Mamamia has a new commenting policy.

In the five years Mamamia has been going, comments have been a really valued part of the site and we’ve always asked that you imagine you’re at a dinner party when you’re commenting.

That means that “differences of opinion are welcome but you need to keep it respectful or the host will show you the door”.

Here’s the thing: this year the dinner party has grown. A lot. In fact we’re not so much hosting a dinner party any more, as a giant pot luck get together with 500,000 or so of our closest friends.

And that’s great. As Mamamia grows, so does our fantastic community of readers. That means more wonderful and insightful writers on the site and more interesting and diverse opinions being offered in comments.

But it also means more family tiffs. A few more invited guests who don’t particularly get on and some gate crashers who come to deliberately cause trouble (it also means more technical bugs that we try to fix as soon as we can).

So we’re changing our comments policy. Mamamia is no longer a one-woman-in-her-lounge-room-with-a-laptop-show and we’re amending our dinner party rules accordingly.

This includes comments that are mean-spirited, aggressive, snarky, bitchy and comments that try to bait, mock or taunt other commenters or Mamamia staff.

Tell us your opinion. Enter the debate. But if you can’t make your point without being bitchy or snarky or just downright mean  – we don’t want to hear it. And we won’t help you broadcast it to our wonderful community.

Please be clear: you do not have a RIGHT to have your comment published here on Mamamia. Just like you get to decide what comments from other people you leave up on your Facebook wall, we get to decide what is published here. As does every other website.

We carefully choose the posts we want to publish acccording to the tone we want to promote on the site. And the same goes for the comments. We are not prepared to provide a stage and a megaphone for people who simply wish to abuse us or others. Would you?

And no, this has nothing to do with disagreeing with the writer of the post or the views of anyone on the editorial team. At Mamamia, we have never shied away from diversity of opinion and that will not change. Discussions are dull when everyone is in violent agreement. But when that diversity becomes unnecessarily negative and adds nothing to the discussion, it will be deleted immediately.

Mamamia has always been a warm and welcoming place to be and that’s something we are determined to continue. So the vast majority of our readers can feel safe and comfortable to express themselves thoughtfully and constructively in the comments section.

These new rules will ensure that remains the case. Our commenting policy – that you will see at the bottom of every post now reads like this:

Just. Be cool. Like the Fonz.

Imagine you’re at a dinner party. Different opinions are welcome but keep it respectful or the host will show you the door. We have zero tolerance for any abuse of our writers, our editorial team or other commenters. So if you’re rude, mean-spirited, snarky, aggressive, defamatory or bitchy, your comment will be deleted (so will any replies to the original comment – so don’t bother arguing with rude people, instead just hit the ‘alert moderator’ button).

And if you’re offensive, you’ll be blacklisted and all your comments will go directly to spam. Remember what Fonzie was like? Cool. That’s how we’re going to be – cool. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation…

Of course your feedback is important to us and we want to hear it – as long as it’s constructive and expressed politely. So we will also be introducing a fortnightly ‘Ask Mamamia’ post. Is there something you want to ask the Mamamia team? Anything at all?

Well – here’s your place to do it. This is the first one. YOU ARE IN IT RIGHT NOW. TODAY.

Here is the place for you to let us know story ideas you might have, to make suggestions about the site and tell us what you’d like to see more of. We’d also like to know what you really love. Let’s try to keep it constructive, OK?

We’ll be checking in regularly and responding to your questions as much as we can.

Peace out.