Our mission in allowing article and blog comments is to foster a civil, productive exchange of information and ideas amongst our readers. What is civil and productive in anonymous community conversations is often in the eyes of the beholder and for this reason we have created a method for readers to flag comments that may have crossed the line.

Flagged comments are not always deleted, but a TNT moderator does review every flagged item for propriety. In all instances, The News Tribune reserves the right to delete any comment for any reason.

Comments and avatars subject to deletion:

• Advertising/Spam: Spam is defined as promoting personal or commercial content related to the comment, usually involving linking. Note that spam can be non-commercial in nature. Repeatedly posting links to your own content in comments subjects your comment to the possibility of deletion.
• Obscenity/vulgarity: Suggestive or provocative language relating to people, places or things. Includes creative varieties of swear words -- substituting ast*risks for letters or s p a c e s between letters -- with the intent to bypass our built-in obscenity filtering.
• Personal Attack: Using the word "idiot" or other degrading or derogatory term to describe a fellow commenter, individual or group constitutes automatic deletion. Please make your point without making fun of people.
• Hate Speech: Infractions in this category subject the commenter to banning from the forum and the www.thenewstribune.com on first offense. Generalizations and perpetuating stereotypes of culture, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation are included in this category. Please reserve your moral indignation diatribes to forums outside of thenewstribune.com.
• Copyright/Plagiarism: Comments containing hot linking to images or other copyrighted copy-and-pasted content will be deleted.
• Other - All Caps: ALL CAPS in ANY portion of your comment qualifies the comment for deletion. ALL CAPS is considered shouting, and is disrespectful of civil discourse. Obvious exceptions are abbreviations such as TNT.
• Other - Off Topic: Keep your comment relevant to the discussion taking place. Off-topic comments and subsequent threads are subject to removal.
• Other - Libel/Slander/Unverifiable: Clearly false or untrue statements about persons or businesses are subject to deletion. Allegations which may be true -- but not public knowledge -- made from a commenter's position of knowledge are often difficult if not impossible to verify. Since we don't have a working relationship with 60 Minutes and have limited resources to investigate allegations made in comments, we ask that you keep items that are not public knowledge out of your comments.
  If you have knowledge of illegal or questionable activities, please send them to newstips@thenewstribune.com so that our newsroom can investigate.