Discussion Policy

Community Discussion Rules - Adapted from NPR.org's discussion policy.

The following text serves as the official discussion policy for users of St. Louis Public Radio’s social networking tools, blogs, and web site. All participants in St. Louis Public Radio social networking features and other forums are required to follow these rules, in addition to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for stlpublicradio.org.

We no longer have a comments section on news posts, but you can send questions and comments about news content to feedback@stlpr.org.

If you can’t be polite, don’t say it. Of course, we don’t want to stifle discussion of controversial issues. Some topics require blunt talk, and we’re not always going to agree with each other. Nonetheless, please try to disagree without being disagreeable. Focus your remarks on positions, not personalities. No personal attacks, name calling, libel, defamation, or hate speech. And under no circumstances should you post anything that could be taken as threatening, harassing, bullying, obscene, pornographic, sexist or racist.

Don’t use obscenities. Even if the word in question is often used in conversation. We’re not going to list the words we object to; you know what they are. Remember, this is a public forum and we want everyone to feel comfortable participating.

Anything you post should be your own work. You’re welcome to link to relevant content and to quote limited amounts from other people’s work with attribution and any associated copyright notice and consistent with “fair use” principles of copyright law. But that doesn’t mean you can copy and paste wholesale.

Please stay on topic. Think of it this way–if you hosted a book club meeting at your home, you wouldn’t want someone to show up and insist on discussing reality TV shows.

Keep your comments to 400 words or less. Generally, anything beyond a few paragraphs had better be very, very interesting to the larger community. We reserve the right to edit for brevity, clarity and other purposes.

Please respect people’s privacy. We love to learn about new and interesting individuals, but most people will not be happy to have their phone numbers or e-mail addresses published. Please do not share another’s contact information through St. Louis Public Radio’s discussion threads or social networking features.

Please don’t use public forums for individual communications. Similarly, if you have comments about St. Louis Public Radio coverage or policies generally, please don’t use the site discussion threads to air them. For issues regarding editorial content or policies, write to hello@stlpr.org.

You are solely responsible for the content you post. STLPR is not responsible for the content posted by its users. We do not and cannot review all user content. However, we have the right (but not the obligation) to review, screen, delete, edit and/or move any content.

This is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, lobbying, soliciting, or proselytizing. Feel free to share your ideas and experiences about religion, politics, and relevant products or services you’ve discovered. But we understand that there can be a fine line between discussing and campaigning; please use your best judgment–and we will use ours.

STLPR reserves the right not to publicize rumors, allegations, conspiracy theories and other information which we know to be false or unsubstantiated.