Welcome to theNewsBlender.com!
We have worked very hard to create a site with the intention of encouraging open, civil, respectful discussions. We all know and have experienced otherwise around the online world. In fact, it’s difficult to go anywhere that has not devolved into nasty chaos.
We also want to develop a community of people who are dedicated to that same goal. We want to encourage those who may disagree with us about things to join us and discuss it, as long as it’s rational, respectful, and civil.
If we want that from others, we have to be that ourselves.
As I said, we have worked very hard, long hours to put this site together. And we continue to work hard to put forth the content that we believe our visitors will enjoy discussing and learning from. All of those involved are doing this on a voluntary basis.
We do ask that everyone here understands that and respects that effort.
The “Don’t Be A Jerk” Policy
We don’t want to laden everyone with a bunch of strict rules for participating in the discussions. We believe that if we attract the right, rational people with the environment we provide, then these people are capable of behaving like civil adults. The only rule we have considered to implement for our comments area thus far has been, “Don’t be a jerk”.
Although that will remain the overall gist of our moderating philosophy, we do find it necessary to lay down a few guidelines of expectations. The “Don’t Be A Jerk” standard includes all of the usual stuff like not excessively swearing, disparaging others based on being part of one of all of the usual groups, or immature name-calling. We’re not attempting to create any sort of “safe space”, but nobody needs to tolerate jerks, either.
But those examples are not the only way you can be a jerk. Trolls and others can be a jerk in may ways without specifically calling anyone names or any of the other specific examples. Being a jerk is a subjective thing. Determination of whether someone is being a jerk is at the sole discretion of our moderators. We ask that all visitors please heed that determination. If it ever becomes apparent that a moderator is not using good judgement (as determined by the site owners), we will take measures to correct that.
Please note that being a jerk has nothing to do with ideology. We will not assume anyone is a jerk by who they support or don’t support. The determination will be made in how they present that ideology and how they interact with other TNB community members. It has nothing to do whatsoever about whether a person agrees or disagrees with any particular position or issue.
Please also note that even long-time, regular, beloved members of the community can be a jerk as well. Moderators will address those instances as well and we expect those individuals to handle it respectfully and maturely. We want everyone to feel at home here in the TNB community, but please don’t take that to mean that you will be allowed special treatment as far as allowing jerkiness.
We also expect that our regular community members will welcome all new visitors with respect and friendliness. Doing otherwise is, well, being a jerk. Please do not make immediate assumptions about people. Engage with them civilly and respectfully. We have had issues of new visitors being immediately piled-on and accused of being this or that. Please don’t do that. That’s being a jerk. We need to give everyone a chance and we’d like to see how they interact overall for a while before jumping to any conclusions. Don’t take it upon yourself to make accusations or try to moderate them. Trust that our moderators are watching and evaluating and will take appropriate actions at the appropriate time. But also realize that we cannot always be there 24/7, so if you see an issue that you do not think we have noticed, please use the Contact Us form to notified us. Do not start up with the visitor as that only makes matters worse. Ignore or block them in the meantime.
Open Threads
We ask that people please respect the work that is put into the stories published and refrain from commenting off-topic as much as possible. We don’t want to be super-strict about this, but we also do not want the entire comment section to be hijacked from the topic of the story. If a new visitor comes in and is interested in discussing that story, but sees all of the off-topic comments, they are likely to leave and not come back. This is detrimental to our work and our overall goals.
Therefore, we have created specific open threads for people to gather and discuss anything you’d like (following the “Don’t Be A Jerk” guidelines). These threads are clearly marked and we make one available at all times during the day.
We ask that everyone please respect these simple guidelines. We will provide friendly reminders as we see any issues and truly hope that we don’t have to resort to any banning, but realize there will be those whose only intent is to disrupt and if the owners of TNB determine that they are uncontrollable jerks, we will not hesitate to purge them from the community that we are trying to build.
Now, go forth and be good TNB Citizens!
Help us create something different.