The political season is upon us, and as our coverage has ramped up, so has the commenting on articles we write about candidates and the issues they are addressing.

We've had internal discussions about how we handle comments on political stories, and we've also gotten questions from candidates on that topic. I was planning to post something on the issue when I received an e-mail from Andy Thomas, who serves on the Ann Arbor Board of Education.

Thomas, who was appointed to fill a vacancy on the board and is considering a run for election in November, posed a number of questions I'm glad to address. Here are his questions and my answers.

1. Will political candidates who are designated as "contributors" to AnnArbor.com be permitted to post articles during the campaign season? If so, will there be any limitations to the content of those posts? (Some would argue -- with justification -- that any article from a candidate on any subject, even if unrelated to the office being sought, would constitute a form of "free advertising.")

If a contributor to AnnArbor.com decides to run for office, we do not allow the contributor to post on the site during the campaign. That is true for any type of content, not just political content. We agree that allowing contributors to post on any topic would give them an exposure that other candidates wouldn't have. We already have had one case of a contributor filing for office, and we let her know that she could not post on the site until after the election.

2. Will candidates be permitted to post their comments to stories regarding the election? Will they be permitted to respond to comments made by their political opponents? Will they be permitted to post to stories not directly related to the election, but which might still have the effect of influencing potential voters in their favor?

We allow elected officials and candidates to comment on stories, whether those stories are about them, their opponents or any other topic. Commenting on AnnArbor.com is a public, community discussion, and candidates are as welcome to join that conversation as anyone else.

We've also had some discussion internally about whether we'll allow candidates to post information on the Community Wall. We've decided to permit that for the primary election. After the Aug. 3 primary, we'll reassess and determine what our policy will be for the general election.

3. Will candidates be permitted to post anonymously, using an avatar? If this is permitted, it would, in my opinion, amount to a "license to smear" in that they would be able to make outrageous statements without taking responsibility for the accuracy of their words. I can imagine the "comments" section of any article relating to the election to degenerate into a series of "attack ads," again without attribution to a candidate or his/her campaign.

We require all public officials or candidates to use their real name when they comment on the site. That has been true since we launched last summer. There have been a few instances where we discovered an official or candidate was commenting anonymously. In those instances, we have disabled the account and contacted them to let them know they must use their real name. We have detected most of these cases on our own, but if you suspect an anonymous commenter is actually a public official or candidate, you can let us know by sending an e-mail to share@annarbor.com and we will investigate that.

4. How will you apply your conversational guidelines to political candidates, their supporters and their opponents? We have already seen some rather nasty exchanges between supporters of the two mayoral candidates. The general rule has been that individuals are freer to make disparaging remarks about political candidates (who are public figures) than against private citizens.

Overall, we are applying the same moderation guidelines to comments on political coverage that apply to other coverage. So far, we have found that our current guidelines are adequate to address commenting on political stories. In the media, there is a long-established doctrine that public officials are subject to a standard of "fair comment and criticism'' that does not apply to private individuals. Our commenting guidelines recognize this standard, and we give commenters greater latitude to challenge or criticize office-holders and candidates. If you see a comment about a candidate that you think is unfair or inaccurate, you can flag it by clicking on the words "Report this comment to staff.'' We'll review the flagged comment and remove it if we determine it violates our guidelines.

5. Have you considered establishig a sub-site that is devoted to political campaigning, and restricting political discussion to this site?

We recently launched a new Elections topic on the site, which includes all of our coverage of local and state political races, although we don't restrict commenting to this topic. Our Elections topic also includes a link to our Voters Guide. If you go to this guide, it asks you to type in your address, and then builds a ballot with all the candidates and races you'll be voting on. You can then see profiles on the candidates, including background information and answers on where they stand on the issues. These candidate profile pages are not set up to accept comments, but you can see what people are saying about candidates, or post your own comment, by going to our coverage of a particular race.

We welcome other thoughts or questions about our policies on moderating comments on political stories. Please feel free to ask.