The moderators are tyrants! They delete everything! (and other common misconceptions explained)

Christ on Crutches people, I'm supposed to be doing a literature review for a paper I have due in a grand total of four hours and I can't do it because I felt a sense of accomplishment from the other essay I just finished a bit ago and decided to celebrate with a ProgressiveU break.

And then of course, while browsing the blogs, I see no less than 5 comments about posts being deleted. I'm not sure when everyone came to the conclusion that we delete things for the heck of it. But we don't.

Let me repeat that, we don't delete things for the heck of it. It's a waste of perfectly good time and we don't have enough of that as it is. And it drives me (and others) insane that we have gotten that reputation and have yet to find a reason for it.

Here are the things we do delete

1) Multiple posts (for obvious reasons).
2) Our own posts (because we wrote em, by George).
3) Posts that we are asked to delete (again, obvious).
4) Posts that have been unpublished for a violation (getting to those) and were never edited as requested.

Now, the violation thing...

While we don't routinely delete posts, we do have to unpublish some posts. And of course, when we do that, we send a message saying why the post was unpublished and what needs to be done with it to get it republished.

So, what do we routinely unpublish?

1) Plagiarism/Copyright Infringement. We don't tolerate it in any form. If it isn't your work, cite it or we unpublish it. If it's a continuous thing (ie: if we have to private message you about it three or more times), we place your account under review which may result in your ability to post on ProgressiveU being removed. Plagiarism is not cool... at all. It's horrible, evil, incredibly rude, etc.

***Something to remember here... the four paragraph rule. Do not copy more than four paragraphs of someone else's work (whether it's a news article, another blog, an essay, whatever) into your post. If you do, we'll unpublish and remind you of the rule. When you've fixed it, we'll republish it. And again, if it isn't your work, cite it or don't go there.

2) Chain letters/random postings. These are things that can be found all over the Internet and further, we required that every post contain 100 words of ORIGINAL content (aka content that YOU wrote).

3) Personal Attacks/Name calling. Saying that some people are idiots is okay. Saying Fanaile Essence is a fucking moron and should be smothered with a pillow is not okay (and she isn’t one and shouldn’t be smothered, for the record. And she has my most humble of apologies for nominating her to be the example of the day without her knowledge) whether it's in a blog post, a comment or a private message. If we come across it or someone sends it to us (and they do, often) we will hunt you down and fuss at you. If it's minor (that's funny, you moron) in comment form, we may edit that part out (and you will know we did so because we say so at the bottom of every edited comment and we will tell you so).

4) Spam. We hate it and wish it would die a slow, painful horrible death. We get enough of it in our inboxes, we don't need it here, thank you very much. ProgressiveU is to be spam and advertisement free.

5) And finally, every once in a while if something is illegible due to formatting, spelling or grammatical errors, we will unpublish and ask you to fix the errors. If you need help, we will proofread and edit for you. Free of charge. Without complaint. It's what we do.

Aside from that, we rarely have a need to unpublish anything. And if we do have to unpublish something for a reason not listed, we will still contact you and explain what the problem is/was, give you a chance to fix it and happily republish if you do so.

And just so you know, you really can't sneak one over on us once you've been caught by fibbing to us. We record everything so every other moderator knows exactly what actions were taken, when, by whom, for what reason and any response that was received (include the you bastard replies we get periodically). That way, if you are one of those few that continue to ignore our messages, we can deal with it accordingly. We encourage you to ask another moderator to review if you have a complaint and they will happily do so... just don't lie about the issue and expect them to be clueless. We are not (well, when it comes to moderating decisions any way... I make no claims for me otherwise).

We aren't delete happy tyrants, I promise. We aren't out to censor anyone. We don't all think a certain way. If you need proof of that, look at some of our blogs. We all have different backgrounds, beliefs, and writing styles. We have left very few stones unturned in our own blogging and want everyone else to have the same chance. And we want you to disagree with us. It stimulates discussion and discussion is a good thing. If you feel the need to curse, look me up. I have a few awesome words I can lend you for the occasion. If you want to say George Bush is something or another, again, look us up. We can think of something creative for you (even if we don't agree... and I'm not saying I don't).

And as always, if you aren't sure about if something is acceptable or not, ask one of us. We're here to help... not hinder.

Now, back to that literature review that is getting rather crucial the longer I avoid it.

Cheers and happy blogging all :)

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