Whenever io9 publishes a post that sparks debate, your intrepid editors have to face the inevitable. Somebody with a commenter account is going to be a jerk and we're going to have to ban them. But it doesn't have to happen that way! Whether we're arguing over politics in science fiction, or how much the Watchmen movie will suck, there are a few simple guidelines you can follow if you want to have a giant argument without getting banned. The simplest way to think about our policy is that we allow you to insult ideas, but not people. See below for a complete rundown of io9 commenter tips and guidelines.

1. Do not insult or hurl mean names at actual humans.
By "actual humans," we mean other commenters or writers on the site. If you've just read a blog post that you disagree with, do not comment, "You are a fucking idiot who has obviously never seen a single episode of [my favorite scifi franchise]." That part where you called the author a "fucking idiot"? That was an insult. We like to argue with you about our opinions, but we don't like being told we are idiots. So if you want to avoid being banned, try arguing with the ideas in our posts, like this: "[My favorite scifi franchise] did not have a bad ending — you're totally wrong. I'm right, and here's why." Same goes for talking to your fellow commenters. Feel free to disagree and debate, but as soon as you insult somebody you're banned. We do not, however, care if you denigrate fictional lifeforms. Insult Predator as much as you want.

2. In general, we are not amused by comments whose sole purpose is to debate whether a lifeform (usually female) is hot enough for you to hit.
We all need to go to the "hot or not" place sometimes, but in general explicit comments about cellulite and breast size are best kept inside your head. Feel free to wank over the sexy pictures we post as much as you want, but we don't want to hear about it, OK?

3. Do not troll.
Trolling can mean many things, but for our purposes here it means trotting out a tired cliche or stereotype in order to say that someone's opinion should never be taken seriously. When you disagree with somebody, you say their opinion is wrong. When you troll somebody, you say that they are incapable of forming opinions. If you say, "Japanese people do not know how to write stories," you are trolling. Essentially, you are saying no Japanese person's stories should be taken seriously. That is different from saying, "I hate this story that a Japanese person wrote." Another common troll strategy is to say that a post on io9 is unworthy of debate because it was written so the author could get cash for page views. This is trolling because it does not engage in any way with the author's opinion. Instead, it suggests the author categorically cannot form an opinion because she or he is writing for money.

4. If you believe you have been banned unfairly, please write to one of us (our email addresses are there in the left sidebar).
There are many good reasons to write to us if you think you were banned unfairly. First of all, you may not have been banned — sometimes our comment system takes a mental health day, and people's accounts get deactivated accidentally. So always be sure to check before freaking out. Second, we have frequently unbanned people after exchanging a few emails with them and discussing exactly what it was that got them banned. Remember, we don't want to ban you. We adore having lots of commenters, and we love a good debate. But we also think of io9 as our shop — we spend all day in here working and writing, and we're going to escort you out if you start calling people names, yelling, or pooping on the sofa.

5. There are always exceptions, we are not perfect, and these guidelines may change.
Now that you've got these guidelines, you should be prepared to have a couple of *facepalm* moments where you ask, "Why didn't THAT person get banned?" Although all of us at io9 have brain implants and superpowers, we cannot be everywhere at once. Sometimes a mean comment is going to get through. Also, we will no doubt ban people for things not in this list of guidelines that we hadn't anticipated. And sometimes we won't ban somebody who says one lame thing if she or he has a history of writing really cool comments — generally, in those cases, we'll warn the person by sending them a private email.

Final note:
All the editors and contributors to io9 thrive on your comments and input. We can't count how many times commenters have pointed out errors that we need to fix in our posts (thank you!), or given us amazing post ideas, or filled the comments section with hilarious jokes, cool images, brilliant analysis, and insane trivia. We love having you around, and we're hoping this post will help more of you to stay around for a really long time.