I. Comment Policy

Bostonist loves our readers, and loves our readers' comments. However, Bostonist is a private website, and we reserve the right to delete any comments we find offensive. We strive to maintain an atmosphere of free and open conversation, but inevitably, some posts on the site will spiral off into negative sniping and flame wars. When this happens, we close the posts to further comments. If a commenter repeatedly abuses our comment policy, we delete all of their comments on every post on the site, and ban their IP address. If you have questions about this policy, about comments on specific posts, or about comments that have been deleted, please email the Editors or Jake.

Good Comments

• Good comments respond to the content in the post, or to a comment left by another reader.
• Good comments can disagree with the content in the post, but they never insult the writer of the post, other commenters, Gothamist, other websites, etc.
• Good comments are usually pretty short, have a positive/constructive tone, and are open to being contradicted by other readers.
• Good comments are always on topic, and never contain spam or spam-like content.
• Good comments are rarely anonymous, because good commenters stand behind their opinions.

Bad Comments

• Bad comments insult the writer of the post, other commenters, Gothamist, other websites, etc.
• Bad comments are often long, negative in tone, contain profanity, threats, or invective content.
• Bad comments go off on tangents or go-off topic, and often contain spam or spam-like content.
• Bad comments are almost always anonymous, and usually contain fake contact information, because negative commenters are almost always too cowardly to stand behind their opinions.

Bostonistist respects the rights of photographers and other original rights holders. As such, we do not steal, borrow, or reuse protected images or other content (video, audio, etc) without permission in advance from the content creator or owner.

If you feel that an image (or other content) has been used without appropriate permission, please contact our publisher, Jake Dobkin (jake at gothamist dot com), and he will remove it immediately and begin an investigation. In your email, please include the URL of the page in question. If possible, please include a copy of the copyright registration or other evidence that you are the original rights holder.

Fair-use Policy: Bostonist may occasionally excerpt content or use thumbnails of protected images for the purposes of comment, criticism, or parody. In these cases, we always provide a link back to the original content that is the subject of the post. We evaluate all fair-use situations on a case-by-case basis. We do not believe fair-use allows us to use full-size images, images for the simple purpose of illustration, or images without proper source identification.

Good Sources of Images: Bostonist often relies on public domain images, such as those provided by many government sites, Creative Commons licensed photoblogs and photo sites, and GPL stock sites. Bostonist also makes arrangements with photographers to allow us access to their work. If you would like to allow Bostonist to use your images, please contact our publisher.

While concrete ethics standards are pretty new in the blogosphere, the Gothamist family of sites aims to incorporate standard journalism practices into our city coverage. This statement of practices is a work in progress: if you see something that should be added or changed, let us know.

Outside Ideas, and Meta-Content
Blogging is meant to fuse outside ideas with those of the individual blogger to create new ideas. While standard linking is the most effective way to back up a blogger’s ideas or recognize an outside source for an idea, Bostonist bloggers, where at all possible, will cite the originator of the idea/meme/story. Recycling news is a useful function for meta-news sites like the Bostonist, but such recycling must be appropriately cited. If an idea is original to a Bostonist contributor(s), then that poster may note that in the editorial copy.

Stylistic Consistency
While individual posters are encouraged to develop their own editorial style, the editors of each of the Gothamist sites have a responsibility to maintain stylistic consistency, both between posts and between our different sites. As a group blog, we strive for a unified voice. In this way, each site begins to take on the personality of the city in which it exists.

Confirming Facts and Issuing Corrections
Often in journalism, newsroom editors will require three sources in order to declare something as true fact. Blogging, however, is very much about citing pieces of information on the fly, as the facts are emerging. When we publish items based on anonymous sources, rumor, or “buzz”, we note that in the post. When a post is discovered to be erroneous, a new post is issued and a correction is placed in the previous items. We may also use the comment section, strike-through text or other methods to point out the correction.

Freebees and Conflicts of Interest
Gothamist family editors and contributors cannot promise coverage to friends, real-life colleagues and other acquaintances, unless the content is objectively worthy of being covered. Conflicts of interest are settled on a case-by-case basis by the editor of each site. Bostonist bloggers cannot accept gifts, free meals, tickets, or other consideration in return for running posts. These and all other manner of quid-pro-quo relationships are strictly forbidden. Bostonist writers may review product samples or enter events on press passes as long as doing so does not bias their coverage.

Advertising
All advertising on Bostonist is clearly marked as advertising, and our advertising and editorial business is kept strictly separate. Gothamist blogs may from time to time run promotional contests or enter into other collaborative relationships with our advertisers, but these relationships will always be clearly disclosed. Editorial content will never be influenced by any advertiser relationship.

Other conflicts of interest
Individual bloggers for the Gothamist families are discouraged from writing about things related to their professional lives (e.g., writing about a new Virgin MegaStore offer if the blogger pulls in a pay check from Virgin), but sometimes editorial interest may cause occasional overlaps. If that becomes the case, the blogger has an obligation to disclose the professional relationship.

Statement on Poaching
Editors and contributors may not use the Bostonist name to gain entrance to an event or gather research for a post and then give or sell that post to another blog or media site. This is intended to protect the Gothamist brand. To prevent confusion and bad feelings, Gothamist prefers that its editors and contributors notify Gothamist when they are writing for another blog or media site, especially if the writing is related to the section/beat the writer covers for Gothamist. This policy does not apply to personal blogs.

Our Link list
Bostonist loves to read other sites, and we try to link to other websites frequently in our editorial. We often receive requests from other sites to be added to our left-column link list, and because space is limited in this list, we have established a list of criteria that sites must meet before we add them. Please do not ask for a link if you do not link to us.

Statement on Authorship
Bostoonist is a group blog. The posts and the comments made on Bostonist by its editors and writers reflect only those views held by the author of the post and not by Gothamist LLC, or any other organization.