Miss Martin’s Classroom Rules of Manners

Additional posting guidelines and rules for those who post on my columns. I welcome input, opinions and suggestions.

New Oct. 18, 2008: Those used to posting off-hand comments on other forums will discover that they may have become the victim of the fact that since I’ve instituted these news rules and guideline the comments section of my columns has begun to draw many more repeat readers to the columns than before. Most of the comments are well thought out and well written. They add to the original post with new perspective and challenging ideas. This has led me to be even stricter in removing posts that aren’t up to the standards being set by the majority of posters.

Miss Martin was my wonderful fourth grade teacher. In my entire student life no teacher ever had cause to call my parents, except one time. And that was Miss Martin.

My transgression was breaking her strict rules for classroom manners. One day the music teacher was giving us our do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti’s and I behaved rudely by walking between her and the class. I was sternly rebuked by Miss Martin and later in the day she called my mother. When I got home my mother, who really didn’t think it was the crime of the century, none-the-less gave me a talking to about good manners.

I can’t say this scarred me for life, although some may suggest I am now taking this out on those whose comments I delete.

The following standards are in addition to those established for all of Capitol Hill Blue:

… we believe in civility on this web site and comments may be reviewed, moderated or removed if we feel they contain obscenities, racism, bigotry, anti-Semitic remarks or attack other posters.

The rules against obscenities, racism, bigotry and anti-Semitic remarks are usually clear-cut. The rules against attacking other posters is open to interpretation. This is an attempt to assure civility on my columns and unless others want to adopt them for their blogs or column, they only applies to mine.

Rather than censoring out parts of posts, I will delete entire comments which don’t meet my standards for civility towards other posters. Anyone can copy their posts and email them to themselves, which is an easy way to omit portions and post them again in an acceptable way.

As for writing about politicians and others in the news, I don’t expect posters to be more civil than I am.

I will err on the side being too strict in deleting posts that I think are in the slightest way disparaging of fellow posters.

To give an example from a recent post, even saying another poster is “posturing” will be reason enough to delete the entire post. Such language while seeming benign, and hardly what would be called in web jargon “flaming”, too frequently leads to escalation and then an entire thread can deteriorate into name calling.

A few posters write posts making good points, some obviously putting a lot of thought into what they put online, but add a word or phrase disparaging another poster, and thus may end up having their entire message deleted.

Anyone can rewrite and post deleted comments again adhering to my standards of civility to other posters.

I am not going to defend every deletion decision I make but I hope most members of this commenting community understand I am not about to suppress any opinions on issues as long as they meet the overall CHB guidelines which are on the bottom of this page.

All relevant comments, critical ones included, are welcome New: as long as they add something to or advance the discussion. With the exception of friendly remarks which enhance the sense of camaraderie and community they should be on topic or they also will be deleted.

Comments added to promote an unrelated or barely related cause will also be deleted.

I have already deleted a side remark about me. For one thing I couldn’t figure out what the poster meant.

Try to avoid sarcasm directed at others who post. Even if you mean a comment about another poster to be humorous, it may not come across that way to everyone who reads it. I know this is dictatorial, but I am the sole judge of when humor crosses the line to what may be hurtful sarcasm.

Please try to keep criticism clear and constructive.

Sockpuppet identies and sock-puppeting, as defined by Wikipedia, are not allowed. A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an Internet community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to, like a puppeteer manipulating a hand puppet.

In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a NY Times article claims that “sock-puppeting” is defined as “the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company.”

The key difference between a sockpuppet and a regular pseudonym (sometimes termed an “alt” which is short for alternate, as in alternate identity) is the pretense that the puppet is a third party who is not affiliated with the puppeteer.

The posting of images is prohibited. I post images from the public domain, or which I own or have permission to post.

Posters must post in black font. The must not change font size. Use of italics, bold, underline, and list codes is permitted. Quotes should be put in the blockquote tags.

“Thread hijacking in internet forum communication is the act of steering a discussion off-topic by discussing a subject entirely unrelated to the subject at hand. While this can be an intentional act of trolling, it is often accidental – caused by participants in the discussion responding to a throwaway remark, thus taking the thread off at a tangent to the original subject matter. The results often provoke a feeling of resentment from the author of the original post.”

“An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.” (Wikipedia)

Attempts to sidetrack thread discussion is often subtle, so I will judge each on a case by case basis taking into consideration prior posting history and give the poster one or two warnings. If they persist, subsequent posts will be deleted if they have any hint of trying to subvert the subject of the discussion.