Comments are the opinions of readers and do not represent the views of Newsport or its staff.

Reader comments on this site are moderated before publication to promote valuable, civil, and healthy community debate. Our moderation takes into consideration the following guidelines and rules before comments are approved for publication.

Submitting a comment does not guarantee publication on the Newsport website.

Comments containing abuse, racism, sexism, predatory behaviour, trolls, threats, or spam will not be approved for publication. If your comment does not meet these standards, it will not be published.

We also can’t engage in correspondence over why comments weren’t published as we have to focus on applying our moderation resources to checking each new comment as it comes in and do not have the resources to engage in debate over the content of submitted comments.

If your comment isn’t published, check the comment guidelines and resubmit. If you see a comment you think should not have been approved, contact us so our moderators can take action.

We aim to have constructive conversations in an environment where people feel welcomed, accepted and safe to share their thoughts and ideas.

Facebook Comments

Newsport does not monitor Facebook comments, this is the responsibility of Facebook, however, if Newsport is made aware in writing that a comment is clearly in breach of its own guidelines, Newsport can take steps to remove the comment as soon as possible. This may take up to 24 to 48 hours to action depending on available resources.

Our Commenting Guidelines

• Respect – We ask commenters to be respectful to one another, of the people contained in our articles and of our journalists. We don’t allow personal attacks – this is a moderated public forum and troll behaviour will not be tolerated. Readers are welcome to disagree with each other, but they should do so respectfully. Remember to criticise ideas, not people.
  
  
• Comments which cause offence, are prejudicial or profane, allege unlawful behaviour, corruption, or criminal activity, or are sexist, or racist, will not be published.

In some cases, we may not allow comments on particular articles for legal reasons.

The following behaviour may result in commenters being suspended or banned:

• Infringements of the copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property rights of any person or organisation
  
  
• Defamatory statements and threats will not be tolerated.
  
  
• Statements which degrade others on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or other classification Obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or vulgar comments.
  
  
• Statements which appear predatory, hateful, or intimidate or harass, or name-calling.
  
  
• Statements which contain or advocate illegal or violent acts.
  
  
• Including personal information in your comment such as addresses, phone numbers, workplaces.
  
  
• Any violation of state, national, or international law.
  
  
• Spam, advertising, a promotion or any solicitation of any kind.
  
  
• Pretending you are someone else or imitating another person

If we believe you are violating these commenting guidelines, we may send you a notification via email that you have either been suspended from commenting for a certain period of time or have been banned from commenting for the foreseeable future.

We do our best to ensure fairness, but in all cases we reserve the right to suspend and/or ban accounts without notice, for any reason, but particularly to protect our services, our journalists and our readers and community.

We reserve the right to enforce these commenting guidelines at our discretion.