The Stream Comment Policy

The Stream welcomes comments from our readers. We do moderate comments, but only after they are published.

All comments posted on The Stream solely reflect the opinion of the commenters and do not reflect the opinions or judgments of The Stream, Life Outreach International, our editors, authors, contributors or staff. The comment platform is provided as a service to our readers to allow them to add their unedited voices to the discussion. Comments that violate our comment rules (below) and terms of use will be removed.

Stream comments are hosted on the Disqus comment platform, with logins available through Disqus, Facebook, Twitter or G+ accounts. Commenters are also accountable to Disqus terms and policies.

Stream comments are user-policed as well as staff-moderated. Please flag any comments you see that violate our comments rules or terms of use.

Comment Rules for The Stream:

  • Comments with obscenities or implied (or masked) obscene words are prohibited.
  • Spam and promotion of commercial products, solicitations or advertisements of any kind are prohibited.
  • Comments that are irrelevant to the associated post are prohibited.
  • Comments that contain falsehoods or misrepresentations damaging to any party are prohibited.
  • Any direct threat of harm and/or harassment is prohibited and may require intervention by authorities.
  • Any defamatory, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive comments, or comments that encourage a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or are otherwise inappropriate are prohibited.
  • Comments that share personal information about others or otherwise invade their privacy; that impersonate another person or use any method to misrepresent the origin of the comment are prohibited.
  • Prohibited comments will be removed as soon as discovered and commenters may be blocked.
  • Links in comments will cause the comment not to be published. We do not accept live links.
  • Comments from new Disqus accounts that have not been email validated will not be published. You must have a validated account to have your comment posted.

From Disqus: Basic Rules for Disqus-Powered Profiles and Discussions

The following are not allowed anywhere on Disqus, including: comments, discussions, and Disqus profiles:

  • Spam — What we [Disqus] consider spam: 1) comments posted in large quantities to promote a product or service, 2) the exact same comment posted repeatedly to disrupt a thread. This also applies to created discussions on Home.
  • Impersonation — The display name and avatar of the ‘fake’ and ‘genuine’ accounts must match exactly to be considered for impersonation. We use several strategies to judge authenticity.
  • Direct threat of harm — This covers active threats of harm directed towards a specific person or persons. Contact local authorities if you feel a crime has been committed or is imminent.
  • Personally identifiable information posted without consent — Examples of protected information: credit card number, home/work address, phone number, email address, social security number. Real name isn’t currently covered.
  • Inappropriate profile content — Explicit images of sex, violence, medical procedures, etc. are not allowed in profiles. Profile content allowed by Disqus may not be allowed on all sites, report such profiles to the site moderator.

Disqus doesn’t moderate or manage the communities that use Disqus, but using Disqus to do any of these things breaks our Terms of Service and we may take appropriate action, such as removing a comment/discussion, resetting a profile, or banning an account.

Flagging:

Disqus also provides and encourages flagging to mark comments which break these rules and to help bring them to the attention of the site moderators:

  • To report a user for a Basic Rules violation, click the flag icon in their profile and complete a short survey.
  • Please visit the Abuse FAQ for more information on reporting abuse to site moderators and Disqus.

Other Information on Proper Use of the Discus Platform

Disqus Home>Terms and policies

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