CC Community and FanPost Guidelines: Please Read (now with FanShot remarks!)

Hi all.

The time has come to set down a few guidelines for Camden Chat, and to discuss the community here in general.

Please click through to read the rest of this post...

First, a bit of background.

CC is a little over four years old. One the earliest blogs of the SB Nation network, it has grown organically over those years: what started as a soapbox for SC's opinionated-yet-insightful scribbllings is now one of the most popular Orioles communities on the web. 

Along the way, CC marked out a middle ground for the educated Orioles fan. There are many, many places on the internet where just about anyone who wants to can grab the mike and start yelling. Largely unmoderated message boards such as CBS Sportsline, Yahoo! Groups and Message Boards, and SI are prime examples of places where you can expect the conversation to devolve pretty quickly. There are also a number of O's blogs where basically one person is talking, and other folks only get to comment on what that person is saying. (And lots of those blogs are terrific—you can see a number of them in our left sidebar). 

The CC model (and really, the overall SBN model) was to provide a middle ground between these two extremes: a place where a thinking person could come to discuss the team, and have other fans debate his/her views, without having to wade through a lot of crap. And by "crap", in this case, I mean racist and/or sexist comments, unintelligible rants, mindless people commenting just to see their name on the internet ("MAT WEITERS IS TEH BEST!!!1!!!), and/or trolling from fans of other teams. Readers knew that when they came to CC, they'd meet up with like-minded fans who were passionate and savvy and (yes, I'm going to say it) discerning, fans who wanted to talk baseball with some intelligence and wit and a sense of humor—three things vital to anyone following a team that's been losing over a decade. 

It all worked fine for a long time. Stacey and duck and I and some others, out of our love for the site, fell in as volunteers to contribute and moderate and/or curate the experience and support SC. We had very little to do, mostly. Until this year. 

This year has led to explosive growth for CC. A lot of people have discovered us through various channels, and that's great. We always welcome new faces. As would be expected, a lot of the "small town" feeling has left the place, and that's inevitable—no community can ever survive without evolving.

But as a group, the mods feel that what made this site really special is in danger of rapidly disappearing. We have had to spend a lot more time this year patrolling the site. In a perfect world, newcomers would have done what should come naturally to anyone who is joining an established community—they'd have hung around a bit, seen how things are here, sensed what the general vibe is, and then joined in the fun. But lately, it seems that no one has the patience to do that. A lot of newbies seem to think we're just like all the other places. 

But we're not just like all the other places. We're proud of what we've built and we want to preserve the character of this place. So we're going take the step of setting forth some guidelines to give everyone an idea of what the site is about.

Note that this post may be revised over the coming days: as mods we are all in various stages of crazy right now, and we can't all get in the same room at once to discuss this stuff. So we're just going to do it on the fly. At the end of the day, we pretty much agree on most things. That means that even though I'm writing this (SC is getting married any minute now), know that it comes from all of us—we have had many, many back-channel discussions about this. And eventually what we develop here will become permanent and be moved to sit elsewhere on the front page and out of the way. 

But do read it. Because after it's been up for a while, we're going to be much more proactive in taking steps to return the site to the atmosphere that attracted so many of us in the first place.  Those steps may include deleting Fanposts, hiding comments, and/or banning members. None of these steps will be taken without warning, rest assured. 

Note that this ain't no democracy. As such, comments will not be allowed on this post. But if you want something explained more fully, or you have a suggestion, feel free to email me or any of the other main staffers (SC, Stacey, duck) via our email addresses at the bottom of the page. 

General Guidelines

We loves us from free speech, but the following behavior will not be tolerated on CC, and may be subject to immediate banning (this has been freely adapted from Athletics Nation, the original SBN blog):

• Personal attacks on community members, either directly or through sarcasm belittling, e.g., "You're an asshole", "Climbed down from the trees recently, did you?", etc. Exceptions may be made if it's obvious the two community members have an existing rapport with each other;
• Comments that are intolerant or prejudiced (sexist, racist, homophobic, etc.) in nature, e.g., "The umpire has a vagina", "The O's shouldn't sign Japanese players", "Doesn't ZAUN look gay in this picture?", etc.;
• Relentless negativity will not be tolerated. What constitutes "relentless negativity"? It's simple: simply posting the Orioles suck 100 percent of the time without reasoning or proposing solutions. There is nothing helpful about someone who constantly says that their team "sucks" and complains. CC is aiming to be better than that. There's a difference between someone who aims to point out flaws and be constructive vs. someone who is destructive;
• Comments that bring politics, or other highly inflammatory non-baseball related topics, onto CC (which is a non-political blog), e.g., "Bush/Clinton ruined this country by...", "Check out this link about the war in Iraq," etc. There is some leeway with this in context—if an announcer during a game brings in politics, it's bound to wind up in the gamethread, and can be tossed around a bit so long as discourse remains respectful and it doesn't take over the thread. Remember this is a baseball blog. 
• When discussing the Orioles, swearing and/or cursing is permitted, but try to keep it out of subject lines so it doesn't show up on the front page. 

