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May 18, 2010 09:28 PM UTC

Colorado Pols Posting Policies

  • 98 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

POLS UPDATE 7/7/10: The following news outlets will no longer be quoted at ColoradoPols.com, nor will links be provided to their content. We ask that all Colorado Pols users also follow these guidelines and refrain from referencing or linking to content from these sources (read this post for more information):

MEDIA NEWS GROUP

  • The Denver Post

  • Boulder Daily Camera

  • Ft. Morgan Times

  • Journal-Advocate (Sterling)

  • The Lamar Ledger

    • FREEDOM COMMUNICATIONS

  • The Colorado Springs Gazette

    • SWIFT COMMUNICATIONS

  • Eagle Valley Enterprise

  • Glenwood Springs Post Independent

  • Grand Junction Free Press

  • Greeley Tribune

  • NOCOpages.com

  • Snowmass Sun

  • Sky-Hi Daily News

  • Summit Daily News

  • The Aspen Times

  • The Citizen Telegram

  • Vail Daily

  • Windsor Now

    • —–

    POLS UPDATE 6/14/2010: After some recent abuses (which did ultimately necessitate a ban), we’re reposting this guide. And we remind our users that as permissive as our standards deliberately are, at some level we must enforce them for the good of the whole community.

    —

    We’ve had a couple of questions about Colorado Pols policies lately, so it’s probably worthwhile to put up this handy reminder (after the jump).

    First off, it is your right to post anonymously at Colorado Pols. Anyone who attempts to “out” someone by posting information or hints toward their identity will be banned from the site. We want everyone to feel comfortable posting in the manner in which they are most, uh, comfortable.

    At Colorado Pols, you are allowed to sign up under any pseudonym you choose; we don’t care if you want to use your real name or not, and if anyone else cares…that’s their problem. We will do our best to protect all posters against anyone who tries to reveal or hint at someone’s real name.

    As for what you can and cannot say in comments and postings, we’ve said this many times in the comments sections, but we will repeat it here. For the most part, we don’t care what you write, and we certainly don’t care about who or what you support. There is a right way and a wrong way to discuss these things, however, which includes:

  • No attempted floating of negative rumors that cannot be substantiated. If you can’t cite, with links, a detailed accusation about something, then don’t write it here. Not only will a post or comment like that not be promoted, it will be deleted, and you may be banned from the site (a first warning may or may not be issued, depending on the comment/diary and the context).

    The most extreme example of this would be something like, “I heard that Candidate Smith has been having an affair with his secretary for two years.” If you don’t post some sort of confirming information about this, your comment will be deleted and you will be banned from the site immediately.

    A less egregious example would be something like this: “Rumor has it that Candidate Smith was running a pyramid scheme that bankrupted a lot of people.” If you don’t have facts to back this up, including links, the comment will be deleted and you may be banned from the site. Note that we don’t consider a link to another blog that has the same rumor an example of factual support; just because someone else chose to publish an unsupported rumor doesn’t mean that it is now verified.

    We are not the place for you to attempt to float negative, damaging rumors about candidates or individuals, no matter the Party. We will be diligent about this. We’re not getting sued over some rumor you tried to start.

  • Can’t write nice? Then go somewhere else. Please, limit unnecessary vulgarity or unnecessary and childish name-calling. Some is okay, but please don’t let it get excessive.

    We suppose you could argue that all cuss words are unnecessary, and you would probably be correct. But there’s a difference between saying, “What the f*** is Senator Smith doing?” in order to emphasize a point and in saying, “You’re just a f***ing worthless piece of s*** you f***ing a**hole.” If you’re just going to use vulgar language to call people names, that’s boring and pointless (in addition to being unnecessary). Go somewhere else.

    This also includes posting graphic images meant to advocate your cause (for example, images of abortions or executions-gone-wrong, meant to promote pro-life or anti-death penalty positions, respectively). Nobody wants to scroll through the comments and come across a jarringly graphic and inappropriate image. You can always provide a link to a page without actually posting the image itself.

  • Don’t write a comment that isn’t somehow relevant to the post you are reading. If you have something off-topic you want to talk about, then go to the daily “Open Threads.” Nobody wants to scroll through comments about the Senate race and have to skip past your diatribe about a flat tax. Unless the diary is called “Senate Candidates Discuss Tax Options,” then take that somewhere else. If your comment is totally off-topic, it will likely be deleted. Repeated abuses of this may lead to being shown the door by your Colorado Pols editors.

