Here at the World Science Festival, we like to encourage a healthy, vibrant community and to facilitate the interaction between the reporters and our readers. To that end, we’ve established these guidelines for commenting on our stories and interacting with our community of readers. This is a living document and will likely be updated as circumstances require. Please check back here regularly for updates.
If you have any questions or comments about these guidelines, please email us at info@worldsciencefestival.com
Be respectful. Science is about exploration and understanding, and we encourage passionate debate. Please help us maintain this atmosphere by flagging any comments which you feel violate these standards (as well as spam), and they will be reviewed by our moderators.
Science is open for debate, and we’d like to encourage that debate in light of the evidence presented. However, we also believe there are some areas where the evidence is clear and disagreements about the conclusions of that evidence are no longer in service to science, but rather to one’s own biases or personal interests. To those ends, comments espousing beliefs plainly not backed by science (like vaccine denialism) will be removed.
Racism and sexism will not be tolerated. Similarly, threats of physical or sexual violence are not acceptable either, and any comments of this nature will be deleted.
Any comment written in all caps will be deleted, no questions asked.
Do not post any personal info in the comments, either your own, another commenter’s, or a public person’s. The inclusion of this information has legal implications and may be removed.
All posts that contain links will be automatically pre-moderated in order to prevent spam. Links to articles that back up your point of view are acceptable, though links to sites that break any of our rules will be removed. Additionally, no shortened links are allowed, as the target and nature of these links are invisible without clicking.
We reserve the right to edit or remove any comment, or temporarily or permanently ban any user we judge to be in violation of these guidelines, or for any other reason that in our judgement that creates a hostile social environment.
Have fun! Enjoy yourself! Build the community you want to participate in.
