{"id":4817,"date":"2009-10-30T12:35:14","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T16:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=4817"},"modified":"2009-10-30T12:35:14","modified_gmt":"2009-10-30T16:35:14","slug":"a-community-guidelines-faq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2009\/10\/30\/a-community-guidelines-faq\/","title":{"rendered":"A community guidelines FAQ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As anyone who has commented on a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\">Globe and Mail<\/a> story probably knows, we have a policy on what kinds of comments are appropriate and which ones are removed, but I confess that we haven&#8217;t always done a great job of communicating that policy clearly and consistently to our readers &#8212; in part because our policy has been evolving, and continues to do so (which I would argue is a good thing).<\/p>\n<p>So why and how are comments on Globe stories taken down? Why doesn&#8217;t the Globe require commenters to use their real names? Why do some comments simply disappear, while others are replaced by a message that says they weren&#8217;t &#8220;consistent with our guidelines?&#8221; Do Globe reporters ever respond to comments, and under what conditions?<\/p>\n<p>These are the kinds of questions that our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/community-guidelines\">Community Guidelines FAQ<\/a> was developed to answer. It also deals with how we approach other forms of community engagement, including live discussions (which we do using software from Toronto&#8217;s Cover It Live) and forums, which we are in the process of rolling out on our Globe Investor site, and hopefully elsewhere. <\/p>\n<p>In coming up with our policies, we have looked at the way many other media outlets handle comments and community &#8212; including sites such as The Guardian (whose policies are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/community-standards\">here<\/a>), the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/aboutcbc\/discover\/submissions.html\">CBC<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/ref\/membercenter\/faq\/comments.html\">New York Times<\/a> &#8212; as well as non-media communities like <a href=\"http:\/\/metafilter.com\/\">Metafilter<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/\">Slashdot<\/a>. Like all of those sites, we want to allow our readers to comment on issues they feel strongly about, but at the same time we want to maintain a civil tone that encourages dialogue instead of partisan attacks. <\/p>\n<p>We are probably never going to achieve that balance completely, or to everyone&#8217;s satisfaction. But we are trying hard to do so, because we know that many of you look to the Globe as a place where you can discuss important topics, and we want to encourage others to do so. <\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/community-guidelines\">FAQ<\/a> is a work in progress, so please let me know what you think, either by posting a comment here or by reaching me at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/community-guidelines\">@mathewi<\/a> on Twitter or via email at <a href=\"mailto:mingram@globeandmail.com\">mingram@globeandmail.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As anyone who has commented on a Globe and Mail story probably knows, we have a policy on what kinds of comments are appropriate and which ones are removed, but I confess that we haven&#8217;t always done a great job of communicating that policy clearly and consistently to our readers &#8212; in part because our &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2009\/10\/30\/a-community-guidelines-faq\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A community guidelines FAQ&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}