ChicagoNow aims to build a community with members who are informed, entertained and engaged both with our bloggers and with each other.
To maintain this community, the conversation on the site must be civil and on-topic. We want to encourage discussion about the content rather than community members or bloggers. Please do us, yourself and your fellow community members a favor and read our commenting policy closely.
Each blogger is charged with maintaining his or her community. This comment policy will be enforced according to bloggers' implicit agreements with their communities within the boundaries outlined below. For example, Da' Bears Blog and Chicago Garden clearly provide very different atmospheres. The level of discourse within each community has been--or will be--settled over time.
To make a comment on a post, we require you to be a registered ChicagoNow user. If you are registered and not logged in, we require you to sign in before you can comment.
In general, ChicagoNow bloggers won't be moderating comments before they are published. If you post a comment that you're sure is not in violation of any of our policies but don't see it appear immediately, don't worry. Sometimes comments can take a few minutes to get posted or anti-spam technology can flag something as a false positive. Rest assured that if you made a legitimate comment, we will do our best to make sure it gets posted on the site for others to see and respond to. There may be rare instances when we may moderate all comments and publish them as they are reviewed. This is especially likely if the post touches on an extremely sensitive topic that will encourage healthy debate.
Note: Some HTML formatting is permitted in the comments section, but links to photos and videos may be held for review by the blogger before they are published. If you've waited a reasonable amount of time and the comment still hasn't appeared, please feel free to alert the ChicagoNow community managers.
ChicagoNow welcomes all points of view and wants you to have the freedom to express your opinion and passionately participate in conversations. We won't censor your comments because we have a political or ideological disagreement with a statement or because you represent an unpopular opinion. However, there are a small number of reasons we will remove your comments to preserve the spirit of the site and to keep the community an inviting place for everyone.
Our goal is to preserve the freedom of speech but to avoid an "anything goes" environment. An excellent rule of thumb is to keep discussion family-friendly and avoid saying anything you wouldn't say to your fellow community members in person.
What to Keep in Mind
We have complete control over the comments, but we will not control them unless they violate our policies.
We have the ability to edit, moderate and delete comments. We won't edit them. And we won't censor them unless they violate our policies.
Comments you make on an individual blog may appear elsewhere on the ChicagoNow site, including the homepage.
Your Comment May Get Removed If . . .
It is hateful, racist, abusive, excessively foul or otherwise off-topic: We welcome all kinds of opinion as long as you remain within the realm of propriety, stay on-topic and keep your comments about the content rather than the blogger or other community members.
It contains self-promotion or spam: We want to hear what you have to say about the post in question. However, if you would like more exposure for your site, services, or product, please contact our ad sales team so we can help you achieve your goals.
It divulges or exposes personal information: We work hard to preserve the privacy of all our community members and you should respect the boundaries set by other members. Do not divulge unnecessary information about yourself or expose the personal information of another user. Making sensitive information available to the public can lead to unsafe situations.
It does not make a contribution to the conversation: Legitimate criticism of content is welcome but comments like "you suck," "this is stupid," "fail," and so on are not welcome, do not contribute to the conversation and may be removed.
Keep in mind that the above policies are general guidelines for the bloggers and community managers, and they are sometimes open to interpretation. (For example, what is a valid contribution and what isn't?) While not all comments will be removed, most comments violating the above principles will not be welcome on the site.
We are not responsible for consequences that arise from your comments. Any comment you make is your responsibility and yours alone. If you submit a comment to any of our blogs, you implicitly acknowledge that the comment is wholly yours and that you will assume all responsibility for it and hold this site, its subsidiaries, partners, and employees harmless for any repercussions you may face as a result of your comment.
You May Get Removed from the Community If . . .
Everyone makes mistakes and we understand that. We hope you will read our community guidelines and commenting policy before you start participating on the site. That said, if you repeatedly violate the community guidelines and/or our commenting policy--after being warned--we will be forced to remove you from our community to preserve a healthy environment for everyone else. We don't want to be put in that position, so please keep our guidelines in mind before participating in any facet of the site.
Again, the best advice remains: Don't say anything you wouldn't say in person.
