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House Rules

HoldtheFrontPage is designed in part to be a forum for discussion and debate and we therefore welcome readers’ comments on the site. Users should however be aware of the need for the site to operate within the law, and for it to uphold the good name of the journalistic profession.

Comments are post-moderated which means they will automatically appear on the site after they are submitted. However comments which are offensive or legally questionable will be removed, while commenters who post under multiple identities so as to make it look as if other commenters are agreeing with them will be blocked.

As a general guideline, comments which make reasoned criticism will be allowed to remain on the site. But comments which contain gratuitous personal attacks on named individuals or which otherwise bring the newspaper industry into disrepute will be deleted.

We will also delete comments that are irrelevant to the story under which they appear – including comments which attempt to shoehorn criticisms of particular regional publishing groups into stories about other companies or issues – along with any comments containing obscene, racist or otherwise discriminatory language.

If you wish to report a comment which in your opinion breaches any of the above guidelines, please use the ‘Report this comment’ facility, giving a reason or reasons why you think it should be deleted.

Comments will generally remain open on all stories except court cases, but owing to occasional abuse of the comment facility in the past, they will sometimes be disabled in the evenings and at weekends.

Please do not use the story comments facility to point out any spelling or grammatical errors on this site, as once the necessary correction is made, they will become obsolete and will have to be manually deleted. Instead, please click on the link above the comments box which reads Spotted an error? Email the editor.

If you have any observations to make about our comments policy, please email the publisher at [email protected].