Community standards

Aims

pv magazine is a platform providing information on a broad range of issues. Some of the content we publish may be subject to opposing opinions, and we welcome constructive debates on these issues. However, we do want to remind our community to adhere to certain standards when interacting with one another. Our platform should remain an inclusive and safe forum for multiple opinions and the lively exchange of those. We ask our readers to engage in respectful and meaningful ways with one another. To this end, we reserve the right moderate and/or delete comments.

Guidelines

The following nine guidelines inform our approach to comment moderation. Adhering to them will ensure participation in the debate. If any of the guidelines are neglected, the moderators retain the right to delete or moderate comments. They apply across all sections of the pv magazine platform, its different regional issues, and its social media accounts.

1. Critique of the articles we publish is acceptable, but attacking our editorial team is not. Our moderators will distinguish between robust and constructive criticism of our content, and attacks on the integrity of our editors.
2. Opposing opinions are welcome, personal attacks are not. Content we publish might evoke opposing opinions, and we are happy about that. Such opposition, however, must be communicated without personal attack, defamation, and/or bigotry. Persistent trolling, even without defamation, does not constitute a relevant and meaningful engagement with our content.
3. Some topics might evoke enthusiastic discussion among our readers. However, should these deviate from factual discussion, we will consider curtailment of the discussion. People are invited to discuss topics important to them and to do so at great length if they feel necessary, or the conversation is engaging. However, we do ask our readers to abstain from strongly divisive statements based on deeply entrenched partisanship. Such views and expressions might hinder a lively and constructive debate.
4. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such. We recognize the difference between criticising a particular government, organization, community or belief, and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.
5. We reserve the right to protect ourselves from legal jeopardy. To do so, we will consider moderating libellous or defamatory comments, or those which infringe on copyright regulations.
6. We will consider removing comments that are wildly off-topic. Even though our content is wide-ranging and can be discussed from many angles, there are boundaries to what we consider useful to a productive and informative debate. In order to maintain a good debate, we will ensure that the comments are “on-track”. This also applies to questions to the editors.
7. Comments with commercial intent, such as advertising or spam will be removed. The comments section is a space of interaction for users, not to advertise products and brands.
8. We will remove posts written in languages irrelevant to the platform in question. Our platforms are inclusive spaces of interaction. As such, we will remove comments submitted in languages other than that of the website in question.
9. In summary, be respectful and considerate. As a trade publication, we attract a broad, informed readership across the whole industry, which may contribute with in-depth knowledge on the matters we discuss. A vibrant exchange of opinions and knowledge is key to our mission as a trade publication, whether this happens on the internet or face-to-face between peers. The aforementioned guidelines are designed to foster high quality, constructive debates, and to ensure everybody feels safe and welcome to participate.

This page was last updated on August 10, 2018.