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.

Interactive discussion is encouraged. If a comment is responsive to another comment, please use the Reply button associated with that comment. Off topic comments are welcome provided that if they’re on the same topic as another recent comment, they are posted as replies to it in order to keep like subject matter collected together. If a comment is not directly responsive to a post, please select the most appropriate recent post. Numerous comments that aren’t responsive to the post or another comment may trigger “speed limit” tripwires and be routed to the comment shredder.

Links are fine so long as they are supportive of the comment text or of the current topic; comments themselves should be your own words. Anything that is not your own words must identify whose they are, preferably with a link to the source and quotes to identity the content from it.

Links to commercial and social media sites (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, X, etc…) may be flagged by the site’s spam filtering software. The administrator is part time and relies heavily on site automation to prevent it from being overrun with spam.

Financology is an economics, finance, and investing site. Politics and major current events can have economic impacts and policy issues are fair game so long as it doesn’t get into partisan or personality politics. Comments that belittle or ridicule a person as opposed to an issue or policy may be routed to the comment shredder. Occasional nonfinancial comments are welcome, but if they’re getting numerous or repetitive it’s time to tap the brakes.

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.