Discussion guidelines

We welcome firsthand experiences, use cases, demos, thoughtful opinions, and questions. Explain what you tried, what happened, and any limitations. Distinguish what you observed from what you believe or predict.

Challenge claims and explain your reasoning. Do not use profanity or slurs, harass, threaten, attack people, impersonate someone else, or post hateful or sexually explicit content. Attempts to disguise prohibited language are also moderated. Debate prompts present a view for discussion, not an established fact or necessarily the editorial team's position.

You may share a direct video or code example on YouTube, Vimeo, Loom, GitHub, Gist, CodePen, CodeSandbox, or Hugging Face Spaces. Explain what it demonstrates and how it relates to the story, and disclose if you built it, work for the company, or have another financial interest. Advertising, product landing pages, homepages, sales solicitations, affiliate or referral links, and link shorteners are not allowed, even when related to the story. Put example links only in the demo field, not in your comment or public name. Linked examples undergo automatic destination and relevance checks. If we cannot inspect a link or establish that it is a useful, non-promotional example, it will not publish; try a publicly accessible example or submit without the link. Only share material you have permission to publish; remove private or confidential information first.

Attach up to two still JPG, PNG, or WebP images per comment, up to 5 MB each. Explain what they show and how they relate to the story in at least 10 words and 60 characters. Screenshots of results, comparisons, failures, and workflows are welcome. Remove personal information, credentials, and confidential details before uploading. Only share images you have permission to publish. We resize images and strip embedded metadata.

Images and their visible text undergo automatic checks together with your comment and the story. Relevant interface branding is allowed; promotional banners, sales pitches, referral offers, and disguised advertising are not. Images stay private until the comment passes checks. Uncertain or unavailable checks ask you to revise or retry, without a human approval queue. You can report a comment to flag its images. Video uploads, animated images, and embedded players are not supported; use the demo link field for an allowed video example.

Reply to a comment to continue that conversation. Replies appear beneath the original comment, oldest first, and follow the same automatic moderation rules. Sort the main comments by New (newest first), Top (most Helpful votes), or Old (oldest first). Top uses the votes on the main comment, with newer comments first when totals tie. Mark a comment Helpful when it adds useful context, evidence, or firsthand experience, including when you disagree with its conclusion. Each signed-in account can give one Helpful vote per comment and remove it later while participation is available. You cannot vote on your own comments. Helpful totals are public; individual voters are private. There are no downvotes. Do not coordinate votes or use additional accounts to inflate totals.

Reply emails are off by default. Use the checkbox on a story to receive an email when someone replies directly to one of your comments there. This setting applies to that story only. Turn it off in the discussion or use the stop-emails link in a notification. These preferences are separate from your newsletter subscription.

Anyone can read published comments. Sign in to submit a comment or poll response. Your chosen public name, comment, demo link, and posting date are visible as soon as automatic checks pass. We do not display your email or individual poll selections publicly. Poll results are aggregate responses from participating readers, not a representative survey or a measure of factual truth.

Comments publish automatically when language, abuse, repetition, promotion, and contextual checks pass. There is no human approval queue. Clear violations are rejected. If a contribution is ambiguous, clarify its relevance and wording before resubmitting. If checks are temporarily unavailable, nothing is published; retry later. Uncertain decisions, inaccessible demos, formatting errors, and service failures do not add guideline strikes. Strong criticism and disagreement are welcome when expressed without abuse or advertising.

Reposting the same or nearly identical comment, changing only punctuation, or repeatedly sharing the same demo link is not allowed. Repeated submissions of the same violating content within 24 hours count as one incident. Rate limits also prevent flooding.

Use the flag beside a published comment, choose the reason that best fits, and submit your report. Sign in to report; your identity is not shown to the comment author or other readers. Reporting remains available when a story's discussion is locked. Reports notify our team and appear in the moderation workspace. A report does not automatically remove a comment or add a strike to its author. We review the comment and its context before taking action. Do not report comments simply because you disagree with them or submit reports to harass another reader.

Confirmed guideline incidents are counted over a rolling 30 days. The first and second incidents issue warnings. Incidents 3-4 pause commenting and voting for 1 hour; incidents 5-7 for 24 hours; incidents 8-11 for 7 days; and incident 12 or later for 30 days. A new incident can extend or increase the restriction. Expired temporary bans lift automatically. You will see warnings or the end time of a restriction privately in the discussion.

Moderators may remove or restore comments, add warnings, reverse mistaken incidents, clear strikes, or restrict accounts and IP addresses temporarily or indefinitely. Account and network restrictions apply across stories. IP restrictions can affect shared connections; contact us if you believe you were affected in error. Attempts to evade restrictions are not allowed.

Sign in and submit a poll response or a comment on the current question to unlock its results. Comments count after they pass automatic checks and are published. Helpful votes and reports do not unlock results. If you remove your response and have no published comment on that question, results become locked again. A new question requires new participation; closing a discussion does not unlock its results for nonparticipants.

Use Report to flag a published contribution. Reports do not automatically remove a comment or count as strikes. Moderators can act after publication and may lock comments on individual stories; existing comments remain readable, and poll results stay available to signed-in participants. You can delete your comments even while restricted. You can update or remove poll responses while participation is available. If a poll question changes, earlier responses stay with the original question. Contact us to appeal an automatic decision, restriction, or removal.

Use the Contact page to ask about moderation, an account restriction, or your discussion data. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for more about how the service handles your contributions.