The Mighty Bruins Community Guidelines
Here are some general rules to follow while interacting with your fellow Bruin fans.
Free Speech on The Mighty Bruin
The Mighty Bruin believes strongly in free speech and in celebrating a diversity of opinions and ideas on the site. Users are, in general, free to express their opinions without fear of retribution. The diversity of personalities, beliefs, and styles is appreciated as being part of what makes our community strong. The Mighty Bruin's team of editors, writers and moderators all operate within this belief system.
However, TMB is a community and free speech does not mean "the right to say what you want, when you want, how you want," without being sensitive to, and respectful towards, the community as a whole. In a community, speech is not "free" -- it comes with responsibility.
The following are simply not acceptable on The Mighty Bruin (excepting, in some cases, for obvious humor between people with an existing rapport); they violate The Mighty Bruin's Community Guidelines, because they violate the all-important principle of "mutual respect for all," and are subject to sanction as outlined below:
Respect For All Community Members
Personal attacks on community members, directly or through sarcasm/belittling, e.g., "You're an idiot," "You don't know what you're talking about, dumbass," "Apparently, you've never seen a baseball game, or you'd know...", "My Chihuahua knows more about baseball than you do," etc.
Comments that are intolerant or prejudiced (sexist, racist, homophobic, etc.) in nature, e.g., "The Bruins shouldn't recruit [ethnic group] players," "Doesn't [Player Name] look like a [derogatory name]?", etc.
Harassing/Baiting of users, e.g., "How about that Dorian Thompson-Robinson; isn't he great?" posted five consecutive times that DTR throws an incompletion. "The Bruins will never win this game" posted 10 times in 30 minutes, etc.
Relentless negativity will not be tolerated. What constitutes "relentless negativity"? It's simple: simply posting the Bruins suck 100 percent of the time without reasoning or proposing solutions. There is nothing helpful about someone who constantly says that their team "sucks" and complains. We're all fans and we all get frustrated when the team doesn't perform or has bad luck, but regurgitating the same venom over and over again doesn't help anything or anyone. We’re aiming to be better than that. If you continue to do nothing but post negativity, you may lose posting privileges without warning. There's a difference between someone who aims to point out flaws and be constructive and someone who is destructive. 10 comments, in a row about how the Bruins stink with no reasoning or proposals is basically trolling and that's how it will be treated. The goal is to make this community fun for everyone.
Comments that bring politics, or other highly inflammatory non-UCLA related topics, onto The Mighty Bruins (which is a non-political blog), e.g., "Bush/Clinton ruined this country by...", "Check out this link about the war in Iraq," etc. This is a sports blog, and we want to try and keep it that way.
No Inflammatory Discussion About The Mighty Bruin’s Policies
While it is our goal to be a welcoming community, any insult or comment that would be perceived as an insult, attack or a lecture to the moderators are not allowed. The moderators reserve the right to delete any post or comment that is deemed not appropriate for The Mighty Bruin.
Inflammatory comments, discussions, or complaints about The Mighty Bruin's process, e.g., how a something is/was fair or unfair, why TMB sucks, whether there is free speech or oppressive censorship on TMB, what "desperately needs to change around here," what user or administrator did what horrible thing, what really happened with (insert past internal drama here) - are not allowed on TMB.
Any insult or any comment that would be perceived as an insult, attack or a lecture to the moderators could be subject to deletion, warning or subsequent banning. The moderators reserve the right to delete any post or comment that is deemed not appropriate for The Mighty Bruin. Also, we will not tolerate any lectures to moderators on how they should run this community.
We know we are not above criticism, and by all means you are allowed to express a different viewpoint than the writers when it comes to the contents of the article You will never face moderation for doing so unless you are breaking the guidelines. But airing grievances about the moderation process in a public forum is not appropriate. Any and all concerns about how the site is moderated should be directed privately to the moderators. To do so, send an email to themightybruin@gmail.com.
