The Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel are pleased to provide this opportunity for you to share information, experiences and opinions. Simply fill out the form which is reached by clicking on the comment link at the end of an article, and your comments may appear among other people's comments in that area. Your submission generally will appear online immediately.

The newspapers act as a passive conduit for online comments and do not and have no obligation to screen comments. We do review and track comment activity during the workday and will sometimes remove those that we find in violation of our guidelines as outlined below.

Readers who are registered users may notify the company of comments that do not meet the guidelines by clicking the report abuse link in the comments field. The newspaper may investigate the allegation and determine in good faith and at its sole discretion whether to remove the comment.

Comments that draw three offensive comment reports from registered users will be automatically removed for review by a staff member. Staff members review comments with the intent of encouraging open discourse, and will apply judgment in this process.

Their decisions are final; rejected comments should be rewritten and resubmitted. Due to the volume of comments received and reviewed, we cannot respond to individual questions about why a comment was allowed or removed.

Comments that may generally be rejected by newspapers staffers and may be reported as abusive by members of the reader commenting community include the following:

Hate speech

Comments with language that degrades others on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.

Personal attack

Comments with threatening, intimidating, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic or profane language. Name-calling about private individuals or commenters. Material that can be considered an invasion of privacy. This includes phone numbers, email addresses, URLs or other specific personal information.

Off topic

Comments that are "off-topic" - unrelated to the topic of the article or the comments of others.

Advertising/Spam

Comments that are repeatedly posted (cut/paste/spamming) Solicitations of any type

Copyright/Plagiarism

Content that appears to violate copyright laws (brief excerpts are OK; lengthy excerpts are not).

Other

Attempts to communicate an obscenity or profanity by using punctuation or dashes to partially spell out an offensive word. Comments where it appears the commenter is masquerading as another person. Information that violates any applicable local, state, national or international law. Comments that instigate or encourage others to commit illegal activities or cause injury or property damage to any person.

This list of guidelines is not comprehensive.

Furthermore, while we are reluctant to impose specific limits on the number of posts by any one commenter, we do ask you to exercise restraint. Discussions dominated by the frequency and verbosity of an individual commenter become less interesting and useful to other members of the audience.

The newspapers do not represent or guarantee the truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of communications posted in comments or endorse any opinions expressed in comments. By entering the commenting area, you acknowledge that any reliance on material posted by other commenters will be at your own risk. Also, please be aware that some comment participants enjoy antagonizing and upsetting others with language that may be considered mean-spirited or rude.

Finally, this area is not an appropriate place to tell us a story has typos in it, or to direct a private email to the reporter or editor. If you'd like to tell us about a specific problem, you may either e-mail the writer, whose address is found at the bottom of an article, or direct other feedback via the "Questions/Comments" link at the very bottom of every page, and indicate who should receive your note.

On some occasions, you may receive an email at the address you listed when posting a comment, from a news staff member of the Kennebec Journal or Morning Sentinel, or from a staff member from one its sister newspapers or web sites in the Blethen Maine Newspapers company, following up on your comment for possible quoting or background in news reporting. It is entirely up to you whether or not to respond.

The Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel reserve the right to amend or change these rules at any time.

Reminder:

All submitted comments become the sole property of the Kennebec Journal or Morning Sentinel, and their parent company, MaineToday Media, Inc.. If your comment is rejected, you will receive an e-mail notice to that effect. MaineToday Media, Inc. reserves the right to post or reject any submission, and to remove any comment without notice. If you have questions, concerns or ideas about the reader comments on this or any other article, e-mail us.

The reader comment system is copyright © MaineToday Media, Inc. Inc.