The Reply section under each article is a vital part of Financology … it’s not much of a stretch to say our articles exist mostly as a springboard for your comments. Any resemblance to a lecture format is purely accidental.

Comment guidelines are few. Comments should be colorably germane to the site subject matter and preferably to the article under which they’re posted. The customary provisos about spam, abusive or offensive content or language apply.

Financology is an economics, finance, and investing site. Politics and major current events can have economic impacts and politicians and policy issues are fair game so long as it doesn’t get into partisan or personality politics. If you criticize, please target the issue or policy, not the person. Occasional nonfinancial comments are welcome, but if they’re getting numerous and dominating the site it’s time to tap the brakes.

Interactive discussion is encouraged. If a comment is responsive to another comment, please use the reply button associated with that comment. Multiple comments under a post that aren’t responsive to the post or another comment may trigger “speed limit” tripwires. Links to commercial and social media sites may also be flagged by the site’s spam filtering software, and links generally should be supportive of the comment text or of the current topic. The administrator is part time and relies heavily on site automation to prevent it from being overrun with spam.

These guidelines are modeled after the Wolf Street commenting guidelines; readers can refer to them for more color. 

Established commenters interested in writing an article can let me know in a comment.

The reply section is also used liberally to follow up on articles. This is a convenient way to post updates and helps keep like subject matter collected together for later reference. Readers are encouraged to check the comments section of recent articles for further explanation and updates, as it usually makes more sense to put it there than post a new article on the same topic; fresh material is regularly found there.