The Boing Boing BBS is a heavily moderated forum. We do this because there are few high-volume public discussion forums that attempt to focus on actual discourse, rather than descending into the sorts of online battles one would find on twitter or reddit. The Authors and the moderators are making a best-effort attempt to create an environment where anyone can engage in intelligent discourse, provided they choose to abide by our community guidelines.
Those guidelines include, in part, not making assumptions about your other users, or engaging in actions that could be construed as bullying or abusively rude.
While we understand that, especially in today’s political climate, many members will choose to defend their opinions and positions vociferously, the privilege of doing so here on the BBS ends where the opinion or position of others does. It does not extend to labelling, bullying, or being rude to fellow members, regardless of their tenure here or how much you might disagree with their comments.
At the same time, there has been a marked increase in users who join only to disrupt our conversations here. The mod team is removing a far greater number of new users than it has in the past. This does not, however, mean that all new users should be treated as though they are posting in bad faith, or that their contributions are somehow less relevant or important simply because they are new, or because you may disagree with their content.
The internet as a whole is full of people, ideas, and positions one may disagree with. Many of which are expressly intended to leech time and energy from well-intentioned posters who post well-researched rebuttals to comments where the commenter has no intention of responding in any other way than to cause further disruption and to leech more energy from responders.
If you believe you have found such a post here, the number one defence against this behaviour is to not respond. Removing the fuel from the fire deprives such trolls of their greatest weapon, your energy. If the post is additionally against our guidelines, we would ask that you flag it. However, do not flag a post simply because you disagree with a poster. The moderation team will then take action as appropriate.
Otherwise, we ask that you treat all members with respect and with replies that conform to our guidelines. Do not bully, label, or intimidate others, even if they do not extend the community the same courtesy. Respond appropriately, flag, or move on.
And don’t feed the trolls.
Thank you.
