Rules and spoiler policy

[Daniel J. Lewis]

To keep an organized, friendly conversation, we need to set a few rules.

We’re forgiving and we generally trust you, but repeat violations may require a removal of content, posts, or membership in extreme cases.

By participating in our chat and forums, you agree to follow these rules.

General rules

• No foul language at all. No exceptions. We have a built in filter for most obscenities, and it will publicly warn. Any attempts to bypass the profanity filter will result in removal.
• Follow our spoiler policy. (See below.)
• Be civil. We have a wonderful community with people from all backgrounds, and many have their passionate positions. When there arises a conflict, we expect the involved parties to behave respectfully toward each other.
• Give credit.We welcome any references or legally shareable resources (even from those who may feel like “competitors”), but make sure you give appropriate credit, especially with a link, whenever possible. If the link address contains foul language, then it will not be allowed.
• Use common decency. Posts with illegal or questionable activity, sexual content, spam, or other common indecencies will be removed without warning.

Spoiler policy
We define a spoiler to be any real information about events, characters, places, or anything else that hasn’t been shown in an episode yet.

This means that we even count the post-episode previews as spoilers. We’re leaning on the conservative side.

Upcoming episode titles are a gray area, since the episode titles are clearly visible in our forums. But you could still treat these as spoilers, out of curtesy.

We’ve enhanced these forums with a convenient “spoiler” button that can wrap sentences and even multiple paragraphs with a special tag that will automatically hide the spoiler until clicked. You must use this whenever sharing a spoiler outside of a spoilers subforum. The spoiler tag is not required inside the spoilers subforum, because the whole section is already marked for spoilers, and all posts within it are not visible from the Active Topics links.

You’re welcome to make uneducated speculations, which is why we have sections to discuss future episodes with a split-off spoilers section. But we expect you to be honest and not disguise your spoiled knowledge as a theory.

For disputes, private questions, and violation reports, please email [email protected].

[faithful reader]

Could we have a spoiler-laden podcast ’round August? August the month, not hcharacter.

[Daniel J. Lewis]

Yes, I’d like to include more spoilers at the end of episodes, but I’d need a contributor.

[LisaFromOH]

Thanks for putting this at the top of every page of the forums, Daniel! Especially since some season 2 spoilers have started coming out. I don’t want to lose any more people on this forum who don’t want to be “spoiled.” (We miss you, Weedith!)

[eireland]

Hey Daniel (and/or anyone who knows…)
What is the spoiler policy on time shifting stations? When does something considered a spoiler than is then seen in the episode no longer considered one? After the EST airing?

[Daniel J. Lewis]

After PST, but we don’t enforce a timezone policy here, yet. I wait until the day after new episodes air before I merge the spoilers section with the nonspoilers section in the forums.

[Grimmsister]

@DanielJLewis wrote:

You’re welcome to make uneducated speculations.

😆 😆 Is it just me who thinks this sentence is funny ?

Something else: Not to be distrusting of you guys running the forums or enything, because I think you do a pretty darn well good job. But where does freedom of speech fit in to this ? Do you concider it when moderating ? Tonight some posts got deleted and I just wondered about it.

[lilred]

I’m kind of wondering about that myself. I know I shouldn’t complain since the mods have taken care of situations I’ve found suspect before (and I really appreciate that!) But do I need to assume that if I ever post a joke about Robert Carlyle heading a one-man show about Soup that it will be labeled ‘harassment’ and deleted.

Where is the line drawn?

[Daniel J. Lewis]

@medchen wrote:

@DanielJLewis wrote:

You’re welcome to make uneducated speculations.

😆 😆 Is it just me who thinks this sentence is funny ?

“Uneducated speculations” meaning you aren’t basing your theory on a spoiler. For example, “I think the August is Pinocchio because there are set photos showing him talking to Marco.”

@medchen wrote:

Something else: Not to be distrusting of you guys running the forums or enything, because I think you do a pretty darn well good job. But where does freedom of speech fit in to this ? Do you concider it when moderating ? Tonight some posts got deleted and I just wondered about it.

We’re all for freedom of speech. But we also have clearly stated rules. You’re free to speak, but if such violates the rules, then it is not allowed or will be removed. If the offending part is small or easily separate from the rest of the content (such as a paragraph, some obscenity, or a whole off-topic uncivil post), then I very carefully consider how I can remove the offending part without changing the message of the commenter. The threads that I removed violated our clearly stated rules, and there was too much to sort through at the time of my removal.

[Grimmsister]

That’s good to know, I appreciate that. And the posts are ‘mostly’ back. Thanks for the hard work you must have put into going through them all- can’t be all that easy being the referee in this game of wordball 🙂
and i guess someone has to be sometimes.

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