Rules reminder and how we enforce the rules
It's time for a rules reminder post:
- This is not your personal journal. If you find yourself posting more than once a day for multiple days in a row, then perhaps you should re-evaluate your lack of friends (kidding!) posts to see if any of them can be condensed. If you have updates on a situation that you posted about five hours ago, just edit the post and tell us that way. We'll still read it, I promise.
- Put all pictures over 400 pixels on any side and multiple images behind a cut. This does not mean that if you have a picture over 400 pixels, it can't be posted in the community - it just means that you should put it behind a cut!
- Lately, people have been asking for more information on what our moderation processes are. Since we encourage transparency with our moderation and welcome open dialogue, I figured it'd be good to give y'all some insight into WHY we take certain actions toward certain posts.
Our decision on how to handle certain situations is based on a number of factors. Things we take into account when we determine what action to take:
- This is not your personal journal. If you find yourself posting more than once a day for multiple days in a row, then perhaps you should re-evaluate your lack of friends (kidding!) posts to see if any of them can be condensed. If you have updates on a situation that you posted about five hours ago, just edit the post and tell us that way. We'll still read it, I promise.
- Put all pictures over 400 pixels on any side and multiple images behind a cut. This does not mean that if you have a picture over 400 pixels, it can't be posted in the community - it just means that you should put it behind a cut!
- Lately, people have been asking for more information on what our moderation processes are. Since we encourage transparency with our moderation and welcome open dialogue, I figured it'd be good to give y'all some insight into WHY we take certain actions toward certain posts.
Our decision on how to handle certain situations is based on a number of factors. Things we take into account when we determine what action to take:
- How long the user has been a member of LJ. IE, if they know what a "cut" is and how to use it.
- How long the user has been a member of WP. If the user is new, they're generally given more leniency because we know we have a lot of rules and it's hard to remember all of them (though I'll admit I don't have much tolerance for people who break three rules while writing their intro post and still say they've read all the rules).
- How long it took the user to create the entry. If you make a HUGE post-wedding post and a too-large picture is outside of a cut, we try to give a warning and several hours to fix it before we delete it. We know people spend a LOT of time creating those posts. I generally check to see if the user has cross-posted it somewhere else. If not, I copy and paste the post code into a Word document or PM it to the user so that they haven't lost all that hard work.
- How "sneaky" the user is trying to be with breaking the rules. If it's an honest mistake, we're more lenient than if you post about "this great eBay auction you found" and link to your own personal auction. We have no tolerance for your lies and sneakiness. You will be caught.
- How easy it is to get in touch with the member. If we know you check WP often and/or get comments e-mailed to you, we know we can ask you to fix the problem and you'll rectify it fairly quickly.
- How quickly we catch the mistake. We try to read every post, but sometimes we miss stuff. If the picture is 405 pixels big, we may miss enforcing the rule because it's just *barely* over the 400 pixel limit so it's not very obvious that the picture is breaking the rule.
- How busy we are and how much patience we have. This is, by far, the hardest "criteria" for any member to determine. While we try to be fair and diplomatic, we're human and sometimes our personal lives interfere with how we moderate. If I'm super-busy at work and I don't have the time to leave someone a comment and check back on the entry several hours to see if they've put their image behind a cut, I'll just delete it. If I'm stressed about stuff in my personal life, it affects how I moderate here. You guys don't need to know what's going on in my personal life (and I imagine most of y'all don't care), so I generally don't indulge it unless to explain why I'm not replying to comments as fast as I'd like to. It's not fair to y'all, but it's hard to take the emotions out of moderating sometimes. I think we're great moderators most of the time, but there are times when we mess up and we should have kept our emotions in check when we didn't.
I think it's also important to note that when we delete people's posts for not putting large images behind a cut or using the wrong font, that person doesn't get a giant black mark on their "record." We keep track of when we delete posts for minor infractions ONLY in case the OP contacts one of us with a question about it. That way, if I deleted the post but the member contacts Kristie or Annalise, they already have the information in order to respond to the member about it. We don't ban you if you post four posts in the wrong font color. We only issue warnings for the more "severe" infractions (the ones that actually hurt people, like name-calling). So while you may feel as though you're getting "jumped on" by one of us for not putting multiple images behind a cut, we don't really hold it against you. We don't hate you if you don't do a cut. It takes a LOT more than that to get on our shit list. :-)
As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us via commenting on mod posts, PMing us, or e-mailing us!
ETA: Upon request, I've re-enabled tagging. Feel free to tag posts appropriately. If we start seeing an influx of tag abuse again, we will either disable tagging again or remove those members from the community. So please play nice!