Posting Photos/Images
Photos and images need to follow the guidelines that "body parts normally covered by a bathing suit" are covered and that sexual acts, or excessive nudity/objectification, are not being displayed. This still allows for a lot of freedom in posting photos and images, while respecting that many of the readers viewing an image may be young, or may prefer modesty in posted images, or may be reading at work.
Finally, as a courtesy to readers all photos, images, and animated gifs need to have a subject line (because this allows them to be "collapsed"), even if the subject line is just a single character.
Obscene/Explicit Language
TMB does not seek to eradicate all profanity from the site. Rather it seeks to find a reasonable happy medium between "pushing the limits" and "crossing the line."
Some swearing, especially in game threads and most notably in heated response to the events of a game, is fine. Occasional sexual references are acceptable, too, especially when written only in suggestive, rather than explicit, language. However, repeated gratuitous profanity and explicitly obscene descriptions, can constitute Community Guidelines Violations if flagged and deemed by the mods to be excessive or over-the-top. In particular, TMB strongly discourages the use of derogatory language that is gender-based and of images that are sexualized.
Again, the purpose is to give the community a lot of leeway, but, at the same time, to make TMB a comfortable and welcoming place for a wide range of people.
Consequences For Violating The Mighty Bruin’s Community Guidelines
Note: As of right now, Substack is working on developing better community tools. So this section may change in the future.
Consistent with its sports theme, when it comes to violations of the Community Guidelines, TMB works on a version of "3 strikes and you're out." Complaints about possible violations of the Community Guidelines should be flagged for review and consideration by TMB's moderators.
The moderators aim to balance a high tolerance for the importance of free speech and low tolerance for minor or petty complaints, with enforcement of the stated guidelines, on behalf of the entire TMB community.
Strike 1: If at least three TMB team members agree that a violation has occurred, the offending user will be contacted privately and issued a formal "strike 1". No other action is taken. Users wishing to appeal a "strike" may email the moderators to explain why they feel the "strike" is not a correct decision and the appeal will be considered.
Strike 2: A second violation through this process triggers "strike 2" from the moderators with the same processes in place for an appeal.
Strike 3: A third "strike" through this process leads to administrative action by the moderators at their discretion. However, a third "strike" will not be issued without weigh-in from all the moderators to ensure it is a decision the moderators, as a group, believe to be appropriate. A third strike will result in a minimum ban of 15 days.
For any user with 3 strikes, any subsequent violation will result in, first, a minimum ban of 30 days and, then, a permanent ban.
Roll-Off System For Strikes
If a user has one strike, 4 consecutive "strike-free" months will cause that strike to roll off.
If a user has two strikes, 6 consecutive "strike-free" months will cause that one of the two strikes to roll off. It will then take 4 additional consecutive months for the remaining strike to roll off.
A "strike three" never rolls off. It is incumbent upon any banned user to apply for reinstatement (whenever they feel it is appropriate) by emailing the moderators at themightybruin@gmail.com.
The TMB team may, at any time, choose to bypass the three-strikes process and ban a user if the circumstances warrant it. If a user's offense is judged to be exceptionally grievous in nature, that user may be banned immediately and unilaterally.
Examples of an exceptionally grievous offense includes but are not limited to attempting to circumvent a ban and posting inflammatory content about The Mighty Bruin's policies.
Procedure For Lodging An Official Complaint
If you believe a user has violated the Community Guidelines and you wish to bring it to The Mighty Bruin's moderators for review, please send an email to themightybruin@gmail.com with a link to the offending comment (to link to a specific comment, click on the time stamp of the comment, which changes your URL to a direct link to that comment).
Complaints are evaluated, and any appropriate follow-up action taken, internally. The user who made the complaint should not expect any reply unless the moderators have specific questions.
If a user repeatedly flags complaints that fail to meet the committee's standard for a violation, the user may be contacted by the moderators and asked to "chill out".