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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Community guidelines

Free speech is chic. Spokesman.com, along with its affiliated Web sites, is a place for robust debate and interaction among community users, especially through discussions about stories, multimedia and other content. But because this is a Web site owned by a family newspaper, this page contains some basic rules about sharing and posting on our site.

In addition to guidelines spelled out below, we expect all commenters to abide by the Spokesman.com Forum Standards.

The basics.

Please keep your comments in good taste. No hate speech or hate symbols, which includes but is not limited to content that is degrading to someone's race, ethnicity, age, gender identity and sexual orientation. Avoid using abusive, obscene, profane or vulgar language. No sharing or uploading content of like nature. If you find a comment offensive or think it violates these standards, please contact a moderator or click the "Flag as inappropriate" link by the comment for consideration and possible removal. Outside of those guidelines, the best solution to "unwanted" speech is counterspeech. If you don't agree with somebody's opinion, consider adding your voice.

Treat other participants politely.

We encourage the building of friendships and social networks through our virtual venues. Please respect other community members. We also encourage users to stay on topic. Please use common sense for taste and decency because your mother, grandmother, kids or boss may be reading.

Don't exploit people; don't exploit the medium.

Spokesman.com is not a place for porn, blatant promotion, mindless abuse, mining, pushing one's own agenda or anything else considered spam. No harassment, stalking, threats or intimidation, trolling, flame wars or exposing other users' personal information. We strongly encourage users with disputes to "take it outside" and away from our discussion venues. We reserve the right to ban repeat offenders temporarily or permanently.

Do respect copyright laws.

We like people who post original content. Otherwise, play on the safe side and credit the source, or consider linking to it instead.

We encourage people to poke around and get sucked into our site.

If you find something you like and want to share it with your friends and family, don't hesitate to bookmark it, embed it or email the URL to spread the good word about the good fight.

We encourage learning and research.

Especially through the use of the extensive online archive and search function, which lets you search back weeks, months and years into published Spokesman-Review content. You can also browse by subject, time, place or type of media. For help using the site, email us at webteam@spokesman.com.


For further information on policies governing S-R.COM Web services, see:
Copyright Policy | Forum Standards | Privacy Policy | Service Agreement