This document describes comment moderation on the Hypergrid Business website.
Comments that are withheld for moderation will be reviewed, but it will not be instantaneous. Please allow 24 hours before you conclude that your comment is permanently declined.
Likewise, it may take up to 24 hours to come upon and remove inappropriate posts. Therefore, just because a comment is posted does not mean it is permanently approved. Comments may be removed at any time subsequent to posting, upon moderation review.
As most of you know, readers can flag comments for moderation. This puts you in the position of being a moderator yourself, so the intention is that you would use the same discussion guidelines we have established for Hypergrid Business. Flagging comments simply out of spite or disagreement is contrary to the guidelines, and comments so flagged will be maintained or restored.
Remember also that any discussion started in Hypergrid Business is yours to continue on any other blog or forum. If you feel there are constraints to your self-expression here, we understand the desire to express your perspectives in alternative formats elsewhere.  You are welcome to post such links in your comments on Hypergrid Business.
What We Hope to Achieve
The Hypergrid Business website provides opportunities for readers who wish to discuss the content we publish, or debate issues more generally. Our goal is to ensure this platform is inviting and informative.
We have developed guidelines which we expect all participants in the community areas of the Hypergrid Business website to abide by. These guidelines are applied with consideration for the context in which comments are made. We will strive to be fair in this process.
The Guidelines
Above all else, personal attacks or verbal abuse on authors, other users or any individual are subject to moderation and will be removed. This includes the right to close conversations that become flame-wars. By ‘personal attacks’, we include name-calling, false accusations, vulgar innuendos and any other form of malicious derision.
Since posting comments is a community activity, we expect all users to find ways of sharing their views that do not feel threatening or toxic to others. For the benefit of the community, we will remove any content that others might find extremely offensive.
Please respect the right of expression of other people’s views and beliefs and consider your impact on others when expressing your own perspectives.
Please note that there will be no toleration of any form of hate-speech, or contributions that appear as such. In the normal course of discussions, we anticipate and recognize that there will be deliberate and considered criticism of a particular business, organization, technology or methodology. On the other hand, we do not accept attacks on people based on the their race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.
While we anticipate criticism of the articles we publish, we will not allow outright misrepresentations of Hypergrid Business or our journalists. We will remove content that could put us in legal jeopardy. This includes postings that appear libelous or defamatory, or material that appears to violate copyright laws and protections.
We will block or remove any posts that amount to spam. This may also apply to people or organizations who frequently post self-serving material or external links without adding relevant material to the quality of the discussion on the Hypergrid Business website. Context will be a strong factor in evaluating such posts. We encourage links that reference additional relevant outside material, but note that external links will be verified before they are approved. Along the same lines, if you post something that is abruptly and arbitrarily unrelated to the original topic then it may be removed, in order to keep the discussion on track. Questions or comments about moderation should also not be posted as comments.
Naturally, you should try to be clear about what you are saying. Remember though that people may misunderstand your intended message and react differently than you expected. Please consider this before you write your rebuttal to a disagreement. Written text has some shortcomings for conversation and we recommend you try to express your point in various ways before you decide on the merit of unanticipated reactions.
You can help to keep the Hypergrid Business community areas open to all viewpoints by staying reasonable and accurate. However, if you identify an instance of clearly inappropriate comments that seem to persist, please report it. When we all participate fairly in maintaining a welcoming and constructive environment, the website is improved and everyone benefits.
Our Moderation Activities
If a contribution to the Hypergrid Business website is perceived as breaching the community guidelines set out above, then it will be removed by the moderator.
Participants who persistently or willfully ignore these participation guidelines will lose posting privileges for the Hypergrid Business community areas.
We do not edit user posts. Therefore, even if only part of a comment is perceived as breaching the community guidelines, the whole comment will be removed. In some cases, this requires the removal of subsequent comments that refer to, and therefore perpetuate, the problem(s) found in the original comment, especially if they reiterate the wording or intent found to be unacceptable.
Because Hypergrid Business is responsible for everything that appears on this site, all actions and decisions taken by our moderators are final. However, general concerns and suggestions can be emailed for review using the Hypergrid Business Contact link found at the bottom of Hypergrid Business site pages.
If you believe your comment was moderated incorrectly, or was accidentally lost in the Spam filter, please contact our Community Moderator, Lawrence Pierce, at lawrence.pierce@hypergridbusiness.com.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in community areas of the Hypergrid Business website do not necessarily reflect or represent the views of Hypergrid Business, its staff, or contributors.
About this Document
This document was inspired by the Community Standards and Participation Guidelines used by The Guardian, which we consider an exemplar of best practices in online comments moderation. We reserve the right to modify our guidelines as deemed necessary or beneficial.
We hope this set of guidelines serves our community well. General concerns and suggestions may be sent for review by emailing the moderator at lawrence.pierce@hypergridbusiness.com.