Denver at San Diego (10/19/2009)

What about offensive posts/comments/blogs?

Our policy on this is still evolving... by which I mean we are figuring this stuff out as we go along. As you'll have read in Community Manifesto one goal of this community is to allow free speech. We are counting on the intelligent, mature members populating this community to be civil and at least minimally respectful of others.

Of course, there are bound to be members who are NOT intelligent and mature, and while we do have the power to edit or delete posts, we don't want to do that if we can avoid it. We have a couple options for dealing with this:

• We have the covers team and our covers linesmen patrolling the community looking for troublemakers. If you want to report a disturbance, go to the Help Forum to post your message.

• For the incorrigibles, we've got the PENALTY BOX. If you get banished to the box, you're not coming out again until we think you can handle yourself.

We've researched the idea of having an "ignore certain posters" feature, or letting users "block" certain others from their view, but have determined that it would be too much of a drain on our server resources. We've simply got too many members, and having these filters in place would slow the whole community down (a lot). There's been discussion on the forum about it, and the consensus is that it's better to have a fast community with a few idiots than suffer excruciatingly slow page loads.
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Guidelines:

For obvious reasons, this kind of thing is only fun as long as people play fair. We want this to be fun as well as informative. Therefore, we have come up with a few basic guidelines that we are requesting users to respect. These aren't rules, but were counting on you folks out there to do a lot of self-policing. So here are some guidelines that will keep this place vibrant, entertaining and enjoyable:

1) If you spot somebody out there who is obviously in direct violation of the rules and spirit of the community, then let us know in the Covers Help forum. If their attitude is ruining your experience, then consider ignoring this user.

2) Regarding slanderous posts/blogs/comments. As mentioned above, we will be notifying readers if we think a particular post is nothing more than unsubstantiated slanderous crap. Once a post has been marked as slanderous, the post will either be deleted or moved to the Penalty Box forum.

3) Try to be civil. We know, we know. Sometimes it's hard to contain yourself when somebody starts acting like an asshole. But we know from personal experience that nobody wants to read a page full of flames either. It's no fun. So at least try to maintain a sense of dignity - plus it shows a lot of class.

4) Try to be interesting. Nobody wants to read a boring posts/blogs/comments.

5) Remember this motto: "Freedom of Speech may always be a right, but that doesn't mean you are always right." In other words, if you don't know what you are talking about, then shut the hell up because you look like a fool!

6) If you have a good idea to improve the community, let us know. We participated in the creation of this software, and plan to add new features from time to time.

7) Any uploaded images used for your community profile which have sexual or violent content are not permitted. All inappropriate images will be removed from your account and you will receive a warning notice.