Commenting Guidelines

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• You must use your full first and last name when you post comments or participate in discussions. You may not represent that you are any other person, whether real or invented, or imply any connection with any person or organization with which you are not, in fact, associated.
• You must stay on-topic with the story that you are posting to.
• You must demonstrate respect for other members. If you disagree with an opinion, feel free to respectfully challenge that opinion with a posting of your own.
• You must not personally attack any other member. You will not stalk or harass another member.
• We appreciate thoughtful criticism of MarketWatch articles and commentary, but will not tolerate attacks against our journalists or smear tactics directed at the site.
• Mocking, baiting, bickering, taunting, name-calling and uncivil exchanges with other members are not allowed. You may not dominate the conversation or discourage participation by others. You may not threaten or promote violence, or wish for harm to befall another person.
• Comments which disparage traits with which people are born are not allowed.
• You will not upload, post or submit anything that is obscene or contains profanity or veiled profanity or that may be hateful or offensive on racial, ethnic, sexual, stereotypical or any other grounds; is harmful, vulgar or distasteful; or is defamatory, libelous, or invades another person's privacy or proprietary rights. You will not evade profanity filters through the creative manipulation of obscene words.
• Do not re-post comments previously deleted by moderators.
• We won't allow comments containing allegedly factual claims that we know to be wrong, or which we simply lack the time or resources to verify.
• Spam, comments copy-and-pasted across threads or from other Web sites and comments with self-promotional links are not allowed.
• Excessive links to external Web sites, comments in all capital letters, all-bold or all-italic postings, excessive blank space and objectionable profile photos are not permitted.
• You will not upload, post or submit or otherwise make available any content that contains links to Web sites with objectionable content.
• You will not upload, post or submit anything that contains viruses, cancel bots, Trojan horses, harmful code, or other computer software or programs designed to interrupt another person's enjoyment of MarketWatch.
• You will comply with all applicable laws in participating on MarketWatch and will not use your comments for illegal purposes.
• You will not upload, post, submit or otherwise make available any content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements) or that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any person.

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Do not feed the trolls. Rather than responding in kind when other members violate the rules, we ask that you instead report that objectionable content by clicking the "Flag" link visible on every comment.

If any member violates any of the above rules, we reserve the right to ban that individual from further participation at MarketWatch.

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