Rules. Like I want to make rules.

You can comment on most of the text: just click on the article’s title, and a place for you to write will magically appear. This is healthy and more people should do it.

Sometimes you’ll find that there’s a fight going on already. Try to be combative, intelligent, and rude, but remember these three things: personal stories about your health will always be deleted; childish personal attacks are only permitted when they are very funny; and if your post is more than one thousand words long then you are officially a loser.

If your post is off-topic, or simply rabid, and you want to talk about you, you, and you, you might want to go here instead, where it won’t get in the way of an ongoing discussion. The discussions here are unusually high level, and linear, people read each other. If you prefer to troll then I’ll happily give you space but not at the expense of an interesting ongoing discussion.

If your post doesn’t appear, it’s pretty unlikely that I’m “censoring” your comments, regardless of how dramatic and exciting you might find that prospect. The spam filter has probably been triggered, and I don’t get round to looking in that bin too often. Just bung me an email and I’ll hook you out.

I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to post anecdotes about your own health problems and treatments here. It’s extremely unlikely that they will inform a discussion about evidence, and experience here suggests that you may become offended and angry when other commenters disagree with your interpretation (as they are very entitled to do). Invite people elsewhere to discuss your anecdote, and if they want to, they will follow your link.

No libel, thanks. If you have been unfairly abused and you don’t like it tell me with an email and obviously I’ll get rid of it, sorry I can’t watch everything that happens here.

I happen to think it’s slightly more stylish to comment under your own real name, but that’s one of few things here that is only an opinion. Perhaps you don’t want your employer catching you skiving on the interweb, or you want to avoid hatemail from the anti-MMR lobby (forward it to me for a hate archive I’m compiling).

Generally if you’re an “involved party” you probably ought to identify yourself openly. If you don’t I may do so, especially if you are from the company/lobby being discussed and pretend not to be.

Cheers!