Recommended Guidelines for Newsvine Members

Newsvine members are encouraged to participate in healthy discussions and debates, while at the same time adhering to the following recommended guidelines. When individuals follow these guidelines of their own accord, the entire Community wins.

Commenting

• Engage others as you would during a face-to-face conversation (courteously).
• Give the benefit of the doubt by asking for clarification instead of assuming another's intent.
• Consider, then address specific arguments and ideas put forth by others, intelligently, rather than taking the easy route and attacking them personally. A "personal attack" is defined as directly or indirectly insulting another user (or group of users), oftentimes by name-calling, labeling, making sweeping generalizations or putting words into their mouth.

  Examples

  • "You are a racist..."
  • "Your ideas are idiotic..."
  • "[insert political affiliation]s are stupid."

  Corrections

  • "I strongly disagree with your position because..."
  • "The weakness in your argument stems from the assumption..."
  • "[public figure] has taken an indefensible stance that reflects poorly on..."

Comment Moderation and Your Column

• Moderating the discussions that take place on your column is your responsibility. Users are expected to be the first line of moderation, depending on staff to make judgement calls on borderline cases and in dealing with repeat offenders. If you don't want to or aren't able to moderate discussions taking place on your column, uncheck "allow comments".
• When deleting the comment(s) of another user, provide them with an explanation as well as instruction as to how they can participate constructively, citing the Code of Honor when appropriate.
• If in doubt, do not delete comments. Instead, report abuse using the "!" icon which appears in the comment box, or contact a Newsvine moderator for assistance.
• Once a comment has been deleted, the author of that comment is notified and given a chance to dispute the deletion of said comment. A Newsvine moderator may overturn the deletion of the comment, if it is determined that the comment in question is clearly within the bounds of the Code of Honor and is on-topic. Users who repeatedly delete comments that are later reinstated may lose the ability to delete comments, as a result.

Seeding Newsvine

• Your column and its contents are a reflection of you.
• Seed as close to the original source as possible.
• Borrow only as much as is necessary from the source article when providing an excerpt for the reader.
• Seeding is a form of nomination - the objective is to send readers to a deserving article or web page.

Writing Articles

• Write articles using the tone in which you would like to be responded to.
• When posting a report about a news event, differentiate and make clear that which you witnessed, know and can be confirmed, and that which is your (or someone else's) opinion or speculation. Provide sources and check facts, if possible.