Leaving an Opinion: Guidelines
So you’ve left an opinion for an article that interests you. Yet when you refresh the page, it doesn’t come out. Don’t worry! All opinions go through our moderation queue before going public; if yours meets our guidelines, then it will eventually become available for everyone to see.
What guidelines, you may ask? Simply put:
- Stay on topic
- Keep things civil
- Don’t violate anyone else’s copyright
Yes, we haven’t been vigilant regarding the above previously (and we might be even guilty of violating them!), but that changes, starting February 21, 2009. We’ll clean up any old offending opinions as we encounter them, and rest assured that we’ll do our best not to let similar statements appear on this site ever again.
Stay on Topic
The best conversations happen when everyone’s on the same track. So if the article is about UST’s Social Network, please limit your opinions to something related to uste.tv.
The key here is relevancy: talking about power generation is general is great for our article on the revival of the Bataan Nuclear Plant, but an opinion saying just hi or hello will never see the light of day. Yes, we’re that mataray—for the sake of staying on topic.
Keep Things Civil
You can rant all you want, or disagree with someone else (including us), as long as your opinion is generally civil. You can be sarcastic, dismissive, even mayabang, as long as you’re civil. Attack the issue, not the person. Witness the conversation between Rico and Charlie: they clearly didn’t see eye-to-eye, but neither of them cursed, insulted each other’s mom, etc.
Yes, among other things, keeping things civil means no profanity, in whatever language or dialect. Bicolanos can’t use “b*ray*” for instance.”Sh*t” and “f*ck” are verboten.
Don’t violate anyone else’s copyright
You’re trying to make a point, and you’ve found an article that expresses it perfectly. So you copy-paste the entire article, and submit it as your opinion, right? Wrong. Copying an entire article violates the writer’s copyright, so ideally, we’ll never let it see the light of day. There are acceptable practices, such as citing a portion of an article to make your case.
What if We Get Things Wrong?
Admittedly, staying on topic and civility can be very subjective (and so is, some may argue, the question of copyright). So we’ll get things wrong from time to time. If you think we’ve let a comment that violates our guidelines slip through, let us know about immediately, especially if it involves opinions on our older articles. However, the final call regarding an opinion’s faithfulness to a topic and degree of civility is ours. Take note though, we’re always open to any suggestions regarding our guidelines.
