The Updated CoC
Here is the updated CoC based on the voting from this article:
The strikeouts are meant to clean up the language of the CoC. Any changes are in red. Please take note as this is now the official CoC.
1. No Personal Attacks: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Address issues and arguments, not individual members. Comments or articles designed as personal attacks or those which in-and-of-themselves, are off topic, disruptive, abusive, threatening, harassing or offensive, unlawful, harmful , defamatory, libelous, known to be false and presented as truth, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable ; are prohibited, and will be removed. Comments meant to inflame will be removed. You can not refer to a member as a bigot, racist or anti-semite nor name call and make other personal insults. Comments about fellow members designed to skirt the "Spirit of the CoC", will be deemed personal attacks and treated as such. Members should refrain from further inflaming an argument. Comments, posting of articles, etc. that violate this rule are to be reported to the Resident Adviser or moderator. Slam articles about members are not allowed on the front page. They are allowed in "Heated Discussion" but must be taken down within 36 hours. When reporting a comment or article, please provide the comment link and the title of the article.
2.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 CoC of the letter or the spirit ing of the CoC, whether or not specifically addressed in the CoC, may still warrant suspension or removal of that person from the NewsTalkers Community.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.
3.The NewsTalkers is a member moderated site . This means meaning that moderators are members of the NT community. 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. If amemberis violating the CoC with intent of disrupting or being arbitrarily argumentative, the author must warn the member civilly , by identifying the specific CoC violation , that they are violating the CoC and to stop said behavior or leave thearticle. Theauthor can contact administration to remove all comments pertaining to an argument. 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".Any/all off topic remarks or CoC violations can be removed by moderators.
4.Members on a rotating basis will also act as moderators on an appointed or volunteer basis. Moderators will be comprised of two permanent members, Perrie Halpern and A. Mac and three group members. All members with at least 3 months on NewsTalkers and no major infractions, can qualify to be a moderator. Moderator comments will be made in purple. Moderators mustrecusethemselves in articles where they have been actively commenting. When an moderator deletes an offensive comment, all comments that pertain to the offensive posting will also be deleted. If you disagree with the actions of a moderator, you may appeal such action to the ResidentAdviser Perrie Halpern or A. Mac in her absence, at which point alldecisionsare 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 a heated debate discussion , don't use profanity to inflame an already intense thread or article. the discussion . Use 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. while those taking offense should consider avoiding comments/articles in which those words/phrases appear. An impasse may be called between two parties during a heated discussion by stating "Impasse", which can not have a last statement either before or after the "Impasse" is called, by the person calling the impasse. Articles containing graphic material should have a warning in red at the top of the article. Comments with graphic material should also give a warning with a long break to avoid the material by other members.
6.Please keep the names of articles and seeds accurate and non-inflammatory. Headlines must not be misleading and should fairly accurately reflect the content of the seeded or authored article. The chat "Main Room" and the "Activity" feed is to be used for social purposes only. Personal attacks, fighting and comments that are meant to skirt the "Spirit of the CoC are prohibited and will result with chatprivilegesbeing suspended for a given period or a comment being removed. The photo feature is fororiginalartwork. Memes and other such visuals meant to convey a message will be removed. Memes can't be used as the sole basis for an article. "The Blogs" are fororiginalpieces of writtenmaterial Art material may be included, but not for the sole purpose of the blog post. All blog posts are the sole possession of the writer and has sole discretionon posting and moderation.
7.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, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; are prohibited. . Pornography and content that would be harmful to minors in any manner is prohibited. Distribution of personal emails, or "spam," is prohibited. 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. Abandoned or inactive groups (groups with no activity for 6 or more months), can be removed by administration.
8.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.
TTT