Posting Rules

After work took me away for 2 months, and we became tagged by Mead and US Penguin Books, this cite exploded. The lack of oversight is showing and I am going to make more of an effort to check in. I've spent HOURS cleaning up the boards, forum, and threads. I'm nowhere near finished. So I am going to make a list of rules and I hope folks take them into consideration.

1. Make sure you are starting a conversation in the right place. As you will see, I have had to do a lot of moving around of discussions. Some examples of wrong posting is:


a. If you're asking a question about Frostbite, don't post it in Spirit Bound's forum.
b. If you're polling regarding characters, please put it in the Characters thread. The only exception is if the poll is specifically related to events in a particular book.
c. If you're wondering what you should wear to Homecoming, there's a Chit Chat thread. It has nothing to do Blood Promise.
d. If you want to discuss your fan fiction, there's a place for such. It is not in Literature no matter how talented you are. Literature is for published materials.

2. Make sure the poll, topic, conversation has not already been initiated. There's no reason to have 5 threads regarding which guy is the hottest. We can discuss hotness in one place (and in depth!!!). To the extent there were multiple discussion opened on the same topic, I have locked the subsequent ones and then merged them all together.

3. Speculation is freely permitted. Spoilers should be warned, or best "blackened out" by the boards functionality. Never put spoilers in the topic thread. I can't tell you how many I had to moderate on this rule alone.

4. If all you can add is "yeah" or "woo hoo", think about whether that adds anything to the discussion. As far as I know, we don't have any server limitations but let's err on the side of caution until MissBat weighs in.

5. Respectfulness is appreciated. We don't agree with each other and don't need to. But be respectful of other opinions. On the flip side, understand that despite the proliferate use of Smileys, tone is very difficult to divine from the written word. Make sure offense is meant before responding accordingly. But given the first part of this rule, rudeness should be at a minimum here.

6. This one's a pet peeve of mine. Correct spelling, syntax and grammar is so much easier on the eyes (and the anal retentive brain). Text-speak should be kept to a minimum as not all of us are in our teens and "in" with the current short-hand lingo. LOL, IMO, IIRC, BTW are commonplace enough and survive this request. I think even old fogies like me know those.

7. If an Admin or Mod gets involved in the discussion, pay attention. We generally like for things to flow organically. If we're stepping in, it's because we see a problem. The correct response to an Admin or Mod who's doing their job is not disrespect or insults. Continued flouting of this rule may cause the posting privileges to be rescinded.

[This topic will likely get updated as I continue my Spring Cleaning].