The following guidelines are intended to ensure that OrangePolitics remains a safe place for self expression, civil disagreement, and community building. They are inspired by and borrow heavily from policies at other successful websites (see links at the bottom of this page). They may change periodically as a result of reader suggestions or lessons learned from managing this community.
Beginning on January 3rd, 2008 all active users must agree to abide by these guidelines. Failure to respect these policies may result in a "troll" rating, which includes moderation of comments.
Identity & privacy
Clear and open identities encourage respectful discussion. While we do not require full names and full exposure, users with obscure or anonymous identities will neccesarily have less credibility.
- Users must register and validate their e-mail address to have comments appear automatically. All comments posted by unregistered users will be displayed as "anonymous" and will be moderated on a case-by-case basis by the editors.
- Only a valid e-mail address is required, but users are strongly encouraged to add more information to their profiles to increase the amount of trust in their content. Some profile information is viewable only by registered users, but information posted on profiles should be considered public information. The administrators of this site will never share any non-public information (such as e-mail addresses) without a users express consent.
- The e-mail address is used only for confirming your registration details and password (and for sending new passwords should you forget your current one) and must continue to be a valid, working address. Users may not use a fake e-mail address or attempt to impersonate anyone (real or imaginary).
- This web site can use cookies to store information on users' local computer. These cookies do not contain any of the information users have entered on the site; they serve only to improve the experience by keeping users logged in.
Content
As a site devoted to lifting up activists' voices and increasing the engagement of Orange County residents in their own community, we agree to agree and to disagree - as strongly as need be - without crossing the boundaries into unacceptable content.
- Everything published on OrangePolitics.org is content: Your posts, comments, poll responses, events, text, images, you name it. We embrace your diversity of opinions but we insist that your content may not include anything unacceptable.
- While the administrators and moderators of this forum will attempt to remove or edit any generally objectionable material as quickly as possible, it is difficult to review every message. Therefore users acknowledge that all posts made on OrangePolitics.org express the views and opinions of the author and not the administrators, moderators or webmaster (except for posts by these people).
- Unacceptable content: You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-oriented or any other material that may violate any applicable regulations or laws. Doing so may lead to you being flagged as a troll and/or banned. The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions.
Behavior
In order to foster a healthy environment for discussion, debate, and advocacy, it is imperative that users treat each other with maturity and respect.- Take responsibility for your own words and for the content we publish.
- Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.
- Try to criticize ideas instead of people.
- Posts and comments with no local content are discouraged (but not prohibited). Please try to limit yourself to discussing local issues, local events, or local aspects of larger issues. This is not a forum for debating national politics or ideologies.
- Please do not demand responses (from elected officials, local media, the editors, or others) to your comments. No-one has any official obligation to read or respond to what is written.
- Ignore the trolls. ("Trolls" are people who participate for the purpose of disrupting rather than contributing to the community.)
This document is inspired by and borrows liberally from the following resources:
- http://bluenc.com/faq
- http://www.well.com/conf/guidelines.html
- http://www.blogher.com/what-are-your-community-guidelines
- http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/code_of_conduct.html
- http://squeezethepulp.com/profile.php?mode=register
