Tag Archives: communityguidelines

Community Guidelines

The site’s community guidelines will be centered around my community standards which are heavily informed by The Guardian’s community standards. These include:

  1. I acknowledge criticism of the articles I publish, but will defend my stance as these are simply my subjective opinions regarding topics.
  2. While I understand that some people feel strongly about certain topics, I will remove any comments that may be disturbing or threatening to others.
  3. I will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other form of hate-speech.
  4. I will remove any comments that are evidently commercial or spam.
  5. I welcome debate and dissent, and even personal attacks.

While most of these guidelines are inspired by The Guardian’s standards, the fifth and final guideline is rather unconventional. I will be offering an anonymous option in my comments section so that users of all walks of life feel comfortable participating — especially people that may need to hide their identity. For instance, my essay surrounding Iran’s recent protests may prompt Iranian citizens to comment; however, they may want to conceal their real names due to the regime’s violent crackdowns.

The fifth community guideline makes me think of the TED Talk we watched in class, “How I turn negative Comments into positive interactions”. The speaker expressed that anonymous users feel more comfortable to say what they want and to critique; however, this often leads to hate comments. I feel that while some people will critique my posts, I am open to criticism. As the speaker explained, “empathy is not endorsement”, and therefore, this creates a more open platform for dialogue.

On the other hand, this is simply a local photography blog so I honestly can’t say I’ll stir up any controversy. With that said, “you can’t exist as a writer for very long without learning that something you write is going to upset someone, sometime, somewhere” (Atwood, 2022, para. 7).

I will implement these guidelines by outlining them in a separate page. This way, users understand that their comments will be public and they can follow the standards. Also, having open interaction will allow me to document how people engage with certain topics. Comments coupled with Google Analytics will allow me to determine what kind of content is best for my audience. These tools will address the question: What does my audience want to see? Finally, while there is a contact page where people can directly request certain topics, I believe people are more inclined to comment organically as they engage with content. 

It’s been a pleasure creating this site — thank you! 🙂

Online Shaming, Cancel Culture, and Community Guidelines

This week’s lecture and assigned readings were particularly interesting to me because even though I have yet to witness the harm that online comments can have on my site, I have seen it happen to more people than I can count. While we may not know the people who use online comments to shame us, I imagine that the understanding that they are real people is quite disheartening to the person being shamed. Maria Konnikova’s article “The Psychology of Online Comments” highlights how we are unlikely to have our opinion changed by an anonymous comment. That makes plenty of sense to me- why would I listen to someone who is afraid to show themselves? But if they are not anonymous? If you can gain information about their life, their job, their family? It quickly becomes apparent that this person is so confident that they are right that they show themselves while in an argument against you. That must be one of the worst feelings in the world.

When watching Jon Ronson’s TED Talk, “When Online Shaming Spirals Out of Control”, I was instantly reminded of how “cancel culture” is currently used in society. Upon discussion with my classmates, what became clear is that some people can be “cancelled” and have their life ruined, while other can be “cancelled” for similar reasons and continue with their lives without consequences. The middle-class women mentioned in Ronson’s speech were destroyed by the online scrutiny they received. But people in positions of privilege, white men in particular, can go about their days as if nothing happened. The example of Chris Pratt that my peer discussed was a perfect example of this. In the future, I plan to be more critical in analyzing the way cancel culture presents itself to different types of people, and I hope you do too!

I think it is important to remember that we all make mistakes, and that by nature of the internet, more of these mistakes get displayed publicly. I think that by cancelling people for little mistakes, we are responsible for criminalizing mistakes that could be undone with a little help. Obviously, there are some people that should stay away when they are cancelled. Like, we don’t need to hear any sympathy pleas from Harvey Weinstein. I’m talking about the people who are open to self-reflection and respond to feedback from others. If you can own up to your mistakes and make amends to the people you harmed, shouldn’t you be forgiven? Growth comes from learning from mistakes, and if we don’t let people come back from mistakes, how many “good” people will remain? We need allies in the fight against the patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, etc., and the way to obtain these allies is through teaching, not shaming.

In saying all of this, it’s inevitable that I recognize the benefit of having Community Guidelines on my site. That being said, I have yet to receive a comment or email on Masked Retail. My thought is that if I find that I can continue posting here during the next semester, even though I won’t be in a Publishing class (☹), I will implement these guidelines. Given where I’m currently at, though, it does not seem necessary to do this right away.

(Featured Image by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash)

Process Post Week #12 – Community Guidelines

In my process post for week two, I outlined three specific goals for my blog. Essentially, I wanted to create a platform encouraging hockey fans to express their views and openly discuss and debate opposing opinions on relevant subjects. As I strive to achieve these goals, I intend to establish community guidelines to set boundaries that will ensure a positive environment on my blog. I, The Hockey Singh will moderate all comments before they are published onto my blog using the criteria outlined below.

1) Discussing and debating opinions is encouraged, however, it must occur in a civil manner where views are criticized and not users. Any form of discrimination or hate speech will not be tolerated. So, treat others how you would like to be treated.

2) Post relevant comments. Conversations can veer-off into many directions, however, comments that are deemed to be off-topic are not allowed. Additionally, comments that are advertising in nature or spam-like are not allowed.

3) If abusive or irrelevant comments are posted in error, they will be taken down as soon as they come to light. Lastly, the opinions expressed in the comments are not necessarily those of the blogger.

The guidelines mentioned above will promote a positive environment, and they will assist in attaining the goals outlined in my week two process post. I plan to implement my community guidelines as part of my about section so that they are readily accessible to readers.

Some of my community guidelines were inspired by CapFriendly.