Rules and Guidelines: A Code of Conduct for The Cincy Jungle Community

Personal attacks against another member. It’s OK to disagree with an article’s author or another commenter. It’s not OK to be a jerk to them. Thoughtful responses stating your position are greatly encouraged and add meaningful content that others' thoughts. We have a zero tolerance policy for internet tough guys (and we actually make fun of you behind your back).

Offensive remarks in respect to race, religion, gender, sexual preferences, et cetera ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE and will likely lead to an immediate ban without warning. This should be common decency and common sense. If you lack these traits, perhaps this site is not for you.

Off-topic comments. The authors work really hard to generate the massive number of articles every day for you to enjoy. Try to keep your comments on target and within the flow of the conversation. If you have something unrelated you want to share, make a Fan Post or Fan Shot! It’s easy to do. If you are intentionally derailing a conversation it will be deleted and can lead to a warning or being banned from CJ.

Trolling is a slippery slope. Trolling is purposely disrupting the community with comments or actions in order to provoke others to respond. It’s taunting - picking an online fight just for a laugh. Effective trolls look for any opening to get under your skin and get you to react. Fans of teams not named Bengals ARE allowed to comment. They are not trolls. They are our guests. They are likely (however wrong they may be) to have differences in opinions on the greatness of their teams. However, there will be some level of tolerance (alright, a lot) for readers defending the site or other users from trolls. Trolling can get you banned. And of course, don’t feed the trolls.

Reduce the Profanity. During the weekly articles any excessive profanity is likely to get your post deleted. If you make a habit of it, you’ll get a warning. If you spew filth like Calamity F’n Jane from Deadwood, edit your mental anguish before you post it. Open Threads are just that. Just realize a lot of people are relying on that play by play lifeline as their only way to experience the game live. Not everyone lives in the tiny viewing sector for 1:00pm CBS Sunday game day (that used to get blacked out anyways). I don't have the ticket. We’re going to cut a lot of slack, but PG-13 is an attainable goal? Right? And if you are that emotional and enraged about something, MAKE A FANPOST (see below). It keeps the open thread rolling and everyone will be happier because of it.

We are looking to each one of you to help out. It helps greatly if you flag an inappropriate comment (it appears as a lovely pink highlight to admin). We might not always delete the flagged comment, but it puts that person on our radar.  And if you feel compelled, let the new commenters know if they are being offensive. You don’t need go all teacher’s pet and tattle-tailey snitchface. Just remind people we are in a society and there are rules in a society.

Finally, lighten up. Have fun. The anger level doesn't help anyone. The 20 minute Open Thread tirade about a certain player, coach or owner gets old really fast. Let it go. Save your strength for your awesome Fanpost.

Speaking of Fanposts, What Are the Guidelines for Fanposts?
Remember these are guidelines and, save for a few, are not rules that will result with immediate disciplinary action. And in truth, a lot of these guidelines are twofold:

• Help make Cincy Jungle's FanPosts more streamlined and;
• Achieve maximum interaction, comments and debate with your FanPost.
• Clear Titles. Make the title of FanPosts constructive and clear. Things like "Player supporters can suck it" are not constructive, if not reason for reactionary attitudes that makes your overall point trivial in appearance with many looking past it because of the juvenile nature in the title. Also, titles like "Bengals" or "Cincinnati Bengals" are not clear. This is sort of the overall theme of the site. Oh, and for the love of god, don't use all Caps for titles. It just looks tacky and people might view the author as being off-kilter, not taking the discussion seriously. And paragraphs are your friend.
• Make Sure Another FanPost Isn't Similar To What You Plan To Write. If you create a FanPost to vent, make sure it's not the same as another poster venting the exact same things. Multiple FanPosts about the same thing will likely see one of the two deleted depending on the reaction from other readers, the number of recommendations and/or which was posted first. The best example of this, back in the old days, was Bob Bratkowski. Rather than having 10 different FanPosts that say the same thing, keep it in one FanPost. That way when others have a different FanPost, then that FanPost isn't buried under a mountain of anger about a single issue.
• Keep Comments On Track. Try to keep comments close to the topic of the post or of the FanPost. If there’s news on a subject that we haven’t posted about yet, or if you have a generalized question outside of the post's topic, then don’t tell us in the comments of the latest posting. Create a FanPost; that’s a big reason of why they're there. There will be instances if a comment is off-topic that we'll simply delete it. If you want to generate a topic for discussion that we're not providing, create a FanPost.
• No Self Promotion. If you're promoting your own website, expect the link/URL to be removed. Contact us directly and we'll work something out with you. You can go a long way working with us to promote your work rather than spamming our site. However, if you create a username only to promote your website, expect to have the FanPost and your comments removed, as well as a possible ban. Contrary to popular belief from other Bengal "fan" sites, we're not a repository for promoting other sites. We have no problem promoting your site if you contact us directly.
• Spelling and Grammar. This is mostly to help you generate discussion inside your own FanPosts. I'm by no means a grammar master and I depend far too much on  spell check programs. However, bad spelling and grammar can make people focus on your mistakes rather than your content. Try to avoid easy mistakes and use a spell checker when you can. You want to debate the content, not what words you misspelled.
• Keep Great FanPosts On-Going. If there's a great FanPost that you want to keep inside the Recommended FanPosts so its easily reachable and always on-going, Recommend ("REC") that FanPost. Once a FanPost gets a certain amount of Recommendations, it will be categorized as a Recommended FanPost and listed above all FanPosts on the right.
• Be Respectful In "Ask A Question" Posts. Sometimes opposing blogs will throw up a FanPost to answer our questions about this week's opposing team. Ask your question, but do not instigate a petty diatribe of the opposing team that will turn into a trivial and petty response from all parties. These people are NOT trolls. They are using their own free time to inform you about the team we're facing. The least you can do is be respectful to those people and talk about the game.
• Etiquette For Promoting Other Articles. If you find an article online you'd like to share with the community, there's etiquette attached to this that's both respectful for the author's original work, as well as not making Cincy Jungle liable for copyrighting issues. Always use Blockquotes (the quotations button in the editor board) and never copy and paste the entire article. A paragraph is about the maximum that we're allowed and always leave a link back to the original article. If you do not properly source the article and we can't find the article to fix your FanPost, the entire FanPost will likely be deleted.