SUMNER NEWSCOW COMMENT SECTION POLICY: 

Sumner Newscow will allow readers to post comments on specific articles which are deemed public in nature.

•The comment section will not be allowed for obituaries, police notes, Sumner County Court dockets, and specific stories of crime that are private in nature.

•We will also no longer allow derogative statements, signed or unsigned, toward specific Sumner County teams or players in which juveniles are involved. Criticism of coaching techniques, and contest controversies will be allowed, but not coaching issues considered private in nature.

•Sumner Newscow will require signatures on comments of stories that the website considers extremely controversial for which the privacy of individuals are at stake.

•Anonymous comments will be allowed in which pertinent information or reaction to a story is deemed acceptable. Personal attacks will not be tolerated. If for any reason, Sumner Newscow determines that “piling on” is becoming an issue, we will either disable or eliminate comments from a specific story. Please bring something new to the table when commenting and not duplicate information which has already been said.

•All comments must stick to the issue of the story in hand. All posts for which commenters demonstrate that they haven’t read the story before commenting is subject to deletion.

•Signed comments will receive preferential treatment and receive more leeway than those that are unsigned.

•Misrepresentation by signing another local person’s name in the comment section is grounds for comment termination rights, public condemnation, and subject to legal action by Sumner Newscow.

•Sumner Newscow will remove any posts that it deems inappropriate, including any posts that are offensive, bullying, defamatory, libelous, infringing, obscene, vulgar, indecent, harassing, hateful, humiliating, misleading, part of a political movement/agenda, invasive to someone else’s privacy, or contains unlawful content of material or deliberate inaccurate information. It is in Sumner Newscow’s sole discretion to determine what content is offensive and whether to remove any content it considers offensive or inappropriate.

•It is also Sumner Newscow’s sole discretion to ban a user from posting on this website, and applications created or administered by Sumner Newscow for a pattern of inappropriate postings or as it deems necessary.

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It is our contention that the comment section in its current format allows for public dialogue and provides protection from those who may not be able to convey a legitimate public message without retribution from adversarial family members, employers, neighbors, or political movements provided that they abide by the rules listed above.

•Those who wish to see the comments pulled from a specific story must demonstrate why they are in violation with the rules listed above by sending their concerns to the Sumner Newscow administrator at sumnernewscow@gmail.com.

•Comments will not be pulled solely on the basis that you may disagree with the posts’ author, who has a legitimate public concern or information.

•Unintentional inaccurate information is not basis for deletion if the author of the post legitimately feels that way.

•Public officials and/or news sources who attempt to withhold public information from an upcoming news story, because of this website’s comment section policy, will be dutifully noted in the story by the author of the article.

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Comments made by posters do not reflect, nor have ever reflected, the opinions of Sumner Newscow administrators nor its sponsors.