulating and interesting to read. If you don’t have anything substantive to add to the conversation, your comment is subject to moderation. Commenters who obviously intend just to pick fights, be nasty, naysay, get attention or get a reaction will have their posts deleted
We may also delete comments that contain:
- Personal information, such as addresses, phone numbers, emails, etc.
- Identical, repetitive messages posted on multiple articles.
- Reproduced copyrighted articles from other sources.
- Blatantly promotional content.
When you see a comment that violates our policy, please use the “Report” option located in the bottom right-hand corner of every comment. A moderator will then decide whether the comment stays on the site. Keep in mind that moderating can be subjective and final decisions rest with [Company] staff.
If a commenter repeatedly violates our policy, they will receive e-mail notification that they are in danger of being banned from the site. If the commenter continues to violate our policy, they will be banned.
Please note that comments may be pre-moderated, so in some cases there will be a delay before they appear.
We reserve the right to use comments posted to the [Company] website in our print and digital editions, our digital-only content and our email products. We may edit comments for reasons of space and clarity. We will never publish commenters’ email addresses without their explicit consent. For more information on how we may use your comments, please see the “Contribution License” section in our Terms and Conditions.
If you have any questions about our comment policy, you can contact us here.