A Reminder of ELi’s Facebook Policy

If you choose to comment on ELi’s posts at our Facebook page, please note the following:

  1. ELi is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, factual news service dedicated to East Lansing. We operate almost entirely on reader donations and are able to do so because our readers trust us to be responsible. This moderation policy is centered on that responsibility to our readership and our community.
  2. You are always able to share our posts and comment on our posts at your own Facebook page.
  3. ELi views the comment threads of our own Facebook page as a means for our readers to carry on discussions about what we post. We must spend money on staff time to monitor the comment threads because we must stop inaccuracies from spreading and uphold our community standards. You make our job easier when you adhere to facts and treat others well. It helps us when you do not act in ways that cause us to have to consider taking some action like hiding or deleting comments. Thank you for your consideration.
  4. If you go way off topic from the reporting posted, we may choose to hide or delete your comments in a thread. An example of this would be if you engage in promotion of a product that is unrelated to our post or if you shift topics entirely in an apparent attempt to inflame prior tensions with someone.
  5. If you engage in personal attacks, name-calling, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, and SHOUTING, we may choose to hide or delete your comments.
  6. If you get into a fight in the comments thread, we may ask you and those you are engaging with to take it elsewhere or we may take other action, like hiding or deleting comments.
  7. If we think you are a bot or are faking an identity, we may choose to hide or delete your comments. (We welcome people misidentified as a bot or fake to meet with us in person to verify their identities.)
  8. If you become abusive towards our reporters or other members of our team, we may choose to hide or delete your comments. Criticism is fine; abuse is not. We note especially the problematic trend in America of abusiveness toward reporters, particularly women. We are glad to say this has been rare in East Lansing.
  9. In extraordinary cases, we will block individuals for repetitive abusive behavior or false presentation of self. (We have done this only twice since 2014.)
  10. If you want to reach us, including to ask us why we took some particular action, Facebook is not the best way to do this. Please use our contact page: https://eastlansinginfo.news/contact-form/