posting guidlines

MediaLens Forum Posting Guidelines
The goal of MediaLens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In posting messages here, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

This is a lightly moderated board and we intend to ensure, as far as we can, that users enjoy a congenial, friendly, and respectful environment. We ask our readers to support this aim and to be mindful of the content and tone of their postings. In particular:

• Incivility in any form is forbidden.
• Any kind of harassment is forbidden, including overt sexism, racism, or classism, of course, but also including any kind of demeaning or otherwise hostile disrespect of others.
• Hounding others is forbidden, including continually emailing or publicly posting messages trying to engage or to continue exchanges with people who have clearly indicated (publicly or privately) their desire to leave an exchange.
• Likewise, questioning ideas and claims and offering varied views on matters is of course welcome, but questioning user's private motivations is not.
• We disapprove of using multiple identities or spoofing other people's identities. If your arguments stand up, there is no need to pretend to be anyone else. We will ban anyone who ignores warnings about spoofing or trolling.

We will remove material that we consider offensive or way off-topic and we may ban repeat offenders.

Please be aware that communicating online is not the same as having a conversation, when more than 80% of your meaning may be communicated by non-verbal behaviour, such as facial expressions, tone of voice and what is loosely called 'body language'. In writing, it is much easier to misunderstand and to be misunderstood, and what may be meant as a harmless jest may be taken by others as a pointed attack.

If you think someone is attacking you, before responding in the same vein, you might like to consider the possibility that you have, at some point, failed to completely understand each other.