Most comments get approved, but some don’t. Here’s why.

Over the course of a year, we receive thousands of comments on the articles, news items, and multimedia entries we post here at the IEET site. To keep things on track and to maintain civil discourse, we practice firm moderating of comments and do so unapologetically.

A basic rule of thumb is that we are here to talk about solutions, not to wrangle over the reality of issues that have already been defined. And although we are happy to engage alternative points of view, we will draw the line when commenters are: a) blatantly irrational or anti-scientific, like those who spew global warming denialist nonsense; b) unproductively argumentative, acting like trolls as opposed to engaging in constructive debate; c) engaging in personal attacks, name-calling, being disrespectful, etc.; or d) obviously commercial.

The large majority of comments submitted to our site are approved, including those we may disagree with. But if your comment doesn’t show up, it’s very likely because it fell into one or more of the categories above.

[Re-posted on 18 April 2011]