Commenting Guidelines

PinkNews readers are given the opportunity to comment publicly on articles on the PinkNews website and app to discuss our published content, express their opinions and debate issues more generally.

First and foremost we want to create a safe and inclusive space for PinkNews readers to interact and engage with our content and with one another, whilst creating a sense of community on our site.

Our role as publisher is to ensure that PinkNews readers adhere to the standard of behaviour that we would expect and reserve the right to intervene if we feel these standards are not being met.

Our rules of play

Please be aware of the following guidelines when commenting on the PinkNews website or app.

• Commenting is only available to readers who have registered an account on PinkNews and have verified their email address.

• We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, dead-naming or any other forms of hate-speech, discrimination or contributions 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, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.

• We welcome healthy discussion and debate, but personal attacks (against authors or other users), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated. PinkNews’ priority is to ensure we create a safe and inclusive space for everyone. 

• We accept criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow misrepresentation of PinkNews, our journalists or any other members of staff to be published on our website. 

• We understand that people often feel strongly about the issues we write about on the site, but we reserve the right to remove or hide any content that others might find extremely offensive or threatening. Please respect other PinkNews readers’ views and beliefs and consider your impact on others when making your contribution. Readers are welcome to flag any comments they feel are inappropriate and we will investigate accordingly.

• We reserve the right turn-off commenting on particular articles if we feel the subject is highly sensitive or  the conversation has descended into a “slanging match” between individuals and is inappropriate for the wider community. We don’t want to stop people discussing topics they are passionate about, but we want to maintain the overall safe and inclusive nature of our website as best we can.

• We will remove any comments that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libellous or defamatory postings, or material posted in potential breach of copyright.

• We will remove any comments we consider to be commercial or spam. Our aim is that this site should provide a space for our members to interact with our content and engage with each other. We actively discourage commercial entities passing themselves off as individuals, regardless of whether they are paying members, in order to post advertising material or links. This may also apply to people or organisations who frequently post propaganda or external links without adding substantively to the quality of the discussion on the PinkNews website.

• Be aware that your comments may be misunderstood and other members may mis-interprit what you’ve written, so try to be clear about what you are saying. Remember PinkNews has a global audience and that text isn’t always a great medium for conversation: tone of voice (sarcasm, humour and so on) doesn’t always translate as you would expect. Please opt for a reasonable tone, and be sensitive to others even in unreasonable circumstances.

• Overall we want this to be a welcoming and inclusive space for PinkNews readers to discuss the topics that matter to them and we expect participants to respect our guidelines and to inform us if anyone is not following our guidelines as we would expect.

Our moderation approach

Members who seriously, persistently or wilfully ignore the community standards set out above or our terms and conditions will have their commenting privileges removed indefinitely regardless of whether they are a registered and verified reader of PinkNews.

Moderation is at the discretion of the OpenWeb moderation tool, and the PinkNews editorial team and we reserve the right to remove any comments that we feel breach our community guidelines in any way. We rely on our readers to flag the comments that they feel do not adhere to our guidelines and will endeavour to investigate and take action when we feel it is necessary.

We use AI software to help moderate our comments and keep our community safe.

If you have any questions or feedback regarding any aspect of reader participation on the PinkNews website, you can write to us at [email protected].

One more thing

The views expressed in the comments section of the PinkNews site do not necessarily reflect or represent the views of PinkNews, its staff or our contributors.