Fanpost / FanShot/ Open Thread Guidelines

This is a bit trickier, and this is the section we may need to revise a bit. There is limited room for FanPosts, and they have the most prominent placement on the site, so it's important that they be great. Not just good, great. The FanPosts are the reason people keep coming back here—if they become crappy, the whole site suffers.

To make room for less-focused commentary on the site, we have also have FanShots and Open Threads. Anything that can't adhere to the guidelines below belongs in one of these two places.

FanShots are somewhat underused because they're a little further down the page, but they are the perfect place for quick hits from around the web: a link, picture, quote, or video that you think other members of the community would enjoy. Anything from "This website has cool Orioles shirts" to "The Sun reports that so-and-so will be called up this week" to video of last night's game. There is no need for analysis in Fan Shots, just use common sense to determine if the content is appropriate for a baseball blog.

Open Threads are a place to just hang out and chat, like you just entered a bar with a bunch of Orioles fans in it. It's okay to go off-topic, post pictures, whatever. Just follow the General Guidelines above, and use the Reply button to keep threads straight. 

Getting back to FanPosts, if you have something larger to say, something you've thought about and want to discuss, by all means, write a FanPost! Here are some pointers:

1. Composition. FanPosts should have correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. We won't delete for an occasional typo, but there is a big difference between the hurried posts of a gamethread and a piece of work you have time to edit.Fanposts should also be formatted so as to be easy to read. Use paragraph breaks, bolding and italicizing, bullet points, etc. The point is to invite discussion, and if users click through and see a solid block of ranting text, chances are they aren't even going to finish even reading it, let alone comment. Don't write a fanpost saying, "sorry I didn't have time to spellcheck this". There's a spellcheck button on the banner right above you: USE IT!. If you don't have time to make a proper fanpost, then what you're saying belongs in an Open Thread. 
2. Subjects. Subjects should be specific, well-thought out, and say something about the contents of the post. No more Fanposts with subjects like "I can't take it!" or "What do you think?" or even "Trade rumors". Strive to be specific.
3. Link Your Sources. Don't report an event/story without citing your source. Anything that is going to be cited must have links. And citing an aggregate site (MLBTradeRumors or the like) doesn't count. Cite the original author, as s/he should get credit for the journalism. 
4. Offer Your Own Analysis. A Fanpost is a bit like an essay. If you want to discuss something, then think of what your take on it is, and put that in. Then think of the different ways it could be viewed by others and address those as well (e.g., "some might say Kranitz was a bad hire, but here's why they're wrong...") Endless polls asking basic unanswerable questions ("Who is better, A or B"?) are no more a contribution than asking whether Miller Lite tastes great or is less filling. It's just space-filler. In general, you shouldn't ask the question unless the answer is truly important to you. 
5. When to Call Attention to News Items. It's okay to basically cut-and-paste and then link to someone else's basic news article (e.g., "SI analyzes the 'Trembley effect'", BP ratings and the like) if you think it's a particularly insightful, or particularly stupid, piece of journalism. But again, ask yourself: does this merit discussion, or is it just something people would want to know? If it's the latter, put it in a FanShot or an Open Thread. If it's more than that, and you think it should be a FanPost, then offer up some analysis—why do you think it's brilliant, or stupid, or whatever. It's also okay to make a FanPost if you see something that's MAJOR breaking news (an established player or heralded rookie getting injured or traded), and want to get the word out there. Minor stuff (the DFA'ing of a bench player, a mostly anonymous AA player spending a week in AAA) belongs in FanShots or the Open Threads.
6. No Fanposts for One Trade Rumor. The Hot Stove heats up a few different times a year. We will post an "Ongoing Rumor Thread" at the top of the FanPosts for the latest updates. You shouldn't write a FanPost for any ONE trade rumor. The exception is being breaking news that is actually news, i.e., a trade that HAS HAPPENED. 
7. One FanPost per Day. We're going to start enforcing this pretty much immediately. If you are posting four or five Fanposts in a day, you're not really understanding what the Fanposts are for, and you're also not leaving room for hundreds of other contributors to the site. Obviously there may be exceptions to this when news is breaking. The site won't delete your second Fanpost, that will fall to us. Don't put us in this position! Choose your topics carefully. 

Overall, think about what you want to say. Think about whether what you're writing is really a contribution that will engender a discussion, or if you're just posting for the sake of posting or because you're bored, or whatever. If you've got a bee in your bonnet and you want to write about it, take the time to compose your FanPost, edit it, and preview it, so that it will be interesting to the other members of the community. 

Also, support your fellow authors and recommend Fanposts you like by clicking the "Rec" button. It appears right under a FanPost after you've clicked through to read it. The more the community at large makes a habit of recommending the best FanPosts, the better the site's quality will be overall. 

Lastly, everything written above was designed to help to explain the policies CC generally uses. This is a private blog and it is entirely at the administrators' discretion how to interpret and implement these guidelines.