A major theme that the DREditors often write about is the importance of seeing past political partisanship and engaging people from different backgrounds in meaningful discussion on controversial topics. So we’re very happy to have a diverse group of commenters who express themselves intelligently, constructively, and politely on a wide range of issues. Good comments are gold on the Internet.
Unfortunately, bad comments are toxic waste. For that reason, DREditors reserve the right to delete comments that don’t contribute to the tone of the site and/or to ban users (by IP address or other means) for repeated infractions. So far we haven’t had to do this very often. As of August 2014 only a very small number of comments (less than 1% of those that make it through the Akismet spam filter) have ever been deleted, and no users have ever been banned. The comments deleted were so egregious that no warning or explanation was provided to the poster, but if you do feel that a comment was deleted unfairly and would like to make your case, please use the contact form to get a hold of us.
Anyone who has used the Internet for a long time understands that it is a waste of time to try and codify exactly what constitutes acceptable vs. unacceptable comments. Frankly, if you’re trying to find that line then you’re missing the point. The hope is to have great comments, not marginally acceptable ones. So we’re not going to provide a bullet list or other set of criteria. However, just to give some basic guidance, please keep in mind that what we’re interested in is open-minded conversation and respect for intellectual differences. What we’d like to avoid are things like insults, flamewars, trolling, and drama.