Guidelines for commenting on a story

Thank you for your contribution! Authors of a story generally appreciate getting feedback on their spiritual experience. Remember that your post will be read by thousands eventually, so here are a few guidelines to using our comments sections:

• As a general rule, posts should be on topic and related to an author's story. If you have something entirely unrelated to say, please use your own story to do so. Comments may gradually get off track a bit, it happens, but don't jump in a story with a completely different subject, or worse, just to promote commenting on your own story. Also, make sure to read the previous posts before publishing yours.
• Posts that are abusive, vulgar, insulting or spammy will be deleted. If a person persists in posting such messages numerous times, they will be blocked / banned from this site. We also reserve the right to delete comments that are juvenile, off-topic, very poorly written, unintelligible, incoherent, messages all in UPPERCASE or with every first letter capitalized, and anything that looks like promotional material.
• Please don't reply to abusive messages. I will delete them in time and your reply will not make any sense for future readers. Don't forget that trolls feed on your attention. If I missed one, you're free to notify me via our contact page (make sure to indicate the page).
• Do NOT post links that would be inappropriate for the general public, or are against the law, to sites about porn, gambling, software pirating, virus, spam, etc.
• This is not a chat room, so avoid abbreviations and SMS language ("u" instead of "you", "n" for "and", "coz" for "because" etc) as it is juvenile and unreadable. We want to have mature conversations about the delicate topic of spiritual experiences, using TXT talk only attracts the intellectually lazy crowd. We really have zero tolerance for this and posts containing these types of abbreviations will be deleted on the spot. You may have noticed that we block some bad words, TXT talk and require a minimum length to a post. We are trying to make sure that someone has actually something to contribute when they make a post, this way, the comments section doesn't look like a trashy myspace / youtube page full of "Cool" and "That's Hot".
• HTML code is not allowed. We keep it simple. For URLs, simply paste the address and we will turn it into an HTML link automatically. If you post your email address, you will notice that we obfuscate it so spam bots do not pick it up (ex: yourname@domain.com becomes yourname [at] domain.com). Otherwise, you may end up receiving spam in the future.
• Spiritual experiences can be a sensitive subject and is not accepted by mainstream society. People publishing their stories deserve to be addressed with respect so this web site can be a safe haven for people wanting to share their experiences. If you disagree with the authenticity and the veracity of a story, you can express your opinion, as long as it is respectful ("I have an another theory for what happened", "I do not believe this to be true because...", etc). However, you cannot be abusive toward the author ("your story is lame", "you're a liar", "you're wasting our time", etc).
• The comments sections have a preview page before you finally publish your post. We would appreciate it if you reviewed it at least once for misspellings. If you don't know how a word is spelled, just check with an online dictionary. Even better, modern browsers (Firefox, Chrome, etc) have a built-in spell checker for text boxes on web pages. To people telling us "this is not an english class", that's the point, we expect users to have successfully passed those and be able to write correctly. Bad spelling tends to drag down the level of intelligence in a discussion and discourage serious people and experts from contributing.
• If you are referring to an article on another web site, do not quote it entirely, as it is usually a breach of their copyrights and will take too much space in the comments area. Find the relevant part, paste that sentence/paragraph between quotes and indicate where it was taken by adding the web link.
• You must be 13 years or older to post a comment. If you are under 18 years old, please do not divulge personal information that could make it possible for someone to find you, for your own safety. If you are 18 years and older, it is up to you, but we still do not encourage the practice. Please use common sense.
• We don't mind getting the skeptic's point of view, as long as you are respectful and tolerant.
• If you are the author of a story, please be aware that users of our site, many from different backgrounds and cultures, will provide feedback to your story and you may not personally agree with all of their comments. However, it is the nature of the web to have debates with very different opinions, and although you may be the only person who truly knows what happened in your story, you should not take it personally when some users disagrees or ask for additional information, but understand that it is part of normal discussions where people exchange ideas.
• This site offers discussions on the topic of spiritual experiences, with people coming from various cultures, so please avoid proselytizing or preaching, unless the author of a story specifically asks to receive feedback from that religious perspective. This site is not about religious beliefs, it is about actual personal spiritual experiences and exploring reality with an open and investigative mind so we can actually learn more about the spiritual world, with the same empirical mind set that made science so successful in other fields. Religions have a lot of wisdom to offer in terms of personal spirituality, but they can also limit our knowledge of the world with old superstitions and unproven dogmas. It's fine to share what your religion has to offer as a possible explanation, but everyone has their own, they certainly don't come here to be converted, so please, don't push it on others as irrefutable fact.
• If you have a question related to a story, please ask it directly in the comments area instead of dropping your email and asking the author to email you, so that everyone can benefit from the discussion. Please do not copy paste the same post under different stories. Each one of them are different and deserve a personal feedback. Also, do not simply request people to read your stories. Your feedback should be about the author's stories, not yours. It's fine to mention it if they are related, but the message itself as a whole should be about the author's experience. Finally, the comments section is not a recruiting tool for your particular group or organization, please don't constantly ask people to contact you for more information instead of helping directly.
• Don't use different aliases on the site, if you picked one, stick with it.
• This site is for the general public. No sexually explicit content is allowed. You can mention a sexual experience with general terms, but there really is no need for technical details.
• Posts are considered the opinion of the poster, and are not necessarily endorsed or approved by spiritual-experiences.com. When posting on spiritual-experiences.com, you grant perpetual non-exclusive rights to spiritual-experiences.com to republish, in any form, the posted material. Once posts are published, they cannot be deleted, unless you present a reason that we consider valid, as deleting a member's post would damage the integrity of our archive and reduce the value of this resource to members and visitors. You are responsible for what you post on the web, so please don't ask others to undo your actions.