555-5555 Forum is a New Place 4 Us

A Shared Place for Everyone

555-5555 forum has zero tolerance for sexist, racist, homophobic or transphobic language, imagery, or comments. We’re a shared community resource — a place for exchange and open conversation. It’s important to us that all people feel welcome and free to express without fear.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this place special for discussion by always working to improve the conversation in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the dialogue, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us all. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Be Chill, Even When You Disagree

You might want to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling
  • Ad hominem attacks
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
  • Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, be reasonable, with counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

The forum provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, etc. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

A group of moderators are responsible for helping keep this forum in shape. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

To maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Think about it. Don’t post anything triggering, obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a newspaper.

This is a public forum welcoming of all people. Be aware with the language, links, and images you share.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Make sure to start topics in the right category.
  • Check the category guidelines before posting.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Avoid posting no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • No need to sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Instead of posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Instead of taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Powered by You

This forum is operated by a few moderators and you, the community. If you have any more questions or ideas about how things should work here, open a new topic in the site feedback category and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us via the staff page.

Terms of Service

Here’s a Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.