There are 5 simple guidelines which we expect all participants in the community areas of the Philosophy Talk website to abide by.
1. We welcome philosophical debate and dissent, but personal attacks (against authors or other users), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated. The key to maintaining the website as an inviting space for everyone is to focus on intelligent discussion of topics.
2. We understand that people often feel strongly about issues debated on the site, but we will consider removing any content that others might find extremely offensive or threatening. Please respect other people’s views and beliefs and consider your impact on others when making your contribution.
3. *We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such.* We recognize the difference between criticizing a particular government, organization, community or belief and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.
4. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is unrelated to the original topic, it may be removed in order to keep the thread on track.
5. We will remove any posts that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like. Our aim is that this site should provide a space for people to interact with our content and each other, and we actively discourage commercial entities passing themselves off as individuals, in order to post advertising material or links. This may also apply to people or organizations who frequently post propaganda or external links without adding substantively to the quality of the discussion on the website.
In short:
If you act with maturity and consideration for other users, you should have no problems.
Don’t be unpleasant. Demonstrate and share the intelligence, wisdom and humor we know you possess.
Take some responsibility for the quality of the conversations in which you’re participating. Help make this an intelligent place for discussion and it will be.