  • Please try to be conscious of limiting excessive back-and-forth discussions between you and one other poster. No matter the issue, inevitably this becomes a pissing match between two people. And guess what? Nobody else cares anymore. If you find yourself engaged in a back-and-forth “I know you are, but what am I” bitchfest, then maybe you should exchange emails and yell in all caps at each other privately.

    • And finally, please email us at webmaster@coloradopols.com if you see something amiss. Believe it or not, we don’t actually sit here all day and read every one of the hundreds of comments that people leave, so we’re bound to miss things that may violate these and other policies.

    For more tips on writing diaries, check out How to Get Your Diary Promoted.

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    98 thoughts on “Colorado Pols Posting Policies”

    1. Don’t write a comment that isn’t somehow relevant to the post you are reading. If you have something off-topic you want to talk about, then go to the daily “Open Threads.

      I guess that eliminates the majority of Libby’s posts…

      Denver Broncos… Still Suck!

        1. I post on topic nearly all of the time. In fact I’ve been accused of posting “off topic” in the daily thread, which just goes to show yourselves how ignorant some of you accusers are.

          An example of an off topic post is this ….

          Specter Spanked

          U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has been defeated in a Pennsylvania primary in his bid for a sixth term after taking the risky step of switching to the Democratic Party.

          Voters today picked U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak as the party’s nominee and rejected the 80-year-old Specter in his first Democratic campaign.

          The vote also was a defeat for President Barack Obama, who supported Specter when he abandoned the Republican Party last year.

          http://www.latimes.com/news/na…

          Now if I post about ineffective government or unprincipled policy at the City under a diary on Hickenlooper then I usually relate it to facts or at least some article from the Denver Post. That girlfriends would be on topic.

          1. The topic of this post wast the Pols posting rules.

            What you posted was a cut-and-paste about Arlen Specter.

            You’re an idiot.  Or, more politely, you have a somewhat different interpretation of what the topic is.

              2. …not as an example.

                You SELDOM post on topic.  Your definition of “on topic” is far, far broader than most of us here.

                PS, Congratulations for supplying a link.  

        1. Pols were Dead Governors? Those were the, well, I guess old days. Neither good nor bad, just old. That’s some name calling for you!

      4. …”limit . . . unnecessary and childish name-calling.”

        So, unnecessary name-calling is not banned, only limited.

        And there is no limit at all on necessary name-calling.

        🙂

          1. that a much loved child is called many names. That’s how I know how much I’m loved here!

            Speaking of which, I just found myself almost simultanously at two opposite extremes of the moral universe: Today with my daughter’s first grade class at their field day, being hung on and used as the rope in a tug-o-war by a pack of deliriously happy six-year-olds, and for the past few days being snarled at by a pack of smugly rabid jackals on Shawn Mitchell’s facebook page. I find it difficult to reconcile the two realities, and to accept, viscerally, that they both exist at the same time in a single world.

            1. If you want an example of unnecessary and childish name calling, I submit exihibit A: Steve Harvey. Of course there are plenty of others. Basically everyone I responded to with “I know you are, but what am I?” Obviously the restrictions are quite lax on this point.

    3. Few questions for the Govs on their policies:

      1) What is your policy on deleting comments or diaries? In the past it’s been said that you can’t delete individual comments so entire diaries have been deleted for offensive posts or posts that “out” somebody”

      2) Speaking of “outing,” what is the policy about comments referring to somebody if they have previously “outed” themselves on here or if theyВ  post on other sites under their own names linking or even bragging aboutВ  their posts here under a pseudonym (and then coming on here andВ  pretending it’s not them)

      3) What’s your policy on you guys deleting your own comments instead of posting an update or correction?

      4) What are the Govs’ policies on disclosing their own connection or relationship with a candidate, campaign, initiative, organization etc. or one officially backing a candidate, campaign or initiative when posting a comment discussing an issue or campaign?  

        1. Never met, talked to or had any communication with the guy but not surprising that you’d carry the line that anyone who questions Bennetons or the Govs must not be a real voter. Maybe when you’ve been old enough to vote for more than 2 or 3 cycles you’ll understand politics beyond the short prism that your history spans. Don’t you have finals to study for or a game of dungeons & dragons to get back to?

          1. So my opinion doesn’t matter. Thanks for letting me know how YOU feel about young voters. Does that speak for the Romanoff campaign?

            1. I speak for myself and only myself. My point was not about whether younger voters matter or not – it was about so many posters who have very limited actual experience or knowledge of politics making broad statements about campaigns, candidates or politics as though they know soo much and are so wise. As an old timer I have things to learn from the youngsters and they have much to learn from those who have been around campaigns since they were a twinkle in their mama’s eye.

