Soapbox Moderation Policy

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Aug 21, 2009 9:10:16 GMT -5 lavandulagirl said:

We are all guilty of being angry on other gardening (or non-gardening) sites. Sometimes, or even often, our anger is justifiable. However, Homegrown has a larger mission than just a place for growers to exchange information. While venting is not, in of itself, a bad thing, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to simply starting threads to call another person names. If a member here has a legitimate grievance with another gardening/growing site, please feel free to air your feelings. If someone here has a dispute with a neighbor, or customer, or anonymous other person, and wants to vent, be our guest. It is often cathartic to get it off your chest.

However, going forward, please understand that threads started simply to call names, or disparage the character of another KNOWN individual, be they members here or elsewhere, will be deleted. If you have a problem on another site, a disagreement, perhaps, over growing patterns of the yacon, or the proper color of a pumpkin, and you feel you were misused by the other party, go ahead and blow off some steam in the soapbox section. If, however, you have that same disagreement, but come over to this site just to post "XYZ is an asshole." It will be deleted.

Soapbox is the most heavily moderated board on this forum. Threads that are highly susceptible to being deleted or locked might include, but are not limited to the following:

• religion
• politics unrelated to growing
• blatant spam by first time posters
• Debates about who is right or wrong
• silly word games
• Name Calling

My general policy is to delete off-topic or spam posts by people that we don't know, and to lock off-topic threads by respected members of the forum. I don't care to debate my moderation decisions. It's a busy forum. I am a farmer and family man. I need to devote my energy primarily to those activities, and not to quibbling over censorship. We all agreed to have our posts censored when we signed up for this forum. And there are plenty of other forums that welcome the kind of posts that don't fit well with the tone I want to maintain on this forum.

Keep your posts on the topics of plants, farms, farmers, and things that directly affect them, and they will sail through moderation without the slightest quibble. A political comment here or there by respected members of the forum will rarely be questioned. But threads devoted solely to off-topic discussions are likely to soon be closed to further comments.