As you join the conversation on our blog, please keep the following in mind:

Comment Posting Basics

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1. Please supply a first and last name or initials and a last name. (Notes)
2. Make comments brief, succinct and conversational, addressing only one point at a time. (Notes)
3. Show Christian love and respect. (Notes)
4. Comment on the topic at the head of the thread. (Notes)
5. Share personal experiences that relate to the topic. (Notes)
6. Discuss ideas not people. (Notes)
7. Avoid politics. (Notes)
8. Read the post and other people’s comments before posting. (Notes)
9. You may quote other authors (including Ellen White) as part of your argument., but don’t make a quotation the whole argument. (Notes)
10. Links to other websites require checking and may not be published at the moderator’s discretion. (Notes)
11. Public comments on moderation are not permitted. (Notes)
12. You may disagree with Seventh-day Adventist views but do not attack the church or its doctrines. (Notes)
    
13. Do not use ALL CAPITALS. It is considered to be bad-mannered shouting. (Notes)
14. Use your first and last name, and provide a valid email address (email addresses are not published.) (Notes)
15. Do not hog the conversation. Your comments should fit into the stream of conversation but should not dominate it. (Notes)
16. Do not use abbreviations such as SDA, EGW and SS. The name of our church is “Seventh-day Adventist.” Any reference to Ellen White should be her name, not the initials EGW.  And do not use SS when you mean “Sabbath School.” (SS has other meanings, including Hitler’s infamous SS troops.) (Notes)
17. Also please see Courtesy in Online Sabbath School Discussion.

Explanatory Notes

1. Most people give their real names. If you have good reasons not to give your usual name, you may use a “pen name.” Then use the same name  consistently. You may want to use a first and last name in your family history.  Another idea would be to use parts of your name. For instance, “Andrew Anderson” could turn into “Drew Derson.” Pen names should not be deceptive – they should not be someone else’s name.
2. We like to think of the blog as a conversation between friends. Remember the blog is read on a screen and readers do not like to use the scroll buttons. When there are questions in the day’s lesson, please address only one question at a time – leaving others to address other questions. 
   It should go without saying that your comment should generally be considerably shorter than the lesson of the day. (We originally reserved the right to edit longer comments. However, since contributors objected to that, we reserve the right not to publish such comment.)
3. All comments are expected to show Christian love and respect for other members of the list. In this spirit, please avoid making absolute statements that imply that you have divine insight into a situation. Instead, preface your points with, “It seems to me,” As I see it,” “As I understand it ..” Peter counsels us thus: “… all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility.” (1 Peter 5:5 KJV) That would appear to mean that we need to see ourselves as learners among learners, not instructors. ​Since others cannot hear our voice or see our body language, this humility needs to be demonstrated in the words we use.
4. Please comment on the subject of the entry. Give reasons for your agreement or disagreement with the entry. Off-topic comments may not be posted. Giving reasons, implies thoughtful comments, not stream-of-consciousness ramblings. 
5. Sharing of your personal experience is always welcome. (This does not, however, give license to violate other point listed.)
6. Please discuss ideas, not people or a group of people. Comments should not judge the value or salvation status of any person or groups of persons − either positively or negatively, since only God knows what is in the heart. (That also means that personal exhortations on what another contributor ought or ought not to do are inappropriate on this forum.)
7. Politics tend to be controversial and divide people. This is complicated by the fact that in our world two sides often operate from two different sets of perceived “facts,” depending on which “news” they read, listen to or watch. (Western “news reports” are often less hard news than interpretation of the news, according to the reporters’ own political bias.)
8. Please read the whole post before commenting. Sometimes your concern may be addressed within the post itself. Also make an effort to read previous comments all the way through. Otherwise you may make a points which have already been dealt with earlier.
9. Use of Ellen White and other authors: In a discussion, please state your argument in your own words, and let the argument stand or fall on its own merits, based on Scripture, rather than presenting someone else’s words as authority. And that includes the writings of Ellen White. (It’s fine to reference Ellen White and other authors. Just don’t present quotations as final authority, and when you do use quotations, please document them properly. For Ellen White references, please include the proper link to the quotation at EGWWritings.org.)
10. You may link to other web sites, but you should provide a comment and perhaps a short summary of why you think the website is useful. We check web site before publishing comments with links so there may be some delay while we do this. If we deem the website to be out of harmony with our philosophy statement, the whole comment will be disallowed. ¹
11. Public comments on our moderation or what people should or should not say in our forum [meta comments] are not allowed. Contact us privately, if you have something to say on that topic.
12. We welcome thoughtful and courteous posts of constructive analysis of  Seventh-day Adventist doctrines and/or policies pertaining to the Sabbath School. Since this is a Seventh-day Adventist list, comments that, in our view, appear to attack the Seventh-day Adventist church and/or its teachings may not be published. In particular, we do not wish to provide a platform for persons advocating beliefs contrary to Seventh-day Adventist fundamental beliefs.
13. Use sentence case and do not WRITE IN ALL CAPITALS, even for emphasis. (Posts written in all capitals are hard to read and may be deleted.) Those of you who know how to use html tags may use the <b></b> and <i></i> tags for emphasis. Use them sparingly so that your comments do not end up looking like they have acne. You may also use <blockquote>around a quotation</blockquote>.
14. Please use your real first and last names and use a valid email address. Using your real name adds credibility to your comments. (If you have good reasons not to use your full name, please tell us what they are, and we will do our best to work something out.) If we cannot reach you at the email address you provide, your comments may be deleted.  For your protection,  email addresses are not allowed within comments. (You can attach an image to your email address at Gravatar.com, and that image will appear every time you comment. It makes our dialog a bit more personal. 🙂 )
15. Do not submit too many comments at once. When one person dominates the conversation, either in real life or in cyberspace, others lose interest. 
16. For the name of our church, “Seventh-day Adventist” is preferred for first mention. After that you may use “Adventist.” Just using “Adventist” all along is okay too.
    For Ellen White, the correct author reference is “Ellen G. White.” “Ellen White” is fine, but EGW is not. Using “Sister White,” while better than EGW, is discouraged, since this is a public site. 

Remember we are Volunteers!

Please keep in mind that this blog is administered by volunteers who lead otherwise busy lives. So please don’t make things too difficult for us. We are grateful for the many people who comment thoughtfully and helpfully. May their tribe increase!

We are in no way associated with the Sabbath School Department of the General Conference. We only publish the Sabbath School lessons online by permission.

Moderation

In order to preserve a positive discussion environment on our blog, all comments are moderated. That means, it may take a while for your comment to be published, depending on the time available for one of our moderators. And if, in our view, your comment does not make a positive contribution to the discussion, it may not be published at all.

We reserve the right to publish or not publish any or all comments, and we reserve the right to edit comments, particularly lengthy ones, to serve the purposes of our blog. See Our Philosophy, for instance. While we sometimes send courtesy notes to new posters who do not fully comply with our Guide Lines, we do  not have the time to send notifications to posters who frequently post such comments.

Posting according to the guide lines above will ensure that others will find your contribution worth reading.

Please Note:

• We do not write or edit the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. Please go to the Adult Bible Study Guide site and use their Contact Form if you want to say something to the editors.
• Once your comment is published, it will stay public for a while, but we may delete some comments on older posts. For instance, it’s nice to get a warm pat on the back for a post, but if it doesn’t add any content, we may not keep it in the archives, giving preference to comments with real content — whether negative or positive.

If you have suggestions to make regarding these guide lines, please use our contact form.

Happy Posting!

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