Site rules?
Hello yet again, everybody. (Getting sick of me yet? :-P) Heather and Katie's remarks about the "no debates/no personal attacks" whatnot reminded me of something I've been meaning to do for a while.When the site was all new and sparkly, the current webmaster, webmistress, and I (yes, we had two webmasters, for unknown reasons) came up with a few temporary rules for the site. They were mainly put in place to keep everyone from running amok until the other officers and members could decide on some set rules.
Unfortunately, that never happened. Why, I'm not sure; but quite possibly because the site wasn't used or visited last year, nearly as much as it is this year. (Seriously -- the site has a backlist of 11 pending invites from last year to old TAB members who either ignored it or figured it was spam. >_<) But, anyway, back to the site rules. Here's the rules as they were last:
CURRENT SITE RULES! (much cheering and booing commences)
This may disappoint some of you, but our site needs to have some rules. Remember, the rules listed here are only temporary; the exist only until I can hold conference with the other admins and TAB officials and decide on the official ones. But, until then, here are our rules. (more cheering and booing commences)
1. Watch your language! While we certainly don't wish to infringe upon freedom of speech, I prefer that this site be relatively "family-friendly." Curious parents may come here to look for event dates, see what events we're planning, find out what we discussed in the latest meeting, or to see if their children would be interested in TAB. We don't need them deciding that we're a bunch of good-for-nothing, vagabond, Satanist hooligans, and would be a bad influence on little Jimmy. This rule applies to both what you say and how you say it -- posts or comments that include personal attacks on others will immediately be susceptible to deletion.
2. Keep things relevant! Chatter is fine and good. However, too much extraneous chatter just takes up time -- and, on the internet, bandwidth. Please restrict irrelevant topics to meetings and personal messages, as posts and comments consisting of them will be susceptible to deletion. I would like to have a "forum"/message board for this sort of thing -- good books, local (non-library) events, etc. -- but as I am a language geek and not a computer one, we can't do this at the moment. This rule may change or alleviate in the future.
3. Don't be afraid to ask questions! The primary purpose of this site is to encourage discussion outside of meetings. If you don't understand something, say so! If the other members are unable to answer your question, the admins and officers will try their best to answer it. Of course, this is still susceptible to Rule #2: keep your questions TAB- or library-related. Questions such as "Why is the sky blue?", "Why is my little brother such a brat?" and "Is the new N-Town Boys's CD ever going to come out?!" will most likely not be answered (unless someone really wants to).
These rules were written to be temporary at most, yet no one's really done anything yet to change them. As a matter of fact, I have a suspicion that they're so far back in the archives by now that few people even know they exist. Methinks it's time for a revamp, non?
I'd like to hear from y'all.* What should we add? What should we change? What should we just re-word, or re-apply? Why? For example, rule #1 was made to both cut back on four-letter-word-filled comments that's primary purpose was to attack or offend, as well as (again) personal attacks. Rule #2 was made in response to a completely random, irrelevent, one-word comment someone made on one of the first posts.**
Anyone think we should bring this up at the next TAB meeting, too? :-)
-- Laura Webb
*Yee-haw.
**If you're curious, that comment was "Pie."
posted by Laura Webb @ 9/17/2005 01:08:00 PM
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