Commenting guidelines for Nela Dunato Art & Design blog

Thank you for reading these guidelines!

NelaDunato.com is the private property of Nela Dunato (myself), and I maintain this space (as well as my social media accounts) in accordance with my own personal values and ethical principles. This means that “freedom of speech” or other common excuses for abuse and nonsense do not apply to this space. I reserve the right to delete any comments and block any users who post comments that do not align with these guidelines.

The comments you post on the blog are visible to the public.

If you wish to remain anonymous, you may use a pseudonym instead of your own name. Your email address is only visible to me—I do ask that you use a valid email address in order to participate in commenting.

If you send me a private email message, I may quote you on my blog or social media anonymously (without any identifying information), unless you explicitly consent to mentioning your name.

If you want me to delete a comment you posted, email your request to me from the same email address you used to post the comment. You don’t have to provide a reason, I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.

Comments on posts may be deleted or closed at any time, so if you want to retain your own writing, please save it to your computer or a cloud document. I sometimes delete my own articles and artwork so what’s here today, may not be here tomorrow.

The Privacy policy applies to all the information you choose to share through the forms on my website.

To keep everyone’s experience of this space pleasant, please adhere to the following:

  • Refrain from posting any kind of abusive or offensive messages directed at myself, or any other person or group.
  • Do not post just to get backlinks to your own website. Spam and overly self-promotional comments are deleted, or edited to remove links.
  • Misogyny, racism, sexism, ableism, hate speech, and white fragility are not welcome and will be deleted.
  • Do not post information about other people that is not factually correct, or expose other people’s personal information (including names, which are defined as personal information per GDPR).
  • Do not present your own personal opinion as “scientific facts” if you cannot cite a credible source for these facts. (Someone’s blog or YouTube video is not a credible source.)
  • Do not post medical misinformation. In fact, it’s best you avoid health topics altogether. Especially do not comment on my personal healthcare choices.
  • Refrain from offering advice to me or other commenters, unless someone has explicitly asked for advice. Before you jump in to write what someone should do, stop, re-read the text, and make sure that advice has been requested.
  • If you want to express disagreement with something I wrote, avoid condescending language. I’m not obligated to provide a platform for critique, and whether your comment remains published or not depends most of all on your tone. Please state your opinion in a respectful manner.
  • Feel free to ask for clarification, and I’ll do my best to answer if I think it will benefit other readers as well. I’m not, however, required to explain or defend my personal beliefs, so I may choose not to engage in a discussion about them. My writing is provided “as is”, and follow-up explanations are not warranted.
  • This is a multi-cultural space, and people of diverse spiritual beliefs (or non-beliefs) are welcome here. I’d prefer if you kept religion out of your comments. If you need to mention it, do it in a way that doesn’t minimize the validity of other people’s beliefs and experiences.

I may add new guidelines if I feel it’s necessary.

Thanks again for reading, and I hope to see you in the blog comments!