RULES AND GUIDELINES

[sopdetly.livejournal.com]

There are currently two mods for therightfangirl. Our main purpose is for broad actions, such as:
-- Spam deletion
-- Troll detection/banning/deletion
-- Major issues involving multiple members
-- Rule/guideline clarification and enforcement

We expect and encourage members to consider themselves all granted some power of calling people out on behaviors unbecoming nice fangirls and fanboys. If things escalate, feel free to summon the mods, but if it's small, don't hesitate to (politely) say, "Hey, don't be a jerk", or "Can you please add a cut?" or whatever else may be needed.

To help with understanding what is and isn't expected on this comm, we've put together some rules and guidelines for you.


No Tolerance Policies: These things will get you banned.
A. Discussion of assassination. "I was just joking" is not an excuse. Don't bring that level of hate into this community. The mods do ask that members report this kind of talk to us immediately.

B. Trolls. No second chances. Again, the mods ask for the community's help in reporting these members and their posts/comments so we can get rid of them immediately. (See 2b below as well.)


Guidelines

1. Posting Guidelines
This is a comm for discussion of both politics and fandom. We don't really want to make specific rules about what can/can't be posted, but it is important to remember that this is a comm and not your personal journal, and that posts should be made with the purpose of informing the membership or generating discussion. Posts that are more personal in nature may not receive the same response from the community, and posts that are clearly spam will be deleted without warning.

1a. When making posts, general LJ posting etiquette is highly recommended. This includes using LJ-cuts for posts with lots of text or multimedia additions (video or graphics), using default fonts and text sizes, and using basic HTML for formatting links. If your post is easy to read, then people are more likely to read it!

1b. Posts are public by default, and you are encouraged to leave them unlocked. We want to make it easy for like-minded people to see what we're about and make the decision to join. However, if you feel that you are more comfortable locking your posts, that is permitted. Mod posts will generally be locked if they deal specifically with the current membership.

1c. If you have a post that by its nature requests the attention of the entire community's membership (i.e., polls, friending memes, etc.), please contact the mods before posting. We want to a) make sure we don't have something similar already planned, b) make sure it's not something that was done in the not-too-distant past, and c) see if your idea could be expanded further and made even more awesome. It's a bummer when you try something like this and get a poor response, so we just want to help ensure that you will get the response you'd like.


2. Comment & Discussion Guidelines
As per a community-wide poll in November 2008, the comm does not allow anonymous commenting, and automatically screens comments from non-members. Mods are not in charge of deciding to unscreen posts—this is 100% up to the original poster. Members are encouraged to unscreen any polite comments received (even if they disagree), but it is not a requirement. If you are a commenter and get a screened comment in reply, please ask the OP to consider unscreening it. If the OP wishes to unscreen impolite/trollish replies, then that's on their head.

2a. The mods are not mediators. We aren't here to make people stop having a different opinion than you. Just because Someone Is Wrong on the Internet doesn't mean you have to correct them. However, if a discussion turns abusive, you may certainly let us know.

2b. If an obvious troll gets in the dungeon, the encouraged response is to ignore it. Contact the mods to make sure we are aware of the breach so we can delete/ban as needed, but the best thing to do is leave it be. Feeding the trolls just means more will come for our tasty treats.


3. Other Conduct Guidelines
The mods are mods here and here only. We will not punish legitimate members (i.e., non-trolls) for actions elsewhere online. However, we do ask that if you engage in wankery elsewhere that you do not come back here to recruit help/brag about it/etc. We do not want this comm to end up looking like the crazy-trolling-VRWC-hub where all of our evil trolling deeds are planned. Likewise, if people wish to use this space to complain about a situation elsewhere, we request that no one else go to the source and say, "So I heard about this at therightfangirl..." and then make trouble. If this is to be a safe space for right-wing fen to escape the more liberal areas of fandom, we need to protect ourselves; if people are going to hate us, it should be for our beliefs alone, and not how we comport ourselves in the rest of the online world.

3a. If you feel you could use some polite help in articulating your point elsewhere, that is perfectly fine to request here.

3b. If you are not a member and think we're all idiots for our political beliefs, we respectfully request that you close out of this window and get on with your life.


A Good Thing To Remember
While in general we all consider ourselves to be some form of right-wing, the exact beliefs of the membership can vary widely, from strict religious social conservatism to more socially lenient small-government libertarianism, and everything else in between. We do ask that members respect each other for these differences and that the "RINO" accusations are kept at a minimum. Respect does not equal agreement, of course, and we also will not require that anyone must change their minds on any particular subject or even leave their minds open to be changed. Everyone comes here to feel safe, not to engage in debate.


This post remains unlocked for non-members to review, and comments are turned off because these things are not up for discussion, as we consider them to really be common sense. Since the community has grown to over 500 members, however, we've found that on occassion, it's good to have common sense spelled out.