How to comment

Our No. 1 house rule is simple: Don’t be a jerk.

Want to be the kind of commenter we’d love to bring home to Thanksgiving dinner? Here’s what we like to see in comments:

  • Weigh in with smart, informed ideas that contribute further to the story.

  • Give us useful, constructive criticism. Spot a typo or an error? Let us know and we will correct it.

  • Demonstrate and share the intelligence, wisdom, and humor we know you possess.

  • Don’t feed the trolls. You wouldn’t dive into a debate with our ill-informed, weird uncle Gary just for the heck of it. And you definitely wouldn’t feed him. (We told you he was weird.) Downvote and flag comments instead.

Although we can’t be everywhere at once, here are some of the kinds of comments we’re going to do our best to curtail:

  • Promoting your own brand, product, or blog. So you’ve got a climate change solution that will simultaneously solve world poverty. Great, but this site is not the place for it.

  • Impersonating authors or other commenters. We can’t believe we have to say this, but: Don’t do that. It’s weird.

  • Comments that make it clear you didn’t read the article. Enraged that we didn’t mention X in a story about Y? Slow down, Speedy McFingerson. If you’d made it past paragraph two, you’d see a very well thought-out discussion of that X you hold so dear.

  • Comments that are completely out of left field. Sometimes discussions veer off a bit, but are still related to the original subject. That is fine. Hijacking the conversation to promote off-topic commentary is not.

  • Threats — no matter how vague — against the author or other commenters. Things can get heated. Before you casually mention your foe’s home address, think of your Mother. (Bonus points if you never mention your “Mother”)

  • Trolling. If you’re just out for a good trolling and are not contributing meaningfully to the conversation, we’ll be pushing you back under the bridge.

Welcome to WolfNet

A site about motorcycle touring, programming and ferrets