To our readers

At the Tampa Bay Times, we think it is important to include our readers in the process of keeping conversations reasonable and civil. To that end, we have created the option for you to easily report abuse of our posting guidelines.

For registered members, if you see an objectionable comment, hover on the comment and click the "report abuse" flag. That will flag the comment for our moderators. Once enough registered members have flagged a comment, it will automatically disappear. We will then review that comment.

For non-registered members, the flag threshold is higher but our moderators will be alerted to all abuse reports.

We will permanently delete comments containing inappropriate content including obscenities, hate speech and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned.

Reader comments on tampabay.com are the opinions of the writer, not the Tampa Bay Times.

Abuse policy: If you have any questions or concerns about our abuse policy, please let us know. You can e-mail : comments@tampabay.com.