FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Whose blog is this?
A. The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command started this blog and is responsible for maintaining it. The command’s goal for the blog is to be the central spot for information about Army science and technology. That is a wide field to which many organizations make significant contributions. We hope that, over time, we will find a way to partner with all of them in order to bring the public the full spectrum of the Army’s technology enterprise in support of our Warfighters.
Q. Why do you moderate comments?
A. For several reasons.  First, we’re new at this.  We do not know what kind of comments the site will elicit, nor how long it will take to monitor or moderate them.  By moderating comments at least initially we will be able to gauge the response to the blog and our ability to handle that response.
Q. What is your comment moderation policy?
A. The guiding principle of our moderation policy is this: stay in your lane.  Our lane is Army science and technology. It is not politics, philosophy, international affairs, religion, or any number of other topics. The Internet and traditional media outlets have venues for discussing any topic you can imagine that are more capable of addressing those subjects. There is no need for Army Technology Live to host those discussions. Furthermore, a good part of what we see as our audience is restrained for discussing some of those subjects in public fora by law, tradition and professional ethics. We will also not publish anything that puts Warfighters at risk, including details of equipment vulnerabilities.  We will not publish comments that contain incorrect information about Army systems that we cannot, for security or other reasons, correct.  We will not publish personal attacks, off-topic comments, profanity or spam.
Q. How can I know if what I’m reading is what the commenter wrote?
A. Any comment that we edit will include an editor’s note briefly describing why the comment was edited.  For example: “edited for policy,” “edited for propriety,” etc. Comments whose entire contents violate our moderation policy will simply not appear, as there is no practical value to noting a comment was not published without bringing up the offending subject matter.
Q. What is your linking policy?
A. Army Technology Live is hosted on dodlive.mil, and as such must comply with Department of Defense policy on linking.
Q. Why do you link to some external news stories or blog posts about Army technology, but not others?
A. Our linking policy closely follows our comment moderation policy.  Additionally, while we will not try to avoid disagreement or embarrassment, we will only link to content that contributes to the public’s factual understanding of Army technology.