The Final Draft of The CoC
Before I present the NewsTalkers final draft of the Code of Conduct, I would like to thank several of our members for taking a very active part of it's creation. First, I would like to thank A Mac, for taking my first draft and doing his union magic to the language of it. I would like to thank Bruce, for making sure that it was fair and balanced. I would like to thank Terry, for taking on the job of shortening it, while keeping the legalize and finally, I would like to thank the NewTalkers community for their contributions, so that we could meet the needs of the community. And now, without further ado.... The final CoC.
Code of Conduct (CoC)
1. No Personal Attacks: Please follow the "Golden Rule," that is, treat others as you would want to be treated. Address issues and arguments, not individual members or posters. Comments or articles designed as personal attacks or those which in-and-of-themselves, are abusive, threatening, harassing or offensive, are prohibited. Comments, posting of articles, etc. that violate this rule are to be reported to the administrator or moderator. When reporting any comment or article, please provide the link (addy), the title of the article and the number of the comment. All posters/members should refrain from further inflaming an already heated situation.
2. Comments about fellow members designed to skirt the "Spirit of the CoC", will be deemed personal attacks and treated as such. A user's participation on this site is judged as a whole, that is, based upon all comments, articles and actions as they relate to NewsTalkers. Recurring counterproductive behavior and/or negative/detrimental activity, be they violations of the letter or the spirit of the CoC, whether or not specifically addressed in the CoC, may still warrant removal of that person from the NewsTalkers Community.
3. The NewsTalkers is a member moderated site. This means the author/seeder (with assistance from administration) moderates his/her own article. Authors/seeders are expected to foster healthy, open discussions. They are responsible for the content they submit and must exercise impartiality if/when reporting abuse. If at any point in a discussion, an author cannot moderate, that author may close the article to comments. The author has the right to ask members to stay on topic and not disrupt the article. Intentional disruption of an article is defined as " ... a continuous exchange of posts between two or more members, which goes off topic and/or are personal attacks resulting in the disruption of the article."
4. Certain members will also act as moderators and/or administrators, some on a rotating/appointed basis. Moderators will be comprised of two permanent members, Perrie Halpern and A. Mac. All members with at least 3 months on NewsTalkers and no major infractions, can qualify to be a moderator, if desired. All moderator comments will be made in purple. Moderators must recuse themselves as such in articles where they have been actively commenting. When an administrator/moderator deletes an offensive comment, all comments that pertain to the offensive posting will also be deleted.Please respect the role of moderator. If you disagree with the actions of a moderator, you may appeal such action to the creator of this site, Perrie Halpern. Her decision on any issue is final.
5. Use profanity judiciously and sparingly. It is understood that certain profanity is commonly used, but be mindful that it may be deemed a personal attack or personally offensive to other posters/members. When entering an heated debate, it is best to leave profanity at the door so as to not inflame an already intense thread or article. Common sense and common courtesy are recommended regarding both the use of, and, the taking offense to "objectionable" language; those asked to refrain from posting a given word or phrase by a fellow member are expected to do so to them, while those taking offense should consider avoiding comments/articles in which those words/phrases appear.
6. Please keep the names of articles and seeds accurate and non-inflammatory. Headlines must not be misleading and should fairly and accurately reflect the content of the seeded or authored article. The "Activity Board" is meant for positive messages or for help only. Negative, nasty or comments that are not in the "Spirit of the CoC" will be removed.
7. Membership can be deleted for persistent violations of the CoC. Members may contact administration and request to rejoin, in which case, should such request be considered, the individual will be asked to sign an agreement not to engage again in any such behavior.
8. Members agree not to upload or post any content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, known to be false, or invasive of another's privacy. Pornography and content that would be harmful to minors in any manner is prohibited. Distribution of personal emails, or "spam," is prohibited.
9. Posting content that potentially infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary right(s) of any person or entity is prohibited. Copyright infringement is illegal.
10. Use of accounts owned by another registered member without prior notice to and agreement from administration is prohibited and will result in the immediate deletion of that account. Use of an anonymizing service, for the purposes of cloaking your identity, or gaining admittance to the site is prohibited.
I decided to leave it open for comments, but this is it. We have beaten this horse to death.
This seems to cover more potential problems than the previous version . Also it
does so w/o resorting to tortured or tangled prose . Thanks Terry . Nice work .
It gets my vote .
I afraid that a lot of that previous language was my own, and Mac did his best to make it work. I wanted to keep the number of rules low, so I got into bullets. But hey, who was I fooling. Mac did the best he could with what I gave him.
???????
But don't let me stop you!
Perrie ,
Whatdya think you are ... a lawyer ?!
Ah Dah, Now I get your joke!
OK, So I am trying to make sure that everyone takes a look at the final draft.
Good! That was the point of doing a first draft. The community gets a say.
Perrie ,
So far only 3 have voted in the poll . Is that because you didn't include a category
for "It's about the same as the previous version" ?
Why thanks. Editing is easy, drafting is the tough part!
No. I but play one on TV.
I donno? As admin, it my duty to post it. If people don't want to look at it, ignorance of the rules, is no excuse. And it's not the same...it shorter with more numbers, LOL! But really, it has stuff that the members were concerned about.
Oops .... My error . It was A Mac as well as T Mac who did this excellent work . And it doesn't even use legalese to make its point ... Well done !
That could be an improvement over playing one in court.
"Fuck off" should be banned just like "fuck you" because they are the same insult. Now I personally have no problem with saying piss off instead. But if you say "fuck off" to someone you are saying "fuck you" in a slightly different manner, but it's the same thing and that needs to be added to banned phrases.
There is a difference between "Fuck you" meaning the same as "Go fuck yourself" which is an obscene act, and "Fuck off" which is a directive to tell a person to stop doing whatever he/she is doing and go elsewhere. How about "Go to hell"? Where would that fit in? Perhaps it is just giving someone directions.
However the level of the insult is the same IMHO. Go to hell is the same. IF it's directed at another member and it's obscene and I would like to see personal insults and attacks banned. Fuck off IS a personal attack on another member and so is go to hell. If you say the GOP can fuck off, that's acceptable. But if you tell another member to fuck off, that is a personal attack and insult on another member.
I guess you're right.
Guys,
You do realize that this is from a CoC discussion from 2011, right?
But my argument is still right
Then and now.
That's funny. It looks like it came up because of a comment from me, but I didn't comment until it was already on the front page. How did it get there?
There HAD to be another message up before mine that's been deleted.
Thanks. Not my style.
Maybe we should all Fuck Off (ooops!)
Bringing this article back from 2011 was done as a prank and then the person deleted the article they posted. I have three or four people that I personally suspect to have done it...
I didn't say you were a suspect. This was done by someone with cunning and a smart and evil imagination.
You're here.
What about "unfuck you"? Wouldn't that be a personal attack to take fucks away from you?
I hadn't fucking thought of that?
[[snicker]]
I could go back to be fatherless, if I could unfuck a few different women! I'd have saved a fortune in child support!