Thanks for carrying the welcoming attitude of our small town into this online community.

Do you have an opinion about something you’ve read here on our site? See something you like or don’t like? Or would you just like to add your own perspective to the stories we’ve presented?

We welcome you to join the conversation by making use of our site and posting comments regularly. What we’re shooting for is to provide a forum that’s open enough to engage in vibrant dialogue among our readers and writers — yet not so open it devolves into the kind of nasty back-and-forth we’ve all witnessed on the Internet.

In our opinion, anonymity is no excuse for rudeness. And anyway, we know who you are and will be happy to delete your comments or block you out if you use our forums to harass or insult any other readers, or if you just plain have a bad attitude. For the most part, just exercise the same courtesies and good manners you would in real life, and there will never be a problem. You can debate somebody and still be nice about it.

Each comment you post will be e-mailed directly to the writer who initially posted the story. The first time you comment, you’ll have to wait to see your comment posted until the writer has approved it. Once you’ve shown your good intentions, we’ll be glad to let you post without requiring our approval every time.

Notice somebody causing trouble? Just let us know.