Salish Sea
Gazette Cooperative Community Code of Conduct
Welcome
to the SSGC Community – We are dedicated to maintaining a
respectful community that actively engages in lively discussions
about news stories and blog posts. Please keep the following in mind
when writing your comments.
Respect Others –
Please be polite to all the members of our Community, including other
commenters, authors and the subjects of articles. Also, keep in mind
that there are real people reading your comments.
Safe
Space – Above all, we believe strongly that the SSGC
Community should be a safe and welcoming space for all individuals,
groups and their ideas. As such, any rudeness, insults, hate,
hostility, or negativity may be removed and you may lose your ability
to comment.
Moderation – In order to
provide a safe space for our community, comments may be pre-moderated
by our team before posting to the site.
Commenting &
Moderation Policy
Q: What is SSGC’s Code of Conduct?
A: Community and Commenting Guiding Principles
SSGC has a thriving user community and encourages commenting on news stories and blog posts. We are dedicated to maintaining a respectful, engaging and informative conversation. Towards that end, we have basic ground rules for commenting to maintain a civil atmosphere. The first and foremost of these is our real name policy – all commenters are identified by their real names. We will also moderate comments based on complaints. If you wish to participate in the community, we ask that you follow the ground rules below and the spirit of the community they seek to create.
(I) If your comments make this community a less civil and enjoyable place to be, you and your comments may be excluded from it.
- SSGC promotes a receptive, transparent and civil atmosphere for comments and users. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to voice their opinion regardless of identity, politics, ideology, religion or agreement with other community members, the author of the post or staff members as long as those opinions are respectful and constructively add to the conversation. However, this community does not tolerate direct or indirect attacks, name-calling or insults, nor does it tolerate intentional attempts to derail, hijack, troll or bait others into an emotional response. We reserve the right to remove these types of comments where warranted. Individuals who consistently or intentionally post these types of comments may lose their ability to comment and, if we deem necessary, be permanently excluded from the community.
(II) Comments may be pre-moderated.
- To maintain a civil atmosphere, we reserve the right to read comments before they are displayed on the site. Review time can vary depending on the site-wide comment load, so please be patient — we will strive to get to all comments as quickly as possible. Please, do not resubmit the same comment or complain to the moderators assuming it has been deleted as that just adds needless comments to be processed.
(III) Be yourself, only yourself, and just one of yourself.
- Every person’s opinion is valuable and unique. Pretending to be someone else removes that unique value from you or from others. Don’t misrepresent yourself or others, or spread mis-information. If you do, you will make the community a less enjoyable and valuable place to be and misrepresentation may be removed when we see it.
(IV) Safe Space.
- We strongly believe that SSGC should be a safe space for individuals, groups and their ideas. As such, purposefully insulting and hostile language or personal threats are not welcome here. If you directly or indirectly threaten the physical or mental well being of a member of this community, or an individual or group, you may be removed immediately. If a credible threat is made against an individual or group, not only may it be removed but it is likely that it will be reported to law enforcement agencies and we will cooperate with them to any extent requested. Personally identifiable information should never be posted to the SSGC comments section for the privacy and protection of all community members. This includes, but is not limited to, full names, addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses. Any comments that contain this information may be deleted.