Comment Guidelines

Something on your mind?

The Jewish Report Online welcomes as much interaction and vibrant discussion between our readers as possible – but we do want the website to be a mature and thought-provoking environment, so some guidelines apply for posting comments.

While we respect your right to post anonymously or under a nom de plume, such comments will be moderated under a stricter set of rules which appear below the following general rules: 

1. All comments first have to be moderated and approved by the Jewish Report Online editorial team before they appear on the website. This may take anything from one minute to 24 hours.
2. Stick to debating the issues and respect other people’s views and beliefs. Comments launching personal attacks or that are hurtful and insulting will not be accepted.
3. Keep your comment as brief as possible. If you want to refer to an article on another website, place a URL link to that article in your comment. Do not paste the whole article into your comment.
4. When you have finished crafting your comment, read it again before posting it. Consider whether others will understand your arguments. Something that you meant to be satirical or humorous might not be clear to another user. Also, take into consideration that your words will remain on the internet for a very, very long time, if not forever.
5. A mild swearword in the right spot can work well. But gratuitous or over-harsh profanity won’t be accepted. If you really have to swear, make sure it’s mild and justified.
6. Don’t write your whole comment in capital letters only.
7. Comments that contain hate speech, racist, sexist or homophobic remarks – or that may be interpreted as such – won’t make it on to the Jewish Report Online.
8. There is a difference between criticising a political party, a religion, an organisation, a cultural group or a community and unreasonably attacking such bodies. Try to motivate your comments and explain your arguments as much as you can. Above all, make sure your words represent fair comment and do not fall foul of the laws pertaining to hate speech and racism.
9. A comment that is obviously off topic – that is, unrelated to the article or contribution in question and the comments that precede it – or that clearly doesn’t contribute to the ongoing debate, may be deleted by the editorial team.
10. The editorial team keeps a close watch on legal matters too: defamatory comments, for example, will be deleted.
11. Unacceptable comments will be deleted without notification.
12. The Jewish Report Online is mainly an English site, although many of our users can read and understand Hebrew as well. We don’t mind the odd word or sentence in any other language as long as the average English-speaking reader won’t feel completely lost. Remember, we cannot moderate what we don’t understand and will always err on the side of caution in such situations.
13. No comments that advertise companies, businesses, services or such will be accepted. We do sell advertisements on the site, though – CLICK HERE to find out more.
14. If you feel that someone else has not taken these guidelines into account, please let us know at online.editor@SAJR.co.za. We will deal with such issues as soon as possible. If it is necessary to remove or change published contributions, parts of contributions or comments, an explanation will be given on the page where possible.

Guidelines for anonymous posters

While we respect your right to post anonymously or under a nom de plume, such comments will be moderated under a stricter set of rules, which include but are not limited to: 

1. Not using any person’s name that did not appear in the original content item being commented on; and
2. Not making negative comments about any communal organisation that was not mentioned in the original content item.