VetChat Comment Policy

We want you to feel at home when you post a comment on VetChat. We want everyone to feel at home posting comments on VetChat. We don’t know what your home is like, but we know how we expect people to behave when they visit ours. That’s why we reserve the right to delete comments and ban users as needed to keep the comment threads here civil and substantive.

Our No. 1 house rule is simple: Don’t be a jerk.

Want to be the kind of commenter we’d love to bring home to Thanksgiving dinner? Here’s what we like to see in comments:

• Weigh in with smart, informed ideas that contribute further to the story.
• Give us useful, constructive criticism. Spot a typo or an error? Let us know and we will correct it.
• Demonstrate and share the intelligence, wisdom, and humor we know you possess.
• Don’t feed the trolls.

Although we can’t be everywhere at once, here are some of the kinds of comments we’re going to do our best to curtail:

• Promoting your own brand, product, or blog.
• Impersonating authors or other commenters.
• Comments that make it clear you didn’t read the article.
• Comments that are completely out of left field.
• Threats — no matter how vague — against the author or other commenters.
• Racism, sexism, homophobia, you get the drift.
• Trolling