People who want to post comments on Health.am are going to have to follow our rules. We know that not all blogs/forums are like that, but this one is.

There’s legal language nearby. Here’s the plain English: no libel, slander, no lying, no fabricating, no swearing at all, no words that teenagers use a lot that some people think aren’t swearing but we do, no insulting groups or individuals, no ethnic slurs and/or epithets, no religious bigotry, no threats of any kind, no bathroom humor, no comparing anyone to Hitler, Stalin or J. Bush. We expect heated, robust debate, but comments should be polite and civil. We consider this to be public space so behave and write accordingly.

Yes, what is not allowable is subjective. Health.am absolutely reserve the right to remove posts we think break any of the rules or the spirit of the rules and we reserve the right to ban individuals from commenting. We will use language filtering programs to block certain words and we will use human editing too.

Comments should be limited to the topic of the original posting. This is not the place for private conversations, no matter how innocent.

We require everyone who comments to register and provide a real e-mail address. No exceptions. And posting comments is not the same thing as complaining to CBS News or notifying CBS News of a problem - legally, there’s a big difference.

Very important: if you see a comment that you feel is inappropriate, let us know by clicking on the “contact us” or “report this complaint” button.

There are 10 guidelines we would like you to be aware of, and which we expect all participants in the community areas of ArmMed Media to abide by:

1. We welcome hearty debate and dissent, but the key to maintaining ArmMed Media as an inviting space is focusing on intelligent, insightful and passionate discussion of issues - to use a footballing phrase, we expect users to “play the ball, not the man”.

2. Please respect other people’s views and beliefs and consider their impact when making your contribution. We understand that people often feel strongly about things, but we will consider removing any content that other users might find extremely offensive or threatening. We actively discourage obscenity and mindless abuse. Personal attacks on other users or authors have no place in an intelligent discussion.

3. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or content that could be interpreted as such. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

4. We appreciate that we have an international audience, but since we publish content in English, the language of conversation on the site should also be English. As such, contributions that cannot be understood by the majority of participants may be removed.

5. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libellous or defamatory postings, or which is posted in potential breach of copyright.

6. We will remove any posts that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like. Our aim is that ArmMed Media should provide a space for people to interact with our content and each other, and we frown on commercial entities passing themselves off as individuals. There are technology features in place, which can help to identify spam in content or delivery form and prevent it from being published on the site, but some may slip through.

7. Think before you press the publish button. Remember that this is a public forum, and your words will be archived on this site and available for anyone to find for a long time - the web has a very long memory.

8. Keep it relevant. The vast majority of conversations on ArmMed Media relate to a specific blog post or topic within a talk board. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is completely unrelated to the original topic then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track.

9. The platform is ours, but the conversation belongs to everybody. We want this to be a welcoming space for intelligent discussion, and we expect participants to help us achieve this by notifying us of potential problems and helping each other to keep conversations inviting and intelligent.

10. And remember ... Text isn’t always a great medium for conversation. Remember that tone of voice - sarcasm, humour and so on - doesn’t always come across when using words on a screen. Be aware that you may be misunderstood, so try to be clear about what you are saying, and expect that people may understand your contribution differently than you intended.

In short, if you act with maturity and consideration for other users, you should have no problems.

Marina Smirnova
ArmMed Media

Provided by ArmMed Media