Folks, your admin staff is concerned about the amount of hot-button, off-topic posting around the forums these days. We would like to remind you of our community guidelines, which define the primary purpose of these forums as being to promote civil, scientifically-grounded discourse on the ketogenic diet.
While we are happy to see that a vibrant community has developed out of this discourse, we also note a rise in acrimonious, political, and generally angry posting, particularly in people’s accountability threads. While we have given a lot of latitude to that type of thread, we notice that acrimony breeds acrimony, and eventually opinions get expressed that are beyond the boundaries of civil discourse.
We are therefore announcing that, going forward, we will be requiring posters to hew more closely to the stated guidelines, which we ask every user to take the time to read, The Community Guidelines can be found at https://www.ketogenicforums.com/guidelines, and the Terms of Service which govern your relationship with the Ketogenic Forums can be found at https://www.ketogenicforums.com/tos. As you will see, we expect you to avoid inflammatory, obscene, violent, abusive, snide, or vengeful language. Epithets and hate speech are forbidden. We are not prudes, but we ask that curse words be blurred, since these forums embrace families and young people.
Criticise ideas, do not attack people; respond dispassionately to the propositions stated, ignoring tone and manner of expression. Consider how you would react if the language you wish to use were turned against you and people like you. Especially consider the impression a particular conversation might give to newcomers, or to the world at large. As the guidelines suggest, ask yourself how you would feel if that post of yours were to appear on the front page of the New York Times for all the world to see.
We wish to state for the record that we are doing our best to enforce the guidelines consistently. We also are very aware that the growth of these forums means that a lot is going to escape our notice. If you spot a post or a thread that does not appear to adhere to the Guidelines, please flag it, to bring it to our attention. We also ask you not to engage directly with the poster(s) in question, so as to avoid escalating a potentially volatile situation. Flags automatically come to the attention of all admins on duty; you can reach the same people with other concerns or criticism in a private message addressed to @forum_admin.
We wish to remind you that the Dudes provide these forums as a public service, bearing much of the cost out of their own pockets. Our commitment to them and to you is to enforce the policies of these forums impartially, consistently, and fairly, using our best judgement at the time. A certain degree of arbitrariness and human fallibility is inherent in the situation, so we ask you to bear in mind that in every case we are doing our best to balance the needs of individuals against the needs of the forums as a whole. We also ask you to bear in mind that a great deal of moderating takes place behind the scenes, because much of what we discuss is confidential. We also try to act by consensus as much as possible, and consensus sometimes takes time to arrive at, so we ask your patience while we work out the best course of action in any given case.