House Rules

We reserve the right to take action on comments that we consider fall into the following areas:

• Personally abusive towards story authors, fellow website users or any other individual or organisation.
• Racist, homophobic, sexist, threatening or otherwise offensive.
• Overtly commercial. While we encourage opinion and comment from arts organisations, such participation should be in the form of a conversation rather than a sales message.
• Legally contentious. This includes material which may be defamatory, may breach copyright or which may encourage others towards unlawful activity.
• Includes personal contact information in public. A valid email address must be given when placing blog comments, but this contact information will remain confidential and will not be shared.
• Contains links to other sites which may contravene any of the points above.

Action we may take

We reserve the right to delete or edit any comments that in our opinion contravene any of the above guidelines. We may also delete or modify any comments which reply and/or refer to other comments which break house rules. We also reserve the right to take further action against repeat offenders.

Moderation policy

Reader comments on The Stage website are generally post-moderated — that is, they are checked after publication and not before. Some comments may contain content or come from certain computers that trigger automated pre-moderation. In general, this is to prevent widescale “spamming” of our website, but occasionally genuine reader comments may also be placed in a queue for pre-moderation. if this happens to your post, please be patient. Comments are generally moderated during office hours Monday to Friday. Comments made outside these hours will be assessed at the earliest opportunity.

What to do if you see a comment that you think breaks house rules

Please email alistair.at.thestage.co.uk making sure to include the web address (URL) of the page on which you saw the comment, and enough information for us to identify the comment concerned.