NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory

The latest news and information about NOAA research in and around the Great Lakes

Comment Policy

In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to let you know that we moderate your comments. This is not to censor what you want to say, rather, to be certain that what you say is on topic and not offensive. Off-topic and/or offensive comments will not be approved for publishing, but they will be retained in WordPress (our blogging platform). The views expressed in comments reflect those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the federal government.

While we’re on the subject of unacceptable comments, it’s important to know why we won’t approve some of them. Any comment submitted that contains any of the following will not be approved:

  • Profanity and vulgar language.
  • Personal attacks or threats of any kind or offensive terms that target identifiable groups.
  • Promotes services or products (spam). Non-commercial links that are relevant to the blog post or comment are acceptable.
  • Makes unsupported accusations.
  • Comments that suggest or encourage illegal, dangerous, or destructive activity.
  • Personal identification that identifies the commenter by name, etc.
  • Long embedded URL strings.
  • Duplicate posts.
  • Off-topic comments.
  • Comments that are really customer support questions (for that, please visit our agency website).

NOAA GLERL is unable to post comments from children under the age of 13 due to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If you are 12 years old or younger, you may e-mail us rather than posting a comment on this blog.

We recognize that the web knows no specific schedule of operations, and your comments are welcome at any time. However, given the need to manage federal resources, moderating and posting comments should only be expected to occur during normal business hours. Please note that you are subject to Automattic’s privacy policy (Automattic Inc. is the company which owns WordPress) when visiting and commenting on our WordPress blog. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

Thanks for joining us here on our blog!