Guidelines

The Rules of the Road

When posting comments or sending article submissions, please heed the following simple guidelines.

  1. No ads: Do not post any advertisements or solicitations.
  2. Be Nice. Please be courteous and respectful to all commenters/posters. As political debates can often get heated, please try to be as respectful and constructive as possible when disagreement arises.
  3. No Flaming. Abusive, profane, or obscene behavior will not be tolerated. Flaming includes such things as name-calling, public criticism of another member or user, personal attacks, baiting, raising issues, or responding to posts in a deliberately inflammatory manner.
  4. No unlawful online behavior. Any posts that can be construed as internet stalking, invasion of privacy, defamation, publication of private user information, and threats of violence will not be tolerated under any circumstances.
  5. Basic netiquette still applies. Take care in what you write. Remember that people will read your post, and it will be archived both by this site, google cache, and the Wayback Machine for quite some time.
  6. Consider your audience. Written words always sound harsher than it is because there are no accompanying gestures or facial expressions.
  7. Try not to offend. When you make your points keep your tone polite. Respond to the issues not to the personal attributes. Ad hominem remarks will not be tolerated.
  8. Private means private. Never repost private email or information to this site, or any other forum or medium, without permission of the original author. Don’t post your phone number or address without understanding the potential consequences. It is better to send personal information by private email.
  9. Don’t shout. Capitalize words only to highlight an important point or to distinguish a title or heading. Capitalizing whole words that are not titles is generally termed as SHOUTING! *Asterisks* surrounding a word can be used to make a stronger point.
  10. Don’t feed the trolls. The best way to stop a flame war from happening is to ignore the folks who try to start them.


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