Guidelines for commenters

We encourage lively discussion on contributions through the commenting function available for each blog post (and if you are thinking about becoming an author, see our ‘Guidelines for authors‘). We welcome constructive comments that contribute to understanding and improving the topic presented, especially to progressing concepts and methods for tackling complex societal and environmental problems. The issues below also apply to authors replying to comments.

To find out how we control data on this website, see our privacy policy and disclaimer (and search on the word ‘comment’ within that webpage).

Moderation: Your first comment will not be posted for public view until it has been checked. Any comment with multiple links will go into moderation before it is published.  We also keep an eye on all comments and will delete or edit any that are inappropriate (see below). We aim to moderate comments as quickly as possible.

When to use the ‘leave a reply’ box versus the ‘reply’ button: If you are posting the first comment or starting a new thread, please use the ‘leave a reply’ box. If you are responding to someone else’s comment, please use the ‘reply’ button, which will automatically link your reply to that comment.

Changing your comment: It is not possible for you to edit your comment directly. Contact us and we are happy to make corrections or changes for you. Alternatively, make a new updated comment and we will delete the original comment as soon as we can.

Email privacy: WordPress requires you to enter your e-mail address as part of posting a comment. It is not published on i2Insights, or shared. If necessary, we will use it to contact you.

Language: i2Insights has a global audience. Please keep the language simple and easy to understand.

You may comment in a language other than English; if you do so, our preference is for you to also include an English version, otherwise we will do so using Google Translate.

Please avoid offensive or inappropriate language.

Relevance: Please keep your comments relevant to the aims of i2Insights. You are welcome to question or argue with the content of an i2Insights contribution, but please do so in a kind and constructive way, and avoid personal attacks.

Links: Where relevant, please link to other i2Insights blog posts, including those that you have authored. If you want to cite or draw attention to work outside i2Insights blog and repository, we prefer old fashioned references rather than links. We have limited capacity to check links or repair those that are broken. 

Images: Unfortunately images cannot be included in comments.

Editing: When we see them, we correct typographical and minor grammatical errors, as well as introducing paragraph breaks to make long comments more readable. If we make more substantial edits, we will let you know.

If your comment does not appear: Please contact us if your comment does not appear in a reasonable time period.