USGS Comment Policy

We welcome your comments and hope that our conversations here will be polite. You are responsible for the content of your comments. We use third-party services such as social media platforms to distribute information. While we use these sites, much like yourself, they are not considered Federal websites and they operate on their own privacy and security policies. As a result, we ask that you follow our commenting rules below to ensure any comments or chat responses are cordial and informational and help you protect your own privacy and security.

We reserve the ability to delete any of the following:

• violent, obscene, profane, hateful, or racist comments
• comments that threaten or harm the reputation of any person or organization
• advertisements or solicitations of any kind
• comments directed toward the success or failure of a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group
• comments that suggest or encourage illegal activity
• off-topic posts or repetitive posts that are copied and pasted
• personal information including, but not limited to, email addresses, telephone numbers, mailing addresses, or identification numbers
• comments that may cause public panic or falsely cite the deployment of emergency services (e.g., "major earthquake to strike Los Angeles in next 24 hours!").

In short: be nice, be mature, and add to the discussion.