A Reminder: Shanghaiist's Comment Policy

We rarely enforce this, since we are too busy to moderate our comments section and generally believe in a thing called free speech, but lately things have gotten a bit unharmonious in certain portions of our site. We apologize to anyone who has been offended (which basically means we apologize to all humankind).

So, dear commenters, please refamiliarize yourselves with the Gothamist LLC comments policy:

Comments Terms of Use

Gothamist loves our readers, and loves our readers' comments. However, Gothamist is a private website, and we reserve the right to delete any comments we find offensive. We strive to maintain an atmosphere of free and open conversation, but inevitably, some posts on the site, and some threads in the bulletin board, will spiral off into negative sniping and flame wars. When this happens, we close the posts to further comments. If a commenter repeatedly abuses our comment policy, we delete all of their comments on every post on the site, and ban their IP address.

In order to make our comments useful and interesting, the following guidelines have been established for comment users:

• Do not post threatening, harassing, defamatory, or libelous material.
• Do not intentionally make false or misleading statements.
• Do not offer to sell or buy any product or service.
• Do not post material that infringes copyright.
• Do not post information that you know to be confidential or sensitive or otherwise in breach of the law.
• Keep all comments relevant to the particular Gothamist Site where the comment is being posted.
• Gothamist LLC will not accept responsibility for information posted in the Comments.

If Gothamist LLC receives notice that a comment post is not in keeping with these terms and conditions or the intended use of the comments, we reserve the right to remove that comment posting. The removal of any comment shall be solely at the discretion of Gothamist LLC.

Please note that once you post a comment to one of our sites, it becomes part of the public conversation. Our policy is that we will not remove a user's comments unless they are in violation of our Terms of Service, and we won't remove them otherwise except in very extreme circumstances. So if you want to say something that you will later regret personally, it is advisable that you use a username that does not identify you. We cannot simply remove your comments because you have a change of heart about making them.

You see we haven't done a very good job of following our own policy. We likely won't get in the habit of deleting comments or banning commenters (not until we get interns, anyway). It just takes up too much time. So, we'll probably just turn off comments for particular posts that get out of control. There are some prime candidates now — suggestions?

There has been talk of implementing a DIGG/YouTube-esque commenting system in which site users can help monitor comments, but right now that is just talk. So please notify us at info@shanghaiist.com if you see a thread getting our of control, and we'll take action.

And please remember the words of the 38th Vice President of the United States:

"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."

Only 125 days until the Olympics are over! Yay!