The Daily Memphian has updated its commenting policy as of March 14, 2024.

1. The Daily Memphian welcomes comments from subscribers. While comments that reflect frustration, criticism, annoyance, and even anger are acceptable, we will remove any comment that is racist, sexist, promulgates false or dangerous information, or otherwise breaks our standards. 

• Comments that make generalities about groups of people based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation will be removed.

2. The comments are meant for reasonably civil discussion focused on the issues and subjects in our articles. Comments that veer from these guidelines will be deleted.

• We do not accept comments that include profanity, personal attacks and personal disparagement.
• We assess comments about public figures differently than comments about people who are not public figures. For instance, we are more lenient with negative comments about people who choose to put themselves in the public eye (e.g., elected officials) versus negative comments about people who, for reasons beyond their control, are subjects of or are in some way related to a story we write. 
• Comments that do not contribute to reasonably civil discussion in a productive way will be removed. Likewise, comments that veer too far from the subject or topic of the story will be removed. 

3. The above guidelines are the same principles we use in moderating comments on our social media pages and posts, with the caveat that we aren’t able to see all social media posts that are made about our articles.

4. Comments are reserved for paying subscribers only.

5. While staff will continue to review the comments, we now also have more automated filtering in place. This should reduce the unacceptable comments, but it does mean that — sometimes — perfectly acceptable comments will get held in a queue before they post to the site. Staff members will look at these held comments. Assuming they are acceptable, they will be posted.

6. We encourage other readers to flag problematic comments as unacceptable. If a comment is flagged by readers five times, it will be sent to our staff for moderation.

7. The same is true for a commenter. If other readers flag a commenter five times, staff will take a look and see if there is a problem.

8. To be clear, while our staff will consider the input of readers on comments and commenters, editors will decide whether a comment (or commenter) is accepted or removed.

9. Comments are now tied to a reader’s subscription, meaning you will no longer have to create a separate account for commenting or tie your comments to your social media profile. Because comments are now tied to a reader’s subscription, anonymous commenting is not allowed.

10. In certain circumstances, The Daily Memphian will opt to turn off all commenting on specific stories. For instance, certain breaking news articles may involve rapidly changing situations where inappropriate or inaccurate information could be inadvertently disseminated in the comments. We are simply not staffed to moderate potential comments such as these when stories are rapidly evolving.

11. Similarly, The Daily Memphian may opt to premoderate all comments on sensitive stories where inappropriate or inaccurate information could be disseminated in the comments. All comments on such stories will be placed into an approval queue before it appears. During business hours, it could take up to an hour or more for approved comments to appear; approved comments left after business hours or overnight will appear during the next day.

12. Comments are automatically closed on stories one week after the story’s original publication time.

If you have questions about this policy, email us at comments@dailymemphian.com.

Also, you are welcome to submit a Letter to the Editor for consideration by our editors.