A housekeeping notice on ConHome's comments policy

ConservativeHome has always prided itself on being an open house for debate about Conservative politics, but there has recently been an escalation in those seeking to abuse the comments facility.

As ever, any comments deemed to be potentially actionable, homophobic, racist, hateful, personally abusive, containing bad language, overly long, tangential or tedious are vulnerable to deletion.

Of late, there has also been a small minority seeking to turn every other thread into a discussion about one of several pet issues, which is incredibly boring for most readers. We intend to crack down on this and will more regularly delete comments which go off-topic in this way, so please desist from making them in the first place.

Another occasional issue is that of trolls from other parties masquerading as Conservatives. Whenever you notice examples of this, please let me or Tim know and we will judge whether to delete their comments and 'mark them as spam' which will make it harder for them to post in the future. Also, please don't engage with them or accuse them of trolling as that only serves to fill the comments threads with repetitive accusations and counter-accusations. If you do 'feed the trolls' your own contribution is likely to be deleted.

Furthermore, whilst the site has always encouraged polite, respectful and constructive debate with those who support other parties, there has also been a recent surge in comments from non-Conservatives which have been unconstructive, tedious, gratuitous and sometimes verging on the abusive. Such comments will be subject to deletion, so again, please desist from making them in the first place.

The full comments policy can be read here and as ever, the decision of the editors is final.

Jonathan Isaby