Community Guidelines
Welcome to The Globe and Mail community. We’re pleased to offer many ways to interact with Globe and Mail journalists, subject matter experts and other readers, including online commenting, live and virtual events, live online Q&As, reader callouts, travel experiences, and more.
To keep our community safe and enjoyable, please follow our rules detailed below. To see what’s happening in the community, visit our community hub. If you have questions or suggestions for our community editors, please email our community editors here.
Community Rules
General conduct
To maintain a safe and beneficial experience for all our readers, we ask that you follow our rules. If you don’t follow the rules, you may be banned from participating in The Globe and Mail community.
- Treat others as you wish to be treated.
- Criticize ideas, not people. Personal attacks of any kind will not be tolerated.
- Do not use profanity, toxic or offensive language.
- Do not yell at others or use all caps when engaging online.
- Avoid spreading misinformation. Before commenting, check your facts with a reputable news source with a published editorial code of conduct.
- Your submissions to The Globe must be original and you must be the creator of the work (i.e. you cannot use AI to generate them).
Prohibited behaviour
The following behaviour will not be tolerated and may result in an automatic ban.
- Personal attacks: Threats, insults, doxxing or bullying of our journalists, other readers, and the subjects of articles.
- Trolling: Inflammatory or irrelevant comments meant to derail a conversation, provoke emotional reactions or harass others.
- Racism, sexism, hate speech and other discrimination: Attacks on a group of people or broad statements against groups.
- Advocating violence: Explicit or implied calls to violence, including incitement to kill or hurt someone.
- Illegal or fraudulent activities: Libelous statements or comments that include false or unsubstantiated allegations; promoting any illegal or fraudulent activities.
- Spam: Flooding the community with multiple messages that say the same thing, messages promoting your business, project or special deals or links to other websites.
- Offensive usernames: If your online username includes words that are offensive or abusive or could be considered offensive or abusive, your account will be blocked.
- Disinformation: Do not distribute false or misleading information that is deliberately created to deceive, manipulate or cause harm.
These guidelines were set by The Globe’s Editorial and Audience teams, with input from moderators and subscribers.
For more details, read The Globe’s Terms and Conditions.
For account questions, contact Customer Care.
For moderation concerns, submit a report.
Commenting
Commenting is one of the most popular community activities enjoyed by Globe and Mail subscribers.
We receive thousands of comments every week across a wide range of stories. Many comments are articulate, informative and thoughtful. The very best offer wit or a unique perspective. You may see some of these comments featured.
When you comment, your username will appear with your comment. If you did not select a unique username when you set up your account, your username will begin with AP_. To learn more about usernames, click here.
You may also see some of our journalists or editors active in the comments. They will be easily recognizable with an AUTHOR badge or red checkmark which indicates Globe staff.
We use both automated and human moderation to monitor comments 24/7.
If you see comments that violate our community rules, report them by clicking the REPORT button and selecting the appropriate reason.
If you no longer wish to see another subscriber’s comments, you can block them by clicking on the user’s name and selecting MUTE.
If you have questions about commenting or our moderation, visit our detailed FAQ.
Globe Events
The Globe offers a wide variety of live and virtual events throughout the year.
All events require registration for admission. Some events may also require a paid ticket or be offered exclusively to Globe and Mail subscribers.
Upcoming events can be found here.
To ensure a safe and enjoyable experience at Globe Events, we ask event attendees to follow the principles outlined in our Community Rules.
Live Q&A
The Globe hosts regular live online text-based Q&As with our journalists or subject-matter experts across a variety of topics including health and wellness, current events, business, personal finance, investing, life and culture. To see what’s happening, visit our community hub.
Participation in live Q&As is limited to Globe subscribers with the ability to comment, however, we often solicit reader questions in advance via reader callouts, if you can’t make the live Q&A.
If your question is answered, it will appear in the Q&A window as well as your notification tray.
We may also publish a selection of questions and answers following the live Q&A as a separate article page which may be available to non-subscribers.
READER CALLOUTS
Both subscribers and non-subscribers can participate in our journalism through reader callouts.
Reader callouts are commonly used to seek out new sources for stories, gather reader contributions on a particular topic or to solicit questions from readers in advance of a live Q&A.
Reader callouts appear at the bottom of articles and often include the words ‘Share your story’ or ‘Ask us your questions’ in the headline. You can also find them on our community hub.
Every reader callout includes an explanation of what we’re looking for, along with details as to how the information you provide will be used.
If you choose to participate in a reader callout, please note the information collected may be used for journalistic purposes, though not all responses will necessarily be published. The Globe may contact you in regard to these submissions, for instance, if someone would like to interview you for a story and/or to let you know how submissions were used by The Globe and Maild.
USER-GENERATED CONTENT
The Globe and Mail welcomes input in the form of comments and other communication, provided you follow the principles outlined in our Community Rules and your submissions are original and created by you (i.e. you cannot use AI to generate it).
If you submit content to The Globe, you agree to our User-Generated Content terms.
GLOBE AND MAIL TRAVEL
The Globe partners with reputable travel agencies to offer guided travel through a Canadian lens to incredible destinations.
Every Globe journey includes daily interactive talks about current events led by our journalists, custom-curated excursions, first-class accommodations, and a unique food and wine program. To learn more about our upcoming travel experiences, visit globeandmailtravel.com.