Sevier News Messenger Sevier County News and Opinion
Welcome to Sevier News Messenger – We are dedicated to maintaining a respectful community that actively engages in lively discussions on news stories and blog posts. Please behave accordingly when participating on the site.
Respect Others – Please be polite to others, including commenters and authors and the subjects of articles. Also, keep in mind that there are real people reading your comments.
Safe Space – Above all, we believe strongly that Sevier News Messenger should be a safe and welcoming space for all individuals, groups and their ideas. As such, we reserve the right to remove any rudeness, insults, hate, hostility, or negativity.
Moderation – In order to help provide a safe space, many comments are pre-moderated by our moderation system and you may see a message that says your comment is pending approval. This system, which includes a team of staff moderators, is in place 24/7. However, there are times when comments may take a little longer to get through the process. Please be patient, we will get to your comment as soon as possible.
Reporting- If you would like to help us keep the Sevier News Messenger a great place to participate, you can report any users who are consistently making negative, threatening comments or harassing others to editor@seviernewsmessenger.com.
Comment Policy
We are dedicated to maintaining a respectful, engaging and informative conversation. Towards that end, we have basic ground rules for commenting to maintain a civil atmosphere. They are enforced 24/7 by a moderating system that features a team of staff, community moderators and moderation tools. If you wish to participate in the community, we ask that you follow these and the spirit of the community they seek to create.
(I) If your comments consistently or intentionally make this community a less civil and enjoyable place to be, we reserve the right to exclude you and your comments.
Sevier News Messenger promotes a receptive, transparent and civil atmosphere for comments and users. Critical, in-depth and intelligent discussions and debates are encouraged. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to voice their opinion regardless of identity, politics, ideology, religion or agreement with other community members, the author of the post or staff members as long as those opinions are respectful and constructively add to the conversation. However, this community does not tolerate direct or indirect attacks, name-calling or insults nor does it tolerate intentional attempts to derail, hijack, troll or bait others into an emotional response. These types of comments will be removed where warranted. Individuals who consistently or intentionally post these types of comments may temporarily or permanently lose their ability to comment.
(II) Many comments are pre-moderated.
To maintain a civil atmosphere, our moderation team may read comments before they are displayed to other users. If this is the case, you may see your comment pending approval. Approval times can vary depending on the site-wide comment load, so please be patient — we will get to all comments as quickly as possible. Please, do not resubmit the same comment or complain to the moderators assuming it has been deleted as that just adds needless comments into the pending queue.
(III) Be yourself, only yourself, and just one of yourself.
Every person’s opinion is valuable and unique. Pretending to be someone else removes that unique value from you or from others. Don’t misrepresent yourself or others, spread misinformation, create multiple accounts or “astroturf”. If you do, you will make the community a less enjoyable and valuable place to be and will be removed when we see it.
(IV) We strive to make this community a safe space.
We strongly believe that the Sevier News Messenger should be a safe space for individuals, groups and their ideas. As such, insulting and hostile language or personal threats are not welcome here. If you directly or indirectly threaten the physical or mental well-being of a member of this community, or an individual or group, you will be removed immediately. If a credible threat is made against an individual or group, not only will it be removed but it is likely that it will be reported to law enforcement agencies and we will cooperate with them to any extent requested. Personally identifiable information should not be posted to the Sevier News Messenger comments section for the privacy and protection of all community members. This includes, but is not limited to addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses. We reserve the right to delete any comments that contain this information.