Community Standards, Participation Guidelines, and Moderation Aims

TL;DR

Be polite – don’t be rude to anyone and respect others. If something you would say would get you bottled on the head offline, please don’t say it here. Remember there is a person behind the screen and that your words affect people.

Don’t troll. We appreciate and welcome criticism towards writers here, but comments that add no value to the discussion or that are merely insulting would be deleted without exception.

Spam? Goodbye. We understand that you may make thousands of dollars working from home, however, we are not interested. Please refrain from posting or we’ll give you a hand and show both you and your post the door.

To put it in a simple sentence, our guidelines boil down to “Don’t be a dick”. If you don’t follow any of these guidelines, not only will our moderators remove the comment but we may also ban you from participating in the discussions.

If you find any comments which violate our guidelines, please make sure to ‘flag’ or ‘mark as spam’ – our moderators highly appreciate your support!

Happy commenting!

Commenter Community Guidelines

We welcome discussion and different points of view, but most importantly we value respectful and constructive correspondence with fellow readers and our community.

We have zero tolerance for comments which we believe could be considered inappropriate or insulting, exhibit troll-like behaviour, or have legal ramifications.

Commenters can flag potentially inappropriate comments for review, out of concern for others, or due to personal offence.

You can flag concerns via the menu next to a potentially offensive comment, or email us via our contact page.

How to comment:

Our comments run on the third-party Disqus platform , which requires users to set up an account.

You can register a Disqus profile either directly with Disqus, or with your Facebook, Twitter or Google accounts.

Unlike the early policies of Facebook and Google, Disqus does not require you use your real name.

However, we prefer commenters use their real name because they are then more likely to behave more maturely, rather than letting loose while hiding behind a pseudonym.

Our journalists put their name to their copy, we think it’s only fair commenters do the same, but understand many users have existing accounts that use pseudonyms.

Let’s keep it friendly:

We’ve invited you into our universe, to be among a bunch of people who like to talk about entrepreneurship, personal development, and more.

Hopefully our comment forums help us and others broaden our knowledge, understanding, and passion for cars and the rules that govern them.

Discussion and debate are welcome, but comments that include personal attacks on another reader or a journalist are not acceptable.

While appreciating there will be, at times, different points of view, we reserve the right to caution commenters openly, delete, edit or modify a thread that breaches our guidelines, and suspend or ban repeat offenders.

In addition, we will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such.

Clarity and intent:

The tone of the written word is not always obvious, so stop and think twice before publishing your comment.

‘Shouting’ – letters, words, or sentences in capital letters – and the use of emojis, other symbols, and inappropriate language are frowned upon because they are designed to make one comment stand out from others.

Use of these and similar techniques could lead to the comment being deleted, edited, or modified at the discretion of our moderation team. Repeat offenders may face have face suspension or a permanent ban.

User images (avatars):

Distasteful imagery in Disqus user photo/picture profiles (also known as an avatar) is banned on this site.

Examples of banned content include sexually explicit, suggestive or revealing imagery; depictions of violence or gore; crude imagery; the celebration or depiction of criminals or criminal activity; propaganda.

Back-up profiles:

Commenters are asked to maintain one profile only, and our moderators flag the IP addresses of repeat offenders.

Repeat offenders with multiple accounts will be banned from our comments section.

Links:

Links to all websites have been disabled, to protect our site and visitors against spam and malware.

Links to other StevenARodriguez.com stories are allowed, however comments that include such links will be initially withheld pending a review before being posted.

Who moderates StevenARodriguez.com?

The monitoring and moderation of discussion in the comments section of StevenARodriguez.com are done by our editorial team and a dedicated moderating team.

Contact us

If you have any questions about these Community Guidelines, please email us at [email protected] .

Footnote: These guidelines may be revised or updated at any time, without notice.