EarthSky Comment Policy

Hi friends! We consider you all as our guests. Guests who are kind to each other are welcome to stay. Guests who behave poorly may find the door closed to them next time they drop by. It doesn’t matter what side of an issue you’re on. We welcome all sides. However, we most definitely don’t welcome impolite behavior in our comments section.

If your comment does not immediately appear on the site after posting, it might have been automatically flagged for review by our commenting system. Some things that will cause a comment to be automatically flagged for review:
– Profanity
– Name-calling or personal attacks on other EarthSky commenters, or the writer of the post, or this website.
– Hate speech of any kind
– Using EarthSky as a soapbox for your pet theories
– Comments can also be flagged for review by other readers
– Comments can be flagged for review because … well, we don’t know why. Sometimes the system has a mind of its own.

If we notice that you continually engage in rude, annoying or downright strange commenting behavior, you might be banned from commenting. We will likely try to warn you before banning you, but we might not, especially if you’re new and just dropped in to smear/ sneer/ make everyone else unhappy and uncomfortable.

EarthSky editors have discretion to ban anyone whose behavior negatively impacts the atmosphere of the comments section, the site in general, and our regular readers.

Is it fair that we may ban you? Yes.

We have worked hard for decades to bring you interesting and accurate content about science and nature. We also get to make the rules on this website.

A word to all regular EarthSky readers and commenters:

The vast majority of you are respectful and polite, and we love you for it. Thanks for being here and for commenting.