Guidelines for commenting on a story

Thank you for your contribution! Authors of a story generally appreciate getting feedback on their supernatural encounters. Remember that your post will be read by thousands eventually, so here are a few guidelines to using our comments sections:

• As a general rule, posts should be on topic and related to an author's story. If you have something entirely unrelated to say, please use your own story to do so, if you are just looking for idle chat, visit the chat room. Comments may gradually get off track a bit, it happens, but don't jump in a story with a completly different subject, or worse, just to promote commenting on your own story. Also, make sure to read the previous posts before publishing yours.
• Posts that are abusive, vulgar, insulting or spammy will be deleted. If a person persists in posting such messages numerous times, they will be blocked / banned from this site. We also reserve the right to delete comments that are juvenile, off-topic, very poorly written, unintelligible, incoherent, messages all in UPPERCASE or with every first letter capitalized, and anything that looks like promotional material.
• Please don't reply to abusive messages. I will delete them in time and your reply will not make any sense for future readers. Don't forget that trolls feed on your attention. If I missed one, you're free to notify me via our contact page (make sure to indicate the page).
• Do NOT post links that would be inappropriate for the general public, or are against the law, to sites about porn, gambling, software pirating, virus, spam, etc.
• This is not a chat room, so please avoid abbreviations and SMS language ("u" instead of "you", "n" for "and", "coz" for "because" etc) as it is juvenile and unreadable. We want to have mature conversations about the delicate topic of ghosts, using "leet speak" only attracts the intellectually lazy crowd. You may have noticed that we block some bad words, leet speak abbreviations and require a minimum lenght to a post. We are trying to make sure that someone has actually something to contribute when they make a post, this way, the comments section doesn't look like a trashy myspace / youtube page full of "Cool" and "That's Hot".
• HTML code is not allowed. We keep it simple. For URLs, simply paste the address and we will turn it into an HTML link automatically. If you post your email address, you will notice that we obfuscate it so spam bots do not pick it up (ex: yourname@domain.com becomes yourname [at] domain.com). Otherwise, you may end up receiving spam in the future.
• Ghost experiences can be a sensitive subject and is not accepted by mainstream society. People publishing their stories deserve to be addressed with respect so this web site can be a safe haven for people wanting to share their experiences. If you disagree with the authenticity and the veracity of a story, you can express your opinion, as long as it is respectful ("I have an another theory for what happened", "I do not believe this to be true because...", etc). However, you cannot be abusive toward the author ("your story is lame", "you're a liar", "you're wasting our time", etc).
• The comments sections have a preview page before you finally publish your post. We would appreciate it if you reviewed it at least once for misspellings. If you don't know how a word is spelled, just check with an online dictionary. Even better, Firefox has a built-in spell checker for text boxes on web pages. . Sure, this is not an english class, but really bad spelling can make you look unworthy of being taken seriously, it also tends to drag down the level of intelligence in a discussion and discourage serious people and experts from contributing.
• If you are referring to an article on another web site, do not quote it entirely, as it is usually a breach of their copyrights and will take too much space in the comments area. Find the relevant part, paste that sentence/paragraph between quotes and indicate where it was taken by adding the web address (url).
• You must be 13 years or older to post a comment. If you are under 18 yearls old, please do not divulge personal information that could make it possible for someone to find you, for your own safety. If you are 18 years and older, it is up to you, but we still do not encourage the practice. Please use common sense.
• We don't mind getting the skeptic's point of view, as long as you are respectful and articulate.
• We would like to remind you that this site is an open discussion on the topic of ghosts, with people coming from various cultures, so please avoid proselytizing or endless quotings of your religious book. This site is not about religious doctrines, it is about actual personal experiences and exploring reality with an open and investigative mind. Everyone has their own religion, they don't need someone else to push theirs down their throat, even if that is part of your religious mandate.
• If you have a question related to a story, please ask it directly in the comments area instead of dropping your email and asking the author to email you, so that everyone can benefit from the discussion. Please do not copy paste the same post under different stories. Each one of them are different and deserve a personal feedback. Also, do not simply request people to read your stories. Your feedback should be about the author's stories, not yours. It's fine to mention it if they are related, but the message itself as a whole should be about the author's experience.
• Don't use different aliases on the site, if you picked one, stick with it.
• Posts are considered the opinion of the poster, and are not necessarily endorsed or approved by yourghoststories.com. When posting on yourghoststories.com, you grant perpetual non-exclusive rights to yourghoststories.com to republish, in any form, the posted material. Once posts are published, they cannot be deleted, unless you present a reason that we consider valid, as deleting a member's post would damage the integrity of our archive and reduce the value of this resource to members and visitors. You are responsible for what you post on the web, so please don't ask others to undo your actions.