Comments Policy
Here at The Nation, we’ve opted to foster an engaged, accountable commenting community for our readers. To that end, in order to comment, you must buy a subscription to the magazine and you must be willing to use your full name.
Conversations increasingly take place on a multitude of platforms, and we view our comment section as just one of many places where our readers can discuss and respond to our work. For a long time now, we’ve read and engaged with reader feedback on Facebook, Twitter, and our letters pages, as well as our comment sections. Of all of those platforms, we’ve found freewheeling, anonymous comment threads to be the most likely to devolve into fighting and vitriol.
By only allowing subscribers to comment and by requiring full names, we ensure that our commenters are commenting in good faith and that they’re invested in intelligent conversation. The Nation’s letters page has long been home to passionate, thought-provoking—and often critical—responses from our readers. We’re optimistic that our new commenting community will reflect that.
Our hope is that the community we grow will consist of both long-time faithful Nation readers and new people who would like to give us a try. If you fall into the latter camp, we invite you to try a low-cost 6-month digital-only subscription for $12. Current subscribers can log in here.
Once you’ve decided to join our commenting community, there are a few ground rules we ask you to follow. Here are the few things that we don’t allow:
Intolerance: We do not welcome homophobia, sexism, racism, classism, anti-Semitism or other intolerance. Keep in mind that this does not always take the form of racial slurs. If you find yourself typing “I’m not racist, but…” or “I’m not sexist, but…” you should probably think twice.
Violence: Threats of violence or threats to any individual or group’s safety are always unacceptable.
Name-calling: Insults directed at our writers or other commenters will be deleted. If a post is otherwise well-thought-out, we reserve the right to remove the insult and publish the remainder of the post. If a thread devolves into name-calling, we will delete the entire thread.
Trolling: We hope to attract comments that are intellectually stimulating and interesting to read. If you don’t have anything substantive to add to the conversation, your comment is subject to moderation. Commenters who obviously intend just to pick fights, be nasty, naysay, get attention or get a reaction will have their posts deleted
SHOUTING: Try to use your inside voice.
When you see a comment that violates our policy, please use the “flag” option located in the bottom left-hand corner of every comment. A moderator will then decide whether the comment stays on the site. Keep in mind that moderating can be subjective and final decisions rest with the staff at The Nation.
If a commenter repeatedly violates our policy, he or she will receive e-mail notification that they are in danger of being banned from the site. If the commenter continues to violate our policy, they will be banned. Subscriptions are not effected by commenting status and banned commenters will continue to receive the magazine for as long as they wish.
We reserve the right to use comments posted to The Nation in our print and digital editions, our digital-only content and our email products. We may edit comments for reasons of space and clarity. If we are publishing a comment submitted online in our print or digital replica editions, digital-only content or email products, we will attempt to contact the commenter to alert them to the use of their comment, but reserve the right to use the comment without doing so. We will never publish commenters’ email addresses without their explicit consent.
Finally, we’ll continue to read and respond to readers on Facebook, Twitter and our letters pages. You can write a Letter to the Editor by emailing [email protected]