ABPnews Community Discussion Rules
Effective April 17, 2013
Consistent with our mission, ABPnews encourages a robust online community through comments on news and opinion articles on www.abpnews.com and www.abpnews.com/blog.
We strive to maintain an engaging and respectful conversation. For the privilege of participation in the discussion, you must adhere to the policy and rules below and to the spirit of the community they seek to create. If you break the rules, we reserve the right to revoke your privilege to comment.
Community Policies
If your comment has been deleted or edited, it is the result of violating one or more of these rules.
- Number: Only ONE comment per user per article is allowed.
- Length: Comments are limited to a word count of approximately 150 words. We will not take time to edit your comment to 150 words. Instead, the entire comment will be deleted.
- Content:
- a. Conversations must be civil in language and tone. No personal attacks, offensive or demeaning language, name-calling, libel, defamation, hate speech or similar abuse be tolerated. Under no circumstances should you post anything that could be taken as threatening, harassing, bullying, obscene, pornographic, sexist or racist. Our comment community is not a place for promotion, recruiting, lobbying or proselytizing your religious beliefs. It is also not a place for demeaning, criticizing, bullying, or harassing religious or political views that are different from your own.
- b. A comment that is off-topic, runs off on an inappropriate tangent or kills the conversation will be deleted.
- Violations: The user will be warned after one violation. A second violation will result in revoking without notice the user's privilege to comment. Repeat registrations under different pseudonyms will not be tolerated.
If you need to contact our editorial staff, email the editor at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . We will review all comments and take them seriously but may not always be able to respond.
Terms and Conditions
The following are general terms and conditions for the privilege of commenting on the ABPnews and blog sites.
- Registration: User registration is required using the comment platform available on each page. It will allow you to register through the platform itself or through a profile of another platform (Facebook, Google+, and Twitter for example).
- Email Privacy: A valid email address is required to register. Your email addresses will not be published or shared. It may be used by the author of an article or by ABPnews staff to respond to you privately.
- Hold Harmless: All comments are the responsibility of the commenter. By submitting a comment, you agree that the comment content is your own, and to hold this site, Associated Baptist Press, and all subsidiaries and representatives harmless from any and all repercussions, damages, or liability. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libelous or defamatory comments, or material posted in potential breach of copyright.
- Ownership: ABPnews has the right to retain the copyright to all comments.
- Threads: Comment threads will be closed after seven days for every article.
- Links: We allow commenters to link to sources for facts or statements you reference. However, note that our comment platform will hold any comments containing a link for moderation first (in order to prevent spam or viruses). It may take a few days for your comment to appear if it contains a link.
- Commercialism: We will remove any posts that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like. Advertising opportunities are available through ABPnews.
- Trackbacks and Pingbacks: All trackbacks and pingbacks will be treated in line with our comments policy.
- Privacy: Protect your privacy. Never share private information such as a mailing address or phone number in your comment. We will also not allow commenters to reveal private information about one another.
- All Rights Reserved: We reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments and to block access to persons who violate these policies and guidelines.
If you have questions, concerns or suggestions, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Thank you for your participation in our online community.
