Community Standards

[Nic Name]

Some online communities have detailed Community Standards like these:

Basic Guidelines:

The following six categories of online conduct are unacceptable at FanHome.com and constitute a violation of our Community Standards which may result in warning, suspension or loss of membership:

Harrassment… Harassment occurs when a member insults, attacks, and denigrates another member at any time. Even though we realize that sports discussions can get intense, we have zero tolerance for taking an argument about a sports topic to a personal level. For instance, the use of terms such as "idiot, moron, stupid" and other derogatory terms constitutes harassment. Harassment not only includes individuals but also can apply to insults against others teams, players and groups of FanHome members. Repeated critical and sharply negative posts toward a forums team and/or forum members can also constitute harassment.

Disruption…Posts which intend to disrupt the topic of conversation or steer the topic away from the focus of the forum and related news. Disruption can include harassment, multiple posting of the same post and posting completely off topic messages.

Vulgarity and Sexual Explicitness…As a community with a diverse variety of members and readers, we ask that our members to post without using vulgarity. Vulgarity not only includes vulgar language and pictures but also sexist, racist, anti-religious and homophobic language which may offend other members. In addition, the "masking" of vulgarity by inserting * or another keystroke in place of one or more letters in a vulgar term is unacceptable in most cases. We realize that there's a "grey area" of judgement with vulgarity but we ask that you'll respect others by avoiding vulgarity.

Solicitation… Refrain from using FanHome’s forums or chat to advertise your site, items for sale, commercial services or website. You may attach a short link to your site within your profile or signature but if you would like more promotion, we have a great Affiliate network called FanHome.net that already includes hundreds of sports sites like yours. Click here or follow the link to FanHome.net from our frontpage for more information.

Spamming…Spamming is the multiple posting of an identical or similar post on one or more of our Forums.

Copyrighted Material…You may post links to appropriate articles but posting articles from other sources in their entirety is a violation of our Community Standards. Use your best judgement, since you agree in the Terms of Use to be held legally responsible for your own posts on this system, but if you must repost quotes or sentences, please credit the source.

Please bear in mind that these are only guidelines; there is always a "grey area" and we understand that. Use your best judgment.

In the Cellar:

There are only three rules to follow here:

Don't use the system to break the law.
Don't try to break the system.
Don't be 'intolerably irritating'.

(And spamming of any kind is intolerable... got that?)

Agree with that?

The thing is, most intolerably irritating people immunize themselves and are often the most intolerant of others.

It is human nature that people judge others by their behavior and judge themselves by their intentions.

I'm sure some folks don't intend to be intolerably irritating, and don't know that they are regarded as such by the community.