A Color-Coded Guide to Flushing & Banning

Subject: A Color-Coded Guide to Flushing & Banning
From: Freditor_G
Date: Mar 1 2006 6:07PM

Many of you have complained, and a smaller number have applauded, the recent increase in editorial vigilance on certain boards. For the sake of those users who can make use of it, we offer the following clarification regarding levels of review:

Code Blue – Examples: Bloghdad [fray.slate.com] and KFS [fray.slate.com].
For those of you who insist upon using Slate's Fray as a real-time chatboard, these boards will receive the scantest level of editorial review. As long as you don't generate complaints that must be responded to, you will be left alone. When we do receive complaints, action will be taken. If we receive too many complaints, then you'll get upgraded to...

Code Yellow - Examples: Today's Papers [fray.slate.com] and Ballot Box [fray.slate.com].
These boards have heavy activity and have a broad topical scope. However, they are also leading sources of misconduct complaints. They will be policed, frequently, for call-outs, flame-baits, eom's, spamming, and inflammatory titles. With a little caution, you should be able to avoid deletion of your posts.

Code Orange - Default Level
These boards have topics and/or affiliated front-page articles, which their users generally tend to stick to. Because they are not significant burdens on the editors' time, they can be left alone, with occasional check-ins for inappropriate conduct.

Code Red - Examples: Politics [fray.slate.com] and War Stories [fray.slate.com]
These boards have been out-of-control for too long. Because they are linked to popular Slate features, they are leading sources of complaints from the general public in addition to the quarrels and feuds that generate floods of spam for the editor to deal with. The editor's primary responsibility – of highlighting good posts and appending the best to the relevant article – has been made impossible by a continuous stream of irrelevant and off-topic chatter. The hammer has therefore come down. Until these boards reach a level where they can be left unsupervised for a few hours, they will be patrolled vigorously and off-topic posts will be flushed at the editors' discretion.

General Principle - Before you submit that post, ask yourself one simple question – "is this the kind of post that Slate would willingly pay somebody to read?" If it isn't, you're wasting the editor's time, and therefore you're wasting Slate's money. Such a post can be deleted at any time, from any board, at the editor's discretion. Deletion alone is not necessarily an indicator of misconduct.

War Against the Editors - We welcome your feedback and criticism, so long as it is placed in the proper forum. However, a pattern of conduct calculated to frustrate the editors in the carrying-out of their duties will lead to a ban. So, if you're planning to write that doozy of a take-down and quadruple post it to War Stories, or to lead a spam brigade into some otherwise sleepy Fray, you are indicating to the editors that you cannot be trusted as a participant of this board. If you can't be trusted not to interfere with our jobs and to respect both the policies and needs of Slate, your presence here is unwelcome and will not be tolerated.

http://fray.slate.com/?id=3936&m=17054694