Community Guidelines

The University of Alberta offers with this blog an official forum in which university community members can engage in dialogue and/or debate about topics central to the university. We are committed to the principles of free speech and of the academy as a place of reasoned debate; however, this site will not be a forum for personal attacks and offensive behaviour. Members of the university community—including staff, students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty—are governed by the university’s IT use policy and the pertinent conduct and ethical behaviour guidelines. All commenters, whether from inside or outside the university community, are expected to remain civil and collegial.

We want your thoughtful engagement on issues before the university. We want your perspective, opinions and questions. Feel free to challenge or question the administration. We seek to inform and to engage the U of A community. Comments will be moderated regularly during business hours by members of the Colloquy staff to ensure they are not defamatory, otherwise violate the IT use or other university policies, or violate applicable laws.

The guidelines: 

Please:

• Be civil.
• Be relevant.
• Don’t try to hijack the conversation to an unrelated pet topic.
• Present your own opinion. 

Always avoid:

• Racist, sexist, discriminatory and offensive language
• Personal attacks and defamatory statements
• Breaking copyright rules
• Violating someone’s privacy
• Threats
• Posting in all CAPS (this is considered yelling in online speak)
• Spam or using the forum for promotional purposes

If you violate these rules, your comment will not be posted.

How do I comment? 

You need only click on the “comment” link. You are not required to identify yourself in the name field. If you log-in with a registered account, you have the option to delete your own posts, but otherwise your posts will not be deleted if you change your mind in the future. If you post anonymously or with your name but not an account, you will not be able to delete your post. For those academic staff members within the University of Alberta community who enjoy the provisions and responsibilities of academic freedom, we encourage you to post under your own name.

Be aware that until the roll-out of the Google Apps for Education suite of tools across the campus, this blog is hosted on Google blog servers outside the university’s agreement with Google. As a result, it is the same as posting to any other externally-hosted website.

So that members of the community can post comments from their mobile devices, the comment button is in a pop-up box. If you have disabled pop-ups in your web browser, you will need to enable them in order to comment.

How are comments moderated? 

Comments are moderated before posting; they are read to ensure they adhere to the guidelines. We will post them as quickly as possible. We won’t edit your comments (any grammar and spelling errors will live on as your own).

What if a comment offends me?

The academy is the place for debate. You may not agree with someone’s viewpoint. You may find someone’s opinion to be offensive. Comments will not be censored for viewpoint, so if you disagree with a comment, that is your opportunity to respond and disagree or debate.

If you think a comment violates our guidelines, click on the “Contact us” link found at the bottom the page and explain your concern. We’ll investigate.

We look forward to receiving your comments.

Registered Accounts

By logging in with one of the following accounts, you will have the option of deleting your comment.

• Google
• LiveJournal
• TypePad
• WordPress
• AIM
• OpenID