Niagara At Large Welcomes Your Comments – But Your Comments Have To Be Attached To Your Real Name

 We were about to post a piece reminding readers of Niagara At Large’s ‘Comments Policy’ anyway. And what better time to do it than now, with an extraordinary number of comments coming in on a piece we posted this July 5 on how an amputee from Thorold, Ontario was treated by security forces at the recent G20 summit in Toronto.

It is heartening to receive so many comments to this disturbing story because it confirms we still have people out there who care about matters like this involving rights for people to express their views and gather peacefully – rights people in Canada and the United States have fought and, in some cases, died for. Unfortunately, many of the comments we are getting are good ones that are either not being signed or that come to us with a fake name or nothing more than a couple of initials – and most of them are good thoughtful comments we would love to publish.

So to all those who have sent us comments without your name attached to them and wonder why they have not made it through our site’s moderator, please resend them with a full name and we will get them on as soon as possible. We ask all others who want to contribute a comment to any post on our site to please play by the same rule with respect to sharing your name with your views.

We believe we have good, sound reasons for exercising this policy and have rarely deviated from it since Niagara At Large was launched this past December. The odd exception may include comments or quotes in posts from individuals whose names we know but why may be in some peril if their names were published. They may also include content we receive (i.e. – a video taken by a witness to an event) that speaks for itself.

For further information, we are including our ‘Comments Policy’ below. It is also available by clicking on ‘Comments Policy’ at the top of Niagara At Large’s home page.

Thanks for visiting Niagara At Large – Doug Draper

Comments Policy

 Niagara At Large wants you to wade in with your views on any of the issues featured in the news and commentary pages of this site.
You are also welcome to share your views on other topics you feel deserve more attention than what they are getting in the chain-owned, mainstream media across-our binational region.
As an independent, on-line source of news and commentary, with no partisan ties or preconceived notions other than to dig for some truth and whatever is  fair for the ordinary citizen, Niagara At Large welcomes a diversity of opinion on issues of interest and concern to our families, our friend and our neighbours and fellow citizens.
In that spirit, Niagara At Large has no interest in becoming just one more echo chamber in cyberspace for people who share the same political ties or views on an issue. To the contrary, a goal of this site is to become a dynamic forum for discussion and debate – a ‘new media’ equivalent of a town hall that everyone, from ordinary citizens to community leaders, want to engage in as we search for ways to make our towns and cities the best places possible to live, work and visit.
But like older fashion town halls or newspapers you might remember before the age of blogging, Niagara At Large is requiring everyone submitting a comment to live by the same rules as regular contributors to this site and link their name to their views.
To put it simply, Niagara At Large will not post anonymous comments for reasons that have to do with accountability and a desire to discourage remarks that violate any sense of civility.
If adding your name to your views is okay with you then please follow the prompts to the end of one of the columns posted on this site and fill out the” leave a comment” form with your name, email address and views. We promise that your email address will not be published on this site (unless you want it to be) and will only be used to contact you if Niagara At Large’s editors have any questions or concerns about the comments submitted.
We will also be moderating comments submitted before they are published and will be filtering out those that include excessive foul language, unwarranted personal attacks or other views that may be defamatory or cross the bounds of civility.
Feel free to contact Niagara This Week’s publisher, Doug Draper, at drapers@vaxxine.com if you have any questions or concerns about Niagara At Large’s comments policy.