Commenting Policy

Here are some things which will get your comment deleted

Personal attacks against another commenter or the writer of the post/website. This can run from name calling to sentences which include the words "people like you" or statements which begin "I bet you" or "you must/probably" etc. This is regardless of what side you're on. 

Hate speech or other clearly intentional jerk behavior. This includes, but is not limited to: Comments which denigrate women, feminism, or feminists, the broad imprecations or assumptions based on race; and anything that amounts to "ugh the gays," "ugh liberals," "ugh fangirls." etc.

Jokes or aggressive negative comments on the aesthetic appearance of a person (commenter's, writers, and folks mentioned in an article alike). 

Here are some things which will get your account banned

Engaging in any of the previously mentioned delete-worthy behaviors consistently and as part of a clear pattern presenting a particularly egregious example of one of those behaviors as a first comment (Stopped by just to say something horrible. "We don't need you here.) We normally give one warning to a user before banning unless a pattern of behavior is clear. However, if a user commits on of these behaviors as their very first comment, we'll skip that step. We do not hesitate to consider behavior on other sites when determining whether to ban. 

Hate reading? If your history of commenting on what makes it seem like you only visit the site to start fights, or specifically to disagree with us whenever we publish a post involving our core themes and for no other reason, we will ban you. Conversely, if you feel the site has changed in a drastic way and no longer appreciate or respect our content, but stick around to tell us that every day, we'll also take that as hate reading. feel free to keep hate reading, but you'll not be able to hate comment any more.

It is at the administrator's discretion to ban anyone whom they determine to be a detriment to the atmosphere of the comments section , the site in general, and our regular readers.

First: It's our site, we get to make the rules. We're not taking away your freedom of speech by deleting/banning you. You can take your anger elsewhere, we don't want it. We try to treat our comment section, or community like a series of dinner parties, where our job as hosts is to foster interesting, free discussion for all of our guests, not just the loudest, most assertive and scariest ones. You can be a poor conversationalist, present a different viewpoint, or talk loudly and brashly. But...if you threaten, annoy, derail, or in other ways spoil the atmosphere of discussion for others, we reserve the right to not invite you back the next time. If that principle is too restrictive for you, there are many other sites out there that share our coverage and have more liberal commenting rules. 

Second: We ask everybody who comes to remember that conversations require listening as well as speaking. And we are firm believers in the fact that banning a commenter only prevents them from speaking, not from listening. 

For those who agree with these rules, please keep in mind that we are only human. We are not sleeping technodroids, fueled by the radiation of the miniature universes housed within our quantmantium frames. If you see a comment which violates these rules, the most helpful thing you can do is to flag it, rather than commenting about how poorly moderated the thread or post is or contacting us through social media or email to that effect. 

A Note to our Regular Readers: 

We wouldn't be what it is without your awesome support. As we mentioned above, flagging comments which violates our policy is a great help, but...please take  this responsibility seriously. Flagging a user who isn't really causing trouble, but who you personally feel is just being obtuse is not a good use of this power. Also, engaging with users who are clearly trolls may be fun for some of you but causes us larger headaches (especially with overly large threads). Flag and move on.

If you're having a disagreement with another user and your replies have gone into the double digits, consider stepping back from the computer for a while. We love discussion, but...we don't want user running themselves ragged trying to convince someone else online they're wrong. 

Happy commenting!!!