Guidelines

We invite you to add your comments, and we encourage a thoughtful, open and lively exchange of ideas at VoxPop, a community dialogue project of post-gazette.com and DeepLocal. We want to create a resource for the whole community, so we expect -- and require -- that the tone of the contributions be civil and respectful.

Your updates will not be screened or edited before they appear on your approved VoxPop account site. We will, however, monitor and review your postings. We reserve the right to remove your posts if the community or the staff at post-gazette.com determine they are inappropriate, offensive or in any way violate our Terms of Use.

Those terms state that you must not post comments containing:

• Personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity or ethnic or racial slurs;
• Language that threatens, harasses or encourages illegal or criminal acts;
• Material that is defamatory, libelous or infringes on a copyright or trademark
• Solicitations or advertisements for any purpose;
• Impersonations of anyone.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and post-gazette.com are not responsible for the content you post. Do not contribute material you know is inaccurate, false or confidential. Please keep updates constructive and on topic.

Want to record someone else? Have them clearly state their name and grant you permission to record them as part of your posted update to avoid violation of Pennsylvania law.

To promote a more respectful discussion, you will be required to provide your first and last names when you register as a VoxPop contributor. Your real name will not be published. A separate "display name" that you choose, plus the town or city neighborhood you supply, will appear with your contributor bio on VoxPop. You also will be required to provide an e-mail address and your mobile phone number to allow a member of the post-gazette.com staff to contact you, should that be necessary.

Approval to use the VoxPop site and its technology is solely at the discretion of post-gazette.com and deepLocal.

We reserve the right to ban contributors whose behavior is abusive and flagrantly violate our Terms of Use. Violators will be notified that their VoxPop accounts have been deactivated and all their posts will be removed from the site.

Any content you provide becomes the property of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has sole discretion over its use, which could include use in advertisements for the newspaper, its Web site or the VoxPop service. Once it appears on the VoxPop site, it will become available to search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Our policy is that we will not remove postings at the user's request. Thank you for abiding by our rules of the road. Send questions about this document to voxpop@post-gazette.com.