Discussion Policy

HAQEEQAT.ORG’S DISCUSSION POLICY:

• At HAQEEQAT.ORG, we seek an, open, educated and civil conversation.

• All opinions–including contrary opinions–are always welcomed and appreciated when stated civilly.

• Etiquette of Discussion & Debate must be observed.

• If you won’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it here!

• HAQEEQAT.ORG reserves the right to modify this policy anytime without prior notice. It is  commenter’s responsibility to keep him/herself updated with HAQEEQAT.ORG’s Discussion Policy each time he/she intends to post a comment.

• In order to comment, it is a-must for you to accept HAQEEQAT.ORG’s Discussion Policy as is, collectively! Well, if you do not- which is your right- you should NOT even start commenting in the first place, simple & clear!

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MODERATING, RESTRICTING, BLOCKING AND DELETING COMMENT:

Although publicly open, this is a privately-run blog and HAQEEQAT.ORG reserves the right to remove entire comments or portions of comments that do not meet these policies, social and healthy moral values.

1. Keep comments on topic; no personal attacks; don’t submit indecent, inflammatory, slanderous, uncivil or irrelevant comments; flamers and trolls are not welcome; inappropriate comments will be removed or edited.

2. The discussion area is moderated, but very lightly. We intend to only automatically hold comments that contain URLs and found any filtered word (mostly, vulgarity & profanity) in.

3. We only block those comments and discussions that are indecent, inflammatory, slanderous, uncivil or irrelevant to the discussion itself. If all you wish to do is to pick a fight, please do it elsewhere. If you want to have a reasoned, reasonable and civil discussion, you are most welcome.

4. If and when reported, we will also monitor and block comments for personal attacks and abusive language. Blatant and obvious misrepresentations will also be edited out. Finally, flamers beware. Please do not try to ‘bait’ people into arguments just for the sake of controversy. Your opinions are your opinions and you have a right to express, but attributing false statements to others, or inventing unsubstantiated or unsubstantiable ‘facts’ is unbecoming in an intellectual forum.

5. Please do NOT try to use the assumed anonymity of the web to say things – or to say them in a way – that you would not do face-to-face. HAQEEQAT.ORG reserves the right to permanently block repeat offenders, including trolls and flamers who try to assume multiple or false identities with the intent to or effect of derailing civil discourse.

6. As with most journalistic mediums, HAQEEQAT.ORG retains the right to edit or block submissions considered dishonest, inappropriate, inflammatory, uncivil or exhibiting and/or enticing religious, sectarian, or ethnic prejudice.

7. Discrimination of any sort is advised to be kept from.

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IMPORTANT NOTES & SUGGESTIONS:

1. We realize that some issues ignite passions. If they do, we suggest that you: (a) write the post, (b) take a deep breath 15 times, (c) drink a glass of cold water, (d) re-read your post and edit out any inappropriate language, and then (e) post your comments. This will spare you the embarrassment and us the effort of having to blank out offensive words from your post, or the entire post, or blocking you.

2. Always include references and sources to support your claims and statements, you may use countless references. In order to support healthy discussions and express our appreciation towards the civilized, we shall dig it out from spam-list and manually approve it for sure, if it is healthy and as per policy.

3. To reply to a particular comment, you can click the reply button under that particular comment. (Up 5 nested (in hierarchy) comments to each comments are allowed. Under the 5th nested comment, you would not see ‘REPLY’ button. In this case you can click ‘REPLY’ button under the 1st comment who’s nested comments you are replying to. Your comment would still appear under the last nested comment.)

4. Readers who want to include a URL in their comments, should preferably use the TINY URL program.

5. Use of basic all HTML tags is allowed. See below what you can use.

6. Yes, you can post images too, see below how you can.

7. Yes, youtube and google videos can also be posted, but this facility has temporarily been withdrawn from non-members.

8. If you want to get notified (via e-mail from Haqeeqat.Org) of other/new comments under your comments on the post(s) you commented, check the box with “Notify me of follow-up comments via E-mail” under your comment editor while posting.

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ALLOWED HTML TAGS:

• to make bold a word or phrase, use: <strong>phrase-to-be-bolded</strong>

• to italicize a word or phrase, use: <em>phrase-to-be-italicize</em>

• to make a clickable URL/HREF, you can just paste the URL as it is, but we prefer TINY URL, also read the following line:

• to make a phrased URL/HREF, use this: <a href=”http://whatever”>text-phrase-here</a>

• smileys are converted to emoticons automatically ( , , , etc)

• to insert image, you’d first have to make sure it’s width is NOT MORE THAN 500pixels if you’re posting an independent comment (not replying nested under another comment). If you’re posting a reply to a comment (nesting your comment under it), in order to include an image in this of your comment, you must use your common-sense to see if the image fits in or not. Wider images may harm the style and width of the page, so we shall deliberately delete it. Here is the image tag you can use while also controlling the size of the image: <img src=”http://whatever.com/image/filename.jpg” width=”500″ height=”150″>

• To make a smaller image clickable to refer to the larger image file: <a href=”http://whatever.com/image/filename.jpg”><img src=”http://whatever.com/image/filename.jpg”></a> You see, it’s just like the 4th tag; phrased URL/HTML tag that is.

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DISPLAY PICTURE:

• In order to have your display picture published with your comment (anywhere, any wordpress-powered-blog in the world) you need to signup with your e-mail address (only) at Gravatar and chose/upload your picture on Gravatar.

• Once you’re signed up on Gravatar, you must use the same e-mail address in your comments you used at Gravatar, whenever and wherever you’d post a comment/reply, your display picture would automatically be attached.