                2. Years do not equate to sound political judgement.  Just ask John McCain.  RSB’s political understanding is far better than many 50+ y.o.’s I know.  

                  “Is anyone else here tired of the flimflam, mealy-mouthed Republican?” –Josh Penry

                  2. about age not being a big deal. Generally speaking, experience is a good teacher and us oldsters are supposed to have derived SOME measure of wisdom from the years we have endured.

                    This does not account for idiots who have been wrong a long, long time. “Top Gun” McCain, is a perfect example.

                    I will also throw a bouquet to rsb. While we can certainly disagree, he/she is always worth reading.

      2. In the past I believe it’s been stated that even if someone has outed themselves in the past, you should continue referring to them by their pseudonym, and you shouldn’t try to “out” them again by dropping in pointless references to information revealed.  OTOH, I don’t think anyone’s said it’s improper to bring up the past when, e.g. discussing a potential conflict of interest.

        And it was recently reviewed that even if you reveal yourself on another site, you should expect to retain at least the illusion of anonymity here.

      3. 1) Sometimes there are threads that have gone on for so long, before we were aware of a problem, that if we deleted the originating comment it would erase the entire thread (and this is a Soapblox software thing — it’s not something we can control. For example, if we deleted your comment, say, tomorrow, it would also erase every comment that responded to it).

        In some cases, what often happens is that the Pols community sort of “self polices” itself, and the problem resolves without our involvement. But sometimes, we still end up having to delete the entire thread.

        2) If someone posts under a pseudonym, then they have the same right as everyone else to post anonymously. You can’t say, “Joe 123” is the same person as “Ted 456,” who had previously identified himself as Joe Smith. The pseudonym, in a sense, is what is protected here.

        3) We don’t really do this. Sometimes our comments just get lost in Soapblox or Cyberspace land just like anyone else. We try not to delete comments, as we said before, because it messes up the entire thread that follows.

        4) Many different people have written for Colorado Pols, and many different people continue to write for Colorado Pols. Nobody at Colorado Pols has ever been a paid staff member of a current campaign.

        We try to write about things that are both relevant and interesting, but we don’t sit down and try to make sure that every candidate or issue has gotten the same amount of coverage. That would be silly — why, for example, would we have written anything about Tom Wiens in the last few weeks when neither he nor his campaign has done anything remotely interesting?

        And finally, we’ll say this: Colorado Pols is not a newspaper or a member of the “media,” nor have we EVER claimed otherwise. This is a blog. Nothing more. We hold ourselves to our own standard, which is to try to be accurate — both factually and argumentitavely (that’s definitely not a word). No matter what we write about, there is ALWAYS, always someone who thinks it is because we are biased one way or the other. If we didn’t provide our own commentary or take on things, then nobody would read this little ol’ blog.

        1. You did do this.  Today.  “Colorado Pols” posted that you didn’t have a problem with the methodology of robopolling, but rather you pointed out other problems with Pols.

          While I was looking up a diary where you did, indeed, state that you have concerns about the validity of robopolls, you deleted your comment.  I saw it, as did several others who are currently discussing the point in that thread.

          1. We have a number of authors who post eponymously as Colorado Pols. In this case, one of our writers made an assertion that another author knew was not correct and the comment was deleted by the second author. In retrospect that was not the right thing to do, another comment correcting this misstatement should have been added. We agree that in future cases of this kind, we should resolve an inconsistency between ourselves in a more transparent manner.

            But we consider this a trifling ‘inconsistency’–in our posts from last August about another Public Policy Polling automated poll, our criticism was focused on oversample rates of Republicans more than issues endemic to the type of poll being conducted. And even in those posts where we point out the inherent drawbacks to this type of poll, there is still useful information: as we said.

            The bottom line for this poll is that it’s early, probably the least-accurate scientific polling method used today, and as a result shouldn’t be taken as gospel–but it reflects something entirely predictable going into Obama’s first midterm. That’s reason enough for Democrats to consider these results carefully…

            There’s nothing inconsistent between our noting a poll’s caveats, or significance within the context of those caveats, then or now. The only difference is who doing so upsets, and that’s not really important to us.

              1. You really made a big fucking deal out of absolutely nothing today, didn’t you? It’s always a little embarrassing when you realize it.

                Raging against news you don’t want to hear just goes with the territory of backing a minor candidate. Must be hard to accept, I forgive you.

                  2. I’m still searching for someone to vote for.  I’m not even sure I’m going to declare as a Democrat and vote in the Dem primary.

                    If I do, I’m probably going to vote for whoever pisses me off less.  So far, the Romies are pissing me off more.

                    I’m just one data point.  But it seems to me that the Romies ought to be paying attention.

