We’d love to hear our readers join in with comments on social media as well as our articles. However, we do have policies regarding comments that our moderation team follows across Disqus (our comment system) as well as on our other social media. Please note that disregarding our comment policies will likely result in comment deletion, blocking, and/or blacklisting.
Play nice with other Teammates. If you didn’t notice by our feminist tone, we don’t really like people to use gender or racial slurs, and we as a staff consider Girls in Capes to be a safe place for discussion. Comments are set to go through approval first. We are very strict about profanity, and there’s very limited profanity that we tolerate in our comments section, so please keep that in mind when entering a discussion.
Patience is a virtue. As mentioned, comments have to be approved first — and we have exactly two editors, so approval may take a bit longer than you’re used to. If you e-mail us, we’ll be more than happy to respond (send your concerns or anything else to editor@girlsincapes.com), but again, just be patient and we WILL get back to you, we promise.
We don’t allow slurs or derogatory remarks. We’re an inclusive kind of website, and we won’t tolerate any slurs or derogatory remarks directed at anyone based on race, religion, nation of origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability or disability, or anything else. A good rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t say it in front of your boss, we don’t want it in our comments section.
We also don’t tolerate aggression or direct attacks. We define a direct attack as a threat against a staff writer or another commenter. “Aggression” includes direct insults to the staff or other commenters; if another commenter or staff member raises a question regarding whether or not the comment is hate speech, we will delete it. It’s also very likely we’ll delete comments that contains slurs of any kind (please see rules above).
Don’t complain if an offensive comment is deleted. We delete comments if we’re worried they’re spam, if we think they’re hurtful to our writers or other Teammates, or if they’re irrelevant to the post or the discussion. We consider some comments to be hate-driven – especially anti-gay, anti-woman, or racist ones – and will both delete comments and block users who post hate-driven comments.
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While some readers have contacted us with concerns that our comment policies are a detriment to freedom of speech, please remember that freedom of speech (in the United States) is simply a guarantee that the government won’t prosecute you for saying what you think or feel. The nice thing about the United States — where Girls in Capes is based — is that it also allows for private groups and companies to manage their own websites in a manner which best works for them.
As our main mission is to create a safe space for readers who are part of marginalized groups, we take threats, slurs, and attacks very seriously, and we will remove these comments as necessary to create a more peaceful and safer environment for readers of all kinds. If our content doesn’t fit what you’d like to read, we would suggest that you find articles elsewhere.
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Staff members will continue updating this list as necessary, but we hope it won’t be! You can leave any suggestions here in the comment section or contact the editor at editor@girlsincapes.com.