We want the comment section on It's FOSS to be a place for human discussion, questions, and even disagreement, as long as it stays respectful. To keep it that way, every comment goes through manual review before it appears on the site.
How comment moderation works
No comment is published automatically. When you submit a comment, it goes into a queue and a member of our editorial team reviews it before it goes live. Most comments are approved or rejected within a few hours, though it can take longer depending on the day and the volume of comments.
You can also not edit an already published comment.
We accept images and gifs in comments but they should also meet the same standard as we discuss below.
What we don't allow
We reject or remove comments that contain:
- Hate speech, slurs, or content targeting someone's race, gender, religion, sexuality, nationality, or disability
- Abuse, harassment, personal attacks, or threats directed at other readers, authors, or third parties
- Sexual, explicit, or otherwise NSFW content
- Content promoting or glorifying weapons, violence, or illegal activity
- Profanity or offensive language
- Spam, scams, or unrelated promotional links
- Off-topic content that has nothing to do with the article
Disagreement is fine. We publish plenty of comments that push back on what we've written. What doesn't get published is anything that crosses from disagreement into abuse.
If your comment isn't approved
If a comment doesn't follow this policy, we simply don't publish it. We don't usually send a notification when this happens. If you think your comment was rejected by mistake, you can reach out through our contact page and we'll take a look.
Readers who repeatedly try to post content that violates this policy may be blocked from commenting altogether.
Why we do this
It's FOSS is read by people looking for straightforward, trustworthy Linux and open source content. Manual review of every comment is how we keep the discussion section as reliable as the articles themselves, for readers and for anyone whose ads run alongside our content.
