Comments policy

New Mandala welcomes and encourages comments from our readers.

To comment, simply write your response in the comments field at the end of a post, and leave your name and email (your email won’t be published). Of course, we prefer it if readers comment under their actual names.

Note that upon submission all comments are ‘hand moderated’ by the New Mandala editorial team, and can be deleted at this point. We ask for your patience after you submit your comment; New Mandala generally operates during business hours, Monday to Friday, Australian Eastern Standard Time (and the editorial team does much more than work on New Mandala).

We take our comments seriously, and so should you. This means that we welcome comments that advance debate, analysis, knowledge and understanding. By all means disagree. But don’t be rude about it, and while you’re welcome to criticise ideas, you should not use the comments section to attack the article’s author. Comments that don’t meet these criteria are not welcome.

In addition, and in recognition that our many readers are drawn from all over the globe and walks of life, New Mandala is committed to providing a free and open forum for all points of view. We don’t censor those points of view. We do occasionally exercise discretion in approving the comments of those who come to dominate discussion.

So, as a guide…

Comments that are published are:

  • Brief: keep your responses to 100 words at a maximum.
  • Relevant: address the article and the ideas and arguments in it.
  • Respectful: don’t attack an author, our editorial team, other commenters or the website. This means using courteous, civil language, and playing the ball and not the player.
  • Rigorous: correct inaccuracies, errors and misjudgements, but make sure that you hold your comments to the same standard.

Comments will be deleted if:

  • They are spam.
  • Off-topic or irrelevant.
  • Libelous, defamatory, abusive, threatening, offensive, clearly false, sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobic or are considered to bring down the standard of debate and community at New Mandala.

The New Mandala editorial team reserves the right to delete comments submitted to the website at any time without notice – this includes if a comment is approved in error. We will not enter into discussion about any decisions or actions taken in regard to comments.

This comments policy is subject to change at any time and without notice.