Commenting policies

GUIDE TO COMMENTING (for PG readers)

We invite you to add your comments, and we encourage a thoughtful, open and lively exchange of ideas and information at post-gazette.com. Some content and comments will generate heated discussions, but we expect -- and require -- that the tone of the commentary be civil and respectful.

Your comments will not be screened or edited before they appear on our website. We will, however, monitor and review your postings. We reserve the right to remove any comment that the community reports as abusive or the staff at post-gazette.com determines is inappropriate or offensive.

Our Terms of Use " ("Those terms") state clearly that you must not post comments containing:

- personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity or ethnic or racial slurs;

- language that threatens, harasses or encourages illegal or criminal acts;

- material that is defamatory, libelous or infringes on a copyright or trademark;

- attacks on the basis of sexual orientation or gender;

- solicitations or advertisements for any purpose;

- impersonations of anyone.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and post-gazette.com are not responsible for any content you post. In keeping with our newsroom standards, do not contribute material that you know is inaccurate, false or confidential. Please keep your comments constructive and on topic.

To promote a more respectful discussion, you will be required to use your Facebook profile to contribute a comment.

As a registered user, you will have the opportunity to flag comments that appear to violate the Terms of Use or disrupt discussions.

We also reserve the right to ban permanently users whose online behavior violates our Terms of Use.

At our discretion, we will disallow commenting on some content and delete and end comments when the conversation violates our guidelines.

Remember that any content you provide becomes the property of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has sole discretion over its use. Once it appears on our website, it will become available to search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Our policy is that we will not remove postings at the user's request.

Thank you for abiding by our rules.