Hi Insiders!
As a member of the MacInsiders community, we want you to have the best experience possible when it comes to discussion and asking questions. This means ensuring that the discussion environment that we have in both the forums and the chatroom are always inviting, and a safe place to connect with other McMaster students. As the community evolves, we reassess our Code Of Conduct to match the requests of the community.
Some users have asked for clarification on certain rules in our
Code Of Conduct, specifically the use of profanity on the site (Section 3) and explicit content (Section 4). These sections of the Code Of Conduct have evolved over time, and we want to make it clear what the current rules are and are open to suggestions and feedback to make any modifications to our current rules. Keep in mind, if you're unsure about
anything you can always PM myself or a mod, or email
[email protected] om - we're happy to help!
With regards to profanity:
profanity and cursing is strongly frowned upon, but not censored or moderated. When MacInsiders first started we automatically censored swearing and moderated posts containing cursing, but found it to be quite futile as users continued to post using creative misspellings or characters of curse words, and moderating these became a big task. As such, the rule was changed over a year ago to allow cursing in certain situations and moderators have been more lenient when it comes to the use of profanity in posts. Being adults here, in university, we expect a level of professionalism when posting in a public forum (or any public website for that matter, which can be seen by everyone including potential employers).
In general, we will leave posts with cursing unmoderated,
as long as it is not at somebody, because then they can be offended by it or consider it a personal attack (which is against Section 5 of the Code Of Conduct). A personal attack is one that is directed at a person rather than at an idea. The use of such words should be infrequent and not used in a sexual context. Using profanity in an excessive manner could result in that post being removed, being kicked from the chatroom, and/or having chat or forum privileges suspended at the discretion of a moderator. In the chatroom, we ask that you keep conversations clean and use better judgement. Keep it classy.
We prohibit any profanity found in thread titles, and will remove the thread or rename the title.
For explicit content: pornographic, sexually explicit, and inappropriate images that are otherwise not consistent with the overall goals of the site are
not permitted under any circumstances. Messages containing sexually explicit/adult references are forbidden. We have added more detailed descriptions of this in the Code Of Conduct. If you feel the need to 'talk dirty' to your bf/gf while in the chatroom please make sure to do so privately using the chatroom private message option so others in the chatroom don't see it, we'd prefer not to have to shout 'get a room!'
Clarification has been added to Section 6 (Trolling, Flame-bait, and Annoying Users): Posting messages in the chatroom or the forums that are meant to annoy other users of the site is prohibited. This includes flooding the chatroom with many messages in quick succession, harassing or bugging a user when they have said to stop doing so, or doing actions in the forum or chatroom that cause others users to be uncomfortable or to not have a positive experience on the site.
Please remember: Harassment and 'put downs' will not be tolerated. Spirited discussions are fine, as long as they don't turn personal with name calling, and put downs. Especially first-year students, we want to make sure all new members are welcomed and feel open to asking questions... any questions, we're always here to help and no question is a 'stupid' question!
The
Code Of Conduct has been updated to reflect these changes and clarifications to help make the rules more clear and easier to understand.
Any questions, feedback, or suggestions feel free to post as a reply below.
Yours truly,
Chad Fullerton
Founder, MacInsiders
