Comment Policy

We want you to feel at home when you post a comment on fossguru.com. We want everyone to feel at home posting comments on fossguru.com. We don’t know what your home is like, but we know how we expect people to behave when they visit ours. That’s why we reserve the right to delete comments and ban users as needed to keep the comment threads here civil and substantive.

Our No. 1 house rule is simple: Don’t be a jerk.

Want to be the kind of commenter we’d love to bring home to Thanksgiving dinner? Here’s what we like to see in the comments:

  • Weigh in with smart, informed ideas that contribute further to the story.

  • Give us useful, constructive criticism. Spot a typo or an error? Let us know and we will correct it.

  • Demonstrate and share the intelligence, wisdom, and humor we know you possess.

  • Don’t feed the trolls. You wouldn’t dive into a debate with our ill-informed, weird uncle Gary just for the heck of it. And you definitely wouldn’t feed him. (We told you he was weird.) Downvote and flag comment instead.

Although we can’t be everywhere at once, here are some of the kinds of comments we’re going to do our best to curtail:

  • Promoting your own brand, product, or blog. So you’ve got a problem and a solution for Windows. Great. Send it through our Email –thefossguru[@]gmail.com.

  • Impersonating authors or other commenters. We can’t believe we have to say this, but: Don’t do that. It’s weird.

  • Comments that make it clear you didn’t read the article. Enraged that we didn’t mention X in a story about Y? Slow down, Speedy McFingerson. If you’d made it past paragraph two, you’d see a very well thought-out discussion of that X you hold so dear.

  • Comments that are completely out of left field. Sometimes discussions veer off a bit but are still related to the original subject. That is fine. Hijacking the conversation to promote off-topic commentary is not.

  • Threats — no matter how vague — against the author or other commenters. Things can get heated. Before you casually mention your foe’s home address, think of your Mother Earth. (Bonus points if you never use the phrase “Mother Earth.”)

  • Racism, sexism, homophobia, you get the drift. Call us the PC Police, fine, but don’t say we didn’t warn you when you get tased. **And by tased, we mean banned or deleted. fossguru.com has not — and will not — ever own a taser, and even if we were to own a solar-charged taser, we’d be too scared to use it.

  • Trolling. If you’re a climate denier just out for a good trolling and are not contributing meaningfully to the conversation, we’ll be pushing you back under the bridge.

A Note to Our Regular Readers


We loves you! The fossguru.com wouldn’t be what it is without your awesome support. As we mentioned above, flagging comments which violate our policy is a great help but please take this responsibility seriously. Flagging a user who isn’t really causing trouble but who you personally feel is just being obtuse is not a good use of this power. Also, engaging with users who are clearly trolls may be fun for some of you but causes us larger headaches (especially with overly large threads). Flag and move on.

If you’re having a disagreement with another user and your replies have gone into the double digits, consider stepping back from the computer for a while. We love discussion but we don’t want users running themselves ragged trying to convince someone else online they’re wrong.

Happy commenting, all!