                    1. And vote in the primary? I thought you had to be registered by some date in March. Or was that just for caucus? I don’t remember.

                      1. According to the Boulder Dems website.

                        You’ve got time Ralphie! Yay!

                      2. And as an exception, a daughter turned 18 about a week before the general election, but law permitted her to register while still 17.  

                      3. And you’re registered unaffiliated, you can declare a party affiliation at the polls.  You have to wait until after canvass to switch back.

                        For an all-mail primary, you won’t get a ballot if you’re unaffiliated.  You can go to a service center, change affiliation, and vote in person.  Or, you can change affiliation before the ballots are mailed.

    5. I think some posters like me that are totally out about our identity, it’s fine to refer to us by name. But that’s my $0.02 worth. (If I was signing up now, I’d do like SteveHarvey and use my full name.)

      2. before I’m certain you really are “David” or even in this country legally.  Your Hawaiian connection automatically makes you suspect. 🙂

        1. Like is that really a state?

          (I read some birther retard – excuse the redundancy, please – claim that besides the birth certificate issue, Hawaii wasn’t really a state like the good old lower 48.)

      3. it delegitimizes your argument somewhat. That said, many people just have a screen name they like to use that is not their name. I’m of the opinion that if you can’t say something using your real name, you probably shouldn’t be saying it anonymously.

        1. Though I don’t hold it against anyone here for using a ‘nym…

          As I’ve noted before, I personally just like using my screen name – I’ve had it since the late ’80s or early ’90s – and there’s no secret as to who I really am.

          And yes – if you’d be ashamed to have a comment associated to you personally, you shouldn’t make it anonymously, though there are valid reasons (protective) to be anonymous or pseudonymous.

        2. When I was a college student, I was also happy to express myself quite publicly without really worrying about the consequences. What does a college student really have to lose? Supreme Court cases have given them quite a lot of free speech rights on campus, and the worst that can happen is they go to another school.

          Grown-ups with real jobs and stable lives have to be somewhat more careful. Some of us have jobs where our superiors are elected officials who are quite willing to fire us based on expression of controversial political opinions.

          If the only people you want posting here are people with nothing to lose, you’ll just get a board dominated by a lot of retirees and college kids. Which might help get more Republicans posting on the board, but would otherwise make the board somewhat less interesting.

    6. But I can live with the rules.

      I suppose that it would be better if I posted under a psuedonym. I don’t  think that I wll. I’ll continue to live by my own values.

    7. I understand if you don’t want to put back a post that got removed obviously, but can you reference who was banned and (generally) for what?

      1. If the point of banning a User is to discourage particular acts, then referencing the act (s) would be to give at least one more bit of attention than it otherwise would get.

        It’s not hard to figure out when a user gets banned.

        It can sometimes be tricky to figure out why.  

        1. I said I get that it doesn’t make sense to post a comment that was deleted.  It could be helpful (or at least interesting) for readers to see User X got banned for reason Y (which of the above reasons), possibly with a little explanation.

      2. Came on here and spammed the hell out the weekend open thread with links to his website concerning various  conspiracy theories and all sorts of nonsense. There were probably 40 or so posts all within about a minute of each other.

    8. Of course, I am scared to post now, because of my short term memory problem, my inability to spell, and my general bitter attitude toward life in general and boyles in particular….

      1. .

        by skipping over some diaries.

        Thanks for the link.  Not that I like spreading rumors, but I want to know at least whom the rumors are about, if not the details.

        .

      1. I had made a comment to it yesterday, and while that still shows as a link under “my comments,” nothing shows up if you click it. That happens to your comments if they were in response to ones that got deleted.

        1. many stylin’ stanzas of my own have been cast into the abyss of his erasure from reality…, or something like that.  🙂

          It’s too bad, really. I don’t think anyone was fond enough of him to enjoy seeing his own worst enemy silenced….

    11. We have room for vigorous and even raucous dialogue here.  But this post is mentally ill and extradinarily vicious in his attacks.  He ruins every thread he invades.

         

      3. I said yesterday that I was going to go to church and pray that the banhammer descend upon his twisted little head, and so it did!!  And I didn’t even really have to go to church.  Or pray.

    13. The murder of 6 million jews, of course.

      But I would not expect a Nazi sympathizer like you to have even given it a thought.  Do you like the Tea Party?  Do you like Tom Tancredo?

      by: reubenesp @ Fri Sep 24, 2010 at 18:51:04 PM MDT

      I tried to quit posting on this site because of stuff like this.

      I’m a third-generation American of German descent. This kind of statement is uncalled for, and has no place in any civilized discussion.

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