Defend Truth

Comments Policy

The fundamentals: Engage Brain before Typing…

We encourage robust debate. We love a well-thought-out, well-argued point. And as a regular Daily Maverick reader, we value your informed opinion.

But anything sexist, racist, abusive, threatening and intolerant will incur immediate reaction. In the words of Sir Isaac Newton: for every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. Transgressing good sense commentary aimed to engage and stretch our mutual brain scapes, can solicit various degrees of reaction from a simple reprimand to being banned from the comments section. See T&Cs below. And yes, Poplak is the ONLY exception – He can swear. He’s earned it.

Now we have all that out of the way, here’s how we’ll do it.

  • You will be asked to review and moderate comments from other readers before your comment goes into the queue to be reviewed and published. This way, we can share the moderation load together and hold each other accountable.
  • Once you’ve successfully reviewed three comments, yours will slot in line to be moderated and published if acceptable.
  • If your comment is rejected, it will go to our trusted comment moderators for a second opinion. If it is still rejected, you will be notified via email that your comment violated our policy in some way.
  • You will get a chance to resubmit a comment, in which case, take a deep breath and consider rephrasing your point.
  • If you are found to be a serial offender your access to the comments section will be revoked.

For more details on our peer reviewing system, read here.

Some things we don’t allow:

  • name-calling and insults.
  • unsubstantiated allegations of criminality.
  • external links, i.e. links to other sites. Because we can’t verify the information on the page you’re linking to, we can’t publish it.
  • defamatory comments.
  • off-topic comments that are irrelevant to the article.

The small print (Please read, we don’t need any DNA as proof, but believe that you agree to it as you are posting comments).

By exercising your right to posting commentary, you have agreed to:

  • the comments policy and the code of conduct.
  • be honest and to abide by the tenet of ‘truth’ of Daily Maverick when posting. In this regard, no user will impersonate, misrepresent or lie as to their identity or affiliation with other parties.
  • to uphold the privacy of users. With this regard, no member shall use any information garnered from Daily Maverick to contact, track or harass another user either on or off our site.
  • that any decision taken with regard to comment arbitration by Daily Maverick is final and absolute.

A final word…

We won’t tolerate anyone abusing our journalists. They are exceptionally hard working and dedicated human beings who have every day put themselves at risk in order to unveil hidden truths for you and the good of the country. You don’t need to agree with them but you do need to be constructive in your criticism.