As promised, we’ve added a few comment moderators for the upcoming season to help keep the comment section here a little cleaner and more welcoming. It’s not going to be an iron fist ruling things, so don’t worry that you’ll be seriously limited, but we’ve had complaints, and these additions have been made with the intention of responding to those.
The first act of the moderators was to collaborate on the 2016-17 Raptors Republic Community Guidelines, which should all be self-evident but are provided below.
2016-17 Raptors Republic Community Guidelines
Welcome to the General Guidelines for Raptors Republic Comment Section! As you may be aware, the comment section is a great platform where we invite discussion and debate about everything Raptors. However, we would like to highlight some general conduct guidelines for everyone to abide by. Whether you are new to the RR community or a seasoned veteran, please read over the following rules and general guidelines prior to the start of the season. We would greatly appreciate it, and the community will be better off for it.
General Rules:
1. Spam: Please no spam! This obviously includes advertisements (which are mostly bots anyway), but also general repetitive negativity that does not contribute to the conversation. If you have a strong opinion about one player, then state a coherent argument with your reason and let other people challenge you. Unfounded hateful messages, posted repeatedly without context, will be considered spam and treated as such.
2. Insults and profanity: Please refrain from using vulgar language toward others and do not make any derogatory references to race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, or ethnicity at all, ever. This should be obvious, but apparently sometimes is not. You are welcome to disagree with other ideas and engage in debates, but hurling insults and/or using aggressive and antagonistic profanity adds nothing to the argument. This behaviour will incur a warning and risk a ban if it continues.
(As a note, while we now have moderators, Blake will have final say over any bans – you don’t have to worry about a loose trigger finger.)
3. Arguing with Moderators: Please don’t argue with the moderators about rules – if you are asked to stop doing something, then please stop. We will try to be as reasonable and forgiving as possible, but if you have any serious issue about the rules or feel you have been unfairly treated, email Blake at raptorsrepublic@gmail.com and he will be able to look into it. It’s better taken to that arena than attempting to sort it out in the comments.
Regarding the above points – if you see something in the comments section which you believe to be inappropriate, flag the offending post and we will look into it and take action if deemed necessary. Finally some recommendations rather than rules:
- Stay positive! We want our website to continue to grow and this will only happen if it is a welcoming environment. If you find it hard to be positive, remember – we were two wins away from the NBA finals last year, we are a good team! (This doesn’t mean cheerleading or holstering your opinions, of course, it’s just a reminder to keep a generally fun and upbeat outlook toward the community.)
- Stay on topic! Try to focus your discussion on the subject of the article you are commenting on, let’s have a conversation.
- Stay cool! This is a friendly website but some ribbing may take place from time to time – if someone is making fun of a statement you have made then take it in jest, try not to react poorly.
That’s all we have to say for now. We ask that you refer to the rules and guidelines throughout the season when necessary. As moderators we reserve the right to remove offending messages and if necessary impose a ban on the offending account, but hopefully our great community won’t give us any reason to. We’re looking forward to another exciting season of basketball, Go Raptors.
