Comment policy

Readers who would like to comment must sign in with a Facebook account in order to post a comment on The Daily Northwestern’s website. Your name, photo and other personal information you make public on Facebook, such as your network, will appear with your comment.

The Daily Northwestern encourages thoughtful, respectful and relevant comments that contribute to a public conversation. We want to emphasize that:

Comments reflect the opinions of readers, not The Daily or the Daily Editorial Board.
Members of The Daily Editorial Board who respond to comments will do so with their name and title.
Comments are meant to further the discussion set forth by articles and columns posted by The Daily.
Comments are never edited. They are either posted on the website or deleted.
We encourage feedback, tips for correction, questions and all comments in general. We have always and will continue to appreciate reader engagement.
Corrections can be sent to [email protected]. News tips can be sent to [email protected] or [email protected].

We reserve the right to remove any inappropriate commentary, including but not limited to:

Any posts that demean others on the basis of race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or preference, ability status, religion, or any other categorization.
Explicit content, including obscenities or anything sexually or violently explicit.
Any comments that are libelous or defamatory, or violate an individual’s reasonable expectations of privacy.
Any comments that are clearly irrelevant to the topic written about. The comments are meant for conversation, not attacks.
Any comments posted by an account that impersonates another individual or group. Users who pretend to be other individuals will be deleted.
Anything intended to harass or intimidate reporters, commenters, or subjects of an article, column, letter or editorial. You can criticize The Daily in a comment, but not an individual writer or editor.
Commercial promotion, spam, news releases, markup language or announcements. Instead, feel free to email any tips or news releases to [email protected] or [email protected].
Factually incorrect information.

We reserve the right to turn comments off on posts, which include but are not limited to the following:

Blotter or crime-related stories, including breaking news posts about murder, suicide, rape, sexual assault or molestation.
Stories where commenting has gotten out of hand, and the debate has taken away from the topic put forth by the article, column, letter or editorial. The commenting may be temporarily disabled.

We reserve the right to approve comments on posts, which include but are not limited to the following:

Obituaries. In order to protect the families of members of the community who have died, we will ensure comments do not violate our policy before posting them with the story. To reiterate, comments will not be edited, but rather deleted or posted.

We ask that readers help monitor the comment threads on dailynorthwestern.com. If you read a comment that violates this policy, we encourage you not to respond to it. Instead, contact our web editor at [email protected] or the editor in chief at [email protected] with your concerns.

Last updated January 3, 2014