RECENT COMMENTS

Commenting and use policy reminder

As discussion has heated up on various topics over the past few days, let me take a second to remind everyone that this site has a well-honed commenting and use policy.

A few highlights from the policy:

• We value the privacy of our visitors. We guarantee that no information that is submitted by a visitor will be made public unless the visitor explicitly makes this information available his or herself, or unless we are for some reason legally compelled to do so. We will not divulge or act upon this information publicly in any way. If you choose to post anonymously or pseudonymously, we will respect your choice.
• Abusive comments will not be allowed. Do not be a bully. Do not call people names. Do not be a dick. Don’t be mean. You really don’t have to make the same point over and over and over again. How many ways can I say this? Simply put: even though this is online, please remember that the people you are addressing are your neighbors.
• Anonymous comments are ok and useful, if not abused. They work best, in the context of this site, if you limit yourself to one pseudonym. There are anonymous folks who post quite frequently, but as a reader I have a sense of what they are all about because they regularly use the same pseudonym. As a follow-up to that, posting bunches of comments under multiple names in the same discussion not allowed. Please do not abuse the ability to post anonymously.
• Snarky political one-liners are frowned upon. If this is your sole contribution to the conversation, please don’t.
• While you are not required to use your real name, you must provide a working email address.
• Attempting to pretend to be someone else, ie posting a comment as Mayor Jones, or as one of the other folks that comment here regularly is a no-no.
• We reserve the right to delete any comment at anytime. All comments are moderated. This is both to weed out the automated spam comments that keep trying to slip through and to ensure that the comments follow the site Use Policy.

Simply put, I do not care what you have to say, but I do care about how you say it. Don’t make this a negative space.