Rules for Our Commenters

You are encouraged to comment, but please observe the rules:

1. Don’t expect us to reply to your comments. If one of us feels strongly, we might reply in an article. Though we often do participate in the comments, we make no promise (implied or explicit) that we will reply to other people’s arguments or questions. Don’t look for us to mud-wrestle with critics in our own comment section.
2. Please remember that this is our website and you are a guest here. You’re not a bouncer, a babysitter, or a hired clown. So treat your fellow guests with respect. If someone needs to be escorted off the premises for drunk and disorderly or otherwise antisocial behavior, one of us will do it.
3. Say what you like about us; disagree as strongly as you like; beat us up or slap us around verbally with near-total impunity. But keep within the parameters of Christian civility. We’ll automatically delete comments with profane or unwholesome words, including abbreviated or otherwise disguised ones.
4. If you want to charge us with breaching the boundaries of Christian civility, please be specific. Point out the infraction and explain why you think it is unbiblical. General complaints or cheap-shot comments about “tone” and undocumented accusations that someone has been uncharitable will be summarily deleted.
5. On-topic comments only. If you have other stuff to say to one of us, send an e-mail.
6. Keep our friends and families out of it. Certain kinds of deliberately-intrusive criticism targeting our loved ones or other cherished aspects of our off-line personal lives will be deemed grounds for an instant, automatic, and permanent ban. (Such remarks are outside the parameters of Christian civility and therefore a violation of Rule 2. They also violate rule 3 and this one, and therefore constitute a threefold offense. That’s sufficient grounds for an automatic instant ban.) Say whatever you like about us (as long as you keep your language clean), and we’ll let you post it. Take a cheap shot at one of our friends, wives, children, churches, or places of employment, and you risk being permanently banned without further consideration. If in doubt, apply the strictest possible interpretations of rules 2 and 3.
7. Don’t feed the trolls.
8. Break these rules three times and the moderators will automatically delete any further comments you post.

KUDOS to Pyromaniacs for allowing us to use their guidelines.