Every once in a while, it's good to point out the community guidelines for posting comments on our blogs or discussion boards. The guidelines are meant to make sure our conversations are courteous and on-point. You can read them here. As the primary moderator for the blogs, I read every comment with the assumption that it's OK to post. When I'm unsure about something, I look to the guidelines. Many of them are obvious: be courteous, don't harass people, don't say or link to anything that's obscene, don't spam, don't violate laws. Others are subject to interpretation. Since interpreting always involves subjective judgment, I figured I'd clarify how I read the guidelines so people can understand why some comments may be edited or declined.

Stay on Topic

"On topic" means please make comments that address the subject of the post. Advice about a job interview isn't about outsourcing, for example. A need for 30 project managers in Palo Alto isn't an invitation to riff about how big companies are conspiring to keep all tech salaries low. On the other hand, that story IS an invitation to argue that companies may have trouble finding PMs because they're not paying enough. Or, that they're behind the times because they care more about waterfalls than Agile. We don't want only happy opinions -- we just want comments to fit with the story. If you want to discuss something that's unrelated to the post, you can go and start a thread on our discussion boards.

Be Respectful

Similarly, if you don't like advice we give or conclusions we draw, feel free to argue. But, we will delete comments that insult people, whether they're authors or other commenters. Our editorial staff and bloggers aren't shills and we don't make stuff up. Readers and other commentators aren't ignorant or rooting for the downfall of America. If you can't make your point in a respectful way, please don't bother to post them. And, we will ban any users who violate the guidelines regularly. Again, you can read them here. If you've got thoughts or suggestions, feel free to send them to editor@dice.com. Or, of course, you can post a comment below.