Q: Do you screen comments on Columns?

A: The UW Alumni Association aims to keep comments civil and on-topic. Screening allows us to remove comments that are hateful toward others or include profanity and other banned material. We reserve the right to remove any comment at our discretion.

Q: Why was my comment removed?

A: Personal attacks, insults, profanity and hate speech are prohibited. Here is more detail on the most frequent reasons comments are not approved or removed:

• Personal attacks and insults: Threatening, intimidating, libeling or defaming of any individual. Name-calling is also prohibited.
• Profanity: Obscene or pornographic language. Attempts to communicate an obscenity or profanity using punctuation, abbreviations or dashes to disguise the word are prohibited.
• Hate speech: Language that degrades others on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical characteristics or disability.
• Off-topic comments: Comments that have nothing to do with the subject of the article.
• Private information: Material that can be considered an invasion of privacy. This includes phone numbers, e-mail addresses, URLs or other specific personal information.
• Solicitations of any kind.
• Advertising or spam, including a comment that is posted repeatedly within one thread or across a number of different threads.
• Copyright violations: No content from UWalum.com or any other source can be reproduced in its entirety. Instead, use a small and relevant excerpt and then provide a link to the full version.
• Comments where it appears the commenter is masquerading as another person.

Q: Who reviews the reported comments?

A: The UW Alumni Association staff has final authority over comments on the Columns site.

Q: How do I report an offensive comment?

A: If you believe a comment violates the rules above, bring it to the attention of the online staff by contacting the UWAA. It will be reviewed as soon as possible. Keep in mind that a comment is not inappropriate simply because you disagree with what it says. It must violate the specific rules above.

Q: Why do you require information to comment?

A: Adding this step deters the hit-and-run troll while allowing us to keep a large community of commenters responsible for their own actions. It’s also the best way to keep spam out of the comments.