University of Bristol comment moderation house rules

We have adapted these rules from the BBC’s House rules for comment moderation.

These house rules are for your safety and to keep the University’s website a healthy environment for discussion.

We welcome your comments, but please don’t post anything offensive or illegal.

Specifically, please don’t post anything that:

  • Is inappropriate (abusive, offensive or disruptive)
  • Is off topic (to the original content or the current conversation)
  • Contains personal information (either your own or someone else’s)
  • Puts children at risk
  • Is illegal, or glamourises illegal activity
  • Is defamatory (damaging to someone else’s reputation)
  • Is in contempt of court (anything that could affect the outcome of a court case)
  • Infringes anyone’s rights (including privacy rights)
  • Is posted for your financial gain (advertising, sponsorship etc.)
  • Isn’t in English (unless we’ve asked you to comment in another language)
  • Contains spam
  • Contains links to content that can’t be seen easily, or may be unsafe (viruses, spyware, paywalls etc)
  • Or doesn’t comply with the rest of our Terms of Use.

If a contribution to our website breaks these rules, then it will be removed. This helps us to ensure the website is appropriate for the vast majority of the people who visit.

Secure areas for blogs (intranets)

You should use a supported Microsoft Office 365 ‘intranet’ solution, such as Groups, if you want to create a secure area to share documents and media files to share with colleagues. The University’s Systems Support provides help and guidance on which Microsoft Office 365 solution to use.

If you have an intranet requirement for a multi-institutional blog, it is possible to add users from outside the University to an Office 365 Group.

If an Office 365 solution is not appropriate for what you are trying to achieve please email web-editor@bristol.ac.uk explaining why you need a secure area and we will discuss potential solutions with you.

Akismet comment moderation software

The Bristol Blogs network uses a plugin called Akismet to moderate external comments on blogs. If you have enabled a comments feed this will protect it from spam and offensive language. Further information about how this plugin works can be found on the Edublogs support site.

Activating Akismet

The Akismet plugin is installed at a network level so there is no need to install it on an individual blog.

The Akismet settings can be found by navigating to Dashboard > Settings > Akismet. These settings will only appear if the site is publicly visible. To change your visibility settings, navigate to Dashboard > Settings > Reading.

Enabling comments and managing user interaction with blogs

You can choose the level of engagement users have with your blog by changing your comment settings.

Comments are enabled on posts and pages by default. You can approve, delete or edit any comments left on your blog at any point. You can also change your comment settings, and can enable or disable them at any time.

The following support articles tell you how you can:

Manage, edit and approve comments
A summary of how comments work on your blog, and what actions you can perform to moderate or delete them.
Moderate comments
Understand the different choices you have for your comment settings, and what levels of moderating you can apply.
Enable and disable comments on published posts and pages
How to enable/disable comments on a post or page you already published, either individually or in bulk.
Enable and disable comments on future posts and pages
How to disable comments on all your future posts, or enable them if they are already disabled.
Custom notification emails
In your settings, you can change how you receive notifications about comments on
your posts and pages.