SBC Guidelines for Posting on the Message Boards

[Thom Young]

After receiving numerous comments over the past year regarding behavior on our message boards, the administrators (Keith Dallas and Thom Young) have decided there is a need to take a more proactive stance on message board conduct—especially since these types of comments have increased within the past few months.

Complaints that have been lodged include a lack of common courtesy and insulting language. With this notice, we want to remind everyone that discussions on the boards should remain civil. Of course, debate and disagreement are still allowed and even welcome. A message board community that is in complete agreement on all matters is boring and pointless.

However, a poisonous atmosphere that either prevents people from joining a discussion or that drives people away is not conducive to a healthy message board community, so a change in policy is needed.

Part of this change will involve either the editing or deletion of posts that the administrators deem to be offensive based on guidelines that are stipulated below.

In some cases, the deletion of an entire thread may be warranted—particularly if the initial post was deemed inappropriate. In other cases, it may only be necessary for an administrator to edit a post by either removing or altering the inappropriate content.

When an administrator edits a post, he will include a note for why it was edited. If an administrator deletes a post, the poster can contact an administrator to ask why the post was deleted.

If a post is edited or deleted, subsequent posts by other members who quoted or referred to the offensive part of the earlier post may also need to be either edited or deleted.

Please follow these basic rules when posting messages:

• Posts should not contain personal attacks. Disagreeing with the views of others is allowed, but disagreements should be conducted in a civil manner.

• For the sake of creating intelligent or interesting discussions, it’s appropriate to indicate what you consider to be errors in logic of a point that you are rebutting (et cetera).

• Similarly, when discussing a creative work, it’s appropriate to point out problems you have with the writing, the illustrations, the editing, et cetera.

• However, it’s possible to disagree with people or to negatively critique works and creators without resorting to methods of belittling other message board members or comic book creators. Examples of “belittling” include, but are not limited to name calling, alluding to psychological or emotional problems, and alluding to intellectual inadequacies.

• Similarly, posts should not contain inflammatory language, nor should any part of their purpose be to deride either the ideas or the posts of others.

• Posts should not contain racist or sexist comments, or be otherwise offensive—such as jokes about rape or pedophilia, et cetera. For most people, common sense is the best guide in this area. As Dave Hearn wrote in a recent post: “I may push the boundary, but I don't want to be responsible for lowering the bar.”

Beyond editing or deleting posts and threads for inappropriate behavior, an administrator may find it necessary to ban a person from the boards for either a particularly severe offence or a series of offences.

For instance, one person was banned for creating a thread that was intended for no other purpose than to degrade a noted comic book creator through disgusting references and offensive images. The thread was immediately removed and the poster was banned from the boards for life.

Finally, the administrators reserve the right to make addendums to the above guidelines as the need arises based on behavior that has not yet been addressed.

[Jimmy'sFriend]

Thanks for the heads up