BOR Policy: Right to Respond

by: Karl-Thomas Musselman

Wed Jan 21, 2009 at 08:34 PM CST

The "Right to Respond" will be a standing promise on Burnt Orange Report where any Democratic or progressive candidate, campaign, or organization we discuss in a front-page post is granted a front-page post in response. The individual, campaign, or organization should preferably do so through their Burnt Orange Report user account (create one here) so that they may engage in comments on that and future posts that are related to them.

The "Right to Respond" is rooted in our Democratic values of openness and broader participation in politics.  It also recognizes that while we may disagree at times, we support (generally) civil discussion that promotes honest debate.  If you, your campaign, or your organization wishes to formally respond to a front-page article in which you were mentioned, don't hesitate to contact us about posting a response.  

Community Guidelines

by: Burnt Orange Report

Thu Jan 24, 2008 at 00:08 PM CST

The administrating of BOR is a group effort, and unfortunately we will fail to have the time to notice every case of abuse of the guidelines. We depend on the community to help moderate. 

- Read more about our comment ratings policy here.

- Read more about our username policy here.  

Here are the guidelines for the Burnt Orange Report user community:

• Post as many comments as you like, but only 1-2 journals per day. No single or two-line journals--if it's a comment, put it in a comment thread. Don't clutter the journals with foolish commentary on BOR itself. More journal rules are listed here. 
  
  
• Do not troll rate (rating as 0) another user's comment unless it is a comment that violates one of these guidelines. Abusing this privilege will result in retaliatory troll rating by a site admin and/or getting a warning or being banned.
   
• 'Trusted users' (TU's) are those users that have 'mojo' and are able to 'review hidden comments' and can rate any of those posts hidden by a '0' ranking. If a trusted user deems the post should not be hidden, they can 'rescue' the post with a '2' rating (higher only if needed).
   
• Users who are excessively bashing the Democratic Party, or being Republican trolls, will be banned. This is a partisan Democratic site.
   
• Users who are spaming the site with unrelated material or the like may be warned and/or banned. Creating user accounts due to 'backlinks services' or with no purpose to engage in our community other than to spam the site is strictly prohibited.

• User content that in way could be considered libelous may be troll rated by users, deleted by an admin, or lead to the user being banned. With BOR's growth we have been subjected to threats of lawsuits and take this seriously.   
  
  
• Users who are bashing or attacking any other user on the site, especially authors of diaries and frontpage postings, will be warned and/or banned. Elected officials and candidates for public office are allowed a higher level of criticism as they are in the public domain (but that doesn't mean you can use inflammatory language against candidates).
   
• Titles should not be inflammatory, and will be edited or deleted. Likewise, users who cannot write comments without excessive inflammatory language will be banned.

Comment Ratings Guidelines

by: Burnt Orange Report

Thu Jan 24, 2008 at 00:06 PM CST

All users can rate all comments, except their own, with a three levels of ratings. The following are an explanation of those levels.

1- Unproductive: A rating given by other users that indicates that a comment is inappropriate, lacking content or analysis, or unnecessarily abrasive. Average users are encouraged to give this rating to comments that violate the Community Guidelines. Comments with this rating can be considered flagged to TU's or site admins for moderation or deletion. 

2- Good: A rating often used for technical purposes and the bastard of the rating system. Two's are often used to bring 'hidden' comments back from the grave without rewarding the original poster with excess rating juice. They are available for use to give props to good thoughts, but may be deprecated at some point. It is not a 'bad' rating to receive and help balance out the averages. 

3- Excellent: A rating given by other users for useful, well thought out, insightful, or analytical comments that add to the discussion and advancement of the BOR community. This is used to identify the best replies and reward higher quality discussion. 

When your comments are rated by others, those ratings are combined into a weighted average. This, roughly, represents the rating we could expect your next comment to receive based on your past comments. Users who maintain a high rating average may become Trusted Users as determined by the algorithm which is changed from time to time by site administrators. 

Remember: Your comment ratings should refer to the content of a comment, NOT whether you agree or disagree with the comment & NOT whether you like or dislike the author! 

Users who have an average greater than a certain minimum, and who have posted a sufficient number of comments are considered "Trusted Users", and gain added capabilities. TU's are granted two additional rating options as described below and are also able to see comments rated below the minimum (they are hidden from normal users).

0- Hide Comment: A 'zero rating' is to be used on comments that violate the Community Guidelines. It flags comments for possible outright deletion by a site admin. Hidden comments are only visible to other Trusted Users who are encouraged to review them and community moderate each other's actions. 

5- Fabulous: A rating to be given out sparingly, a five rating is meant for only the best of the best comments. TU's should understand that 5's greatly assist in the granting of TU status. As with 0's, they should not be abused and other TU's may down-rate a comment with a 2 for balance if inappropriately given. 

(A note: BOR does not have a 4 rating. The "Big Orange" (DailyKos.com) used to max out a 4 rating (since deprecated) and at the time of our migration to the Soapblox platform (SoapBlox.net) we chose to skip 4 and max out at 5. It is a "fabulous" rating in honor of Burnt Orange Report's founder Byron LaMasters who was self-admittedly pretty fabulous.)    

This is a great responsibility for you. It means you've earned the right to peer-review content from untrusted users, and determine if it is spam. We rely on you to rate as much as you can, and to keep the comments as high-signal as we've all come to expect.

Please use your "zero" rating with care! It is *only* for use on comments that are wholly content-free. If you think the poster is clueless, or an idiot, or you just don't agree with them, that is *not* grounds for a zero rating. Zero is for comments that are offensive, script-generated, or otherwise content-free and intended solely to abuse other readers.

Please do not rate duplicate comments 0! As virtually all duplicate comments are accidental, this unfairly impacts the user. Site admins will take care of dupes. 

You also have a duty to read comments posted by untrusted users (you are the only ones who can!) and rate them up if they deserve to be viewable. We hate to see users become untrusted, and want them to rejoin the community, and rating them up when they post good comments is the only way for that to happen.

It is a cruel irony that those who are trusted, in any context, usually have more work with no particular reward for that work, and that is the case here as well. You still post with no initial rating, like a normal user, and your ratings do not carry any extra weight or power. The big reward for being trusted is that you get to see the bottom-of-the-barrel dreck. But basically, someone has to do this, and you have shown the rest of the BOR readers that you have the responsibility and perception to be trusted with this task. Hopefully there are enough of you that no one person will have to expend any unreasonable efforts.

Thank you for contributing to BOR, and for taking on the mantle of responsibility for keeping the site as high-quality as you've helped make it. I, and all the other readers, salute you.

Username Guidelines

by: Karl-Thomas Musselman

Wed Jan 25, 2006 at 02:26 AM CST

1. Usernames can have spaces, numbers, and letters.


2. Registering an actual name (Morgan Freeholder) means that actual person will be the one doing the regular posting and commenting.


3. Registering a promotional name (Freeholder for Senate) means that official campaign staff will be the primary writer.


4. Any other usernames/handles for individuals are acceptable so long as they are not vulgar, rude, or particularly unfunny.


5. You are NOT allowed to create user accounts with the intent of spamming the site (in posts, comments, signature lines, or profiles) with non-political related content. Accounts created due to any "backlinks services" or for the purpose of search term optimization are strictly forbidden.