Forum administrators and moderators have the right to edit, delete, move or close any comment or forum at any time. The following rules and guidelines clarify our practices and provide an explanation of what content may lead to message deletion and/or user bans.

New to forums? We want our forums to be a welcoming place. Our staff is happy to help users who are unfamiliar with online forums. If you are new to commenting or forums and have a question, please e-mail webmaster@journalstar.com.

Play nice! Messages containing intentionally misleading or false information, defamatory content, threats, verbal abuse, harassment, obscenity or personal information about other individuals are not allowed.

Comments should be brief and stick to either generally known facts or the facts contained in a news story.

Keep a civil tone. Resist making personal attacks or indulging in name-calling.

If your item doesn't get posted or is deleted, tone it down a bit and try again.

Spam is not allowed. Spamming includes multiple disruptive, meaningless or repetitive messages, or messages posted solely for solicitation. Messages considered spam, trolling or flaming (as determined by the moderator) can be deleted without warning or explanation.

User Accounts: Registered user names must follow the same rules as remarks posted on forums. Any user accounts considered objectionable or created for the purpose of spamming or promoting commercial interests may be deleted. Deliberate or continued abuse of user accounts could result in a ban of the user's IP address.

Signatures: All content posted in the user's signature field must follow the same rules as forum messages and user accounts.

Fair Use: Do not post entire articles into comments or forums. This is a potential violation of copyright laws. It's unnecessary and results in needlessly long posts. Instead, post a brief abstract of the material and a link to the complete source. If you are not sure how much of an article you can legally post, please simply post a link to the material.

Don't see a message you posted earlier? Administrators may move messages to more relevant forums. If you recently posted a message and cannot find it anywhere, the message may have been deleted because of objectionable content. Feel free to try again or contact the moderator for details.

What to do if your account has been banned: If you try to log in and receive a message that you've been banned, do not immediately open another user account and continue the inappropriate behavior. Such action could result in a permanent ban. Instead, contact the administrator and find out what caused the sanction. We may or may not reinstate your privileges after such a contact.