Comments policy

We’re here to promote a smart on-topic community of commenters. We’re not keen on anyone creating a hostile environment that discourages others from joining the conversation. We will shortly be adding new features to the site that will allow commenters to build up a reputation for high-quality on-topic comments. If we think that you’re straying from the standards that we set here, we may delete comments and give you a warning. Repeat warnings will lead to a ban at our discretion

Try and stick to these rules

1. Stay on the subject. Try not to go off topic in a comment thread. If you do, and it annoys us, we’ll delete / ban. Spam will be deleted on sight. Spammers will be banned.
2. Be nice. Don’t make personal attacks on other commenters, Left Futures’  bloggers or the subjects of posts on the site. By all means challenge the things people say or do, but don’t be personal and keep it civil. Play the ball and not the player. We occasionally hear from readers of other blogs who say that they’re reluctant to comment because they are worried that their views will not be responded to in good faith. We’d be happy if we never heard that here.
3. We’re on the Left. Racist, xenophobic, homophobic and sexist comments, and derogatory comments about people with disabilities or mental distress will be deleted.
4. We’d prefer you to register with the site. Usually, we’ll allow you to post anonymously or using an ad-hoc name, but at other times (depending on our capacity to moderate the comments, or at times when controversial issues are being discussed) we will only allow logged-in comment. We may even occassionally ‘pre-moderate’ comments though at the moment, it is our policy to avoid doing this. We use standard WordPress settings that mean that your first comment on the site will be pre-moderated (largely as an anti-spam measure).

If you break these rules, aside from our warn / ban system ….

• we may remove your comments.
• in extreme cases, we may contact your Internet Service Provider or pass on your details to the appropriate legal authorities

We reserve the right to change these policies without notice.