Ars Technica’s neighborhood is—in our biased opinion—second to none on-line. For greater than 26 years, readers have enabled and impressed our work, making a neighborhood with an incredible signal-to-noise ratio. To assist these efforts, we’re updating our Posting Pointers to make them extra accessible to new readers—and extra simple and extra clear for everybody.
The substance of the rules is not altering. Most provisions are simply common sense objects meant to foster real dialogue, such because the prohibitions towards hate speech, private assaults, trolling, and spam. We did, nevertheless, suppose just a few guidelines may very well be clarified and that we may clarify the moderation course of extra clearly. To that finish, we’re introducing The Ars Posting Pointers Model 3.0. (The earlier model of the Pointers is archived right here for comparability functions, however once more, the substance hasn’t modified.)
We now define the moderation course of extra clearly as a result of it has precipitated some confusion previously. As Captain Barbossa put it in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, “The Code is extra what you’d name ‘tips’ than precise guidelines.” Similar factor right here. Human judgment will at all times be used in relation to deciphering infractions. We are going to, as an example, be rather more affected person with long-term members who’ve a historical past of good-faith posts however who typically have a foul day—however a lot much less tolerant of brand-new posters who attempt to stir individuals up.
As the brand new tips state, our aim always is to advertise the well-being of our neighborhood and to foster respectful, frank, and productive discussions, with room for numerous viewpoints. Our Posting Pointers have been initially written at a time when the largest controversies in our neighborhood have been the overreach of the Recording Business Affiliation of America, the OS X-fueled rebirth of Apple, and the hope-springs-eternal coming of “Linux on the desktop.” However the world has modified, to place it mildly. We hope, on some stage, {that a} refreshed set of tips would possibly encourage everybody to be just a little extra form and rather less wanting to carry out ethical outrage.
