Registration and Posting Guidelines

[mvpsoft]

**Welcome to Dave Snyder's PhilliesPhans. We believe this is the home of many of the most passionate and knowledgeable Phillies fans in the universe, and the location where you'll find *The Best Baseball Talk Online.™***

INFORMATION FOR POTENTIAL NEW MEMBERS
We welcome new members who want to be part of a civil, rational discussion. New members revitalize online communities, bringing new ideas to the conversation and helping us all to think outside of our usual boundaries.

However, this is NOT an open forum -- membership is granted by administrative approval only. If you are visiting this site for the first time we suggest that you lurk for a while and try to determine if this is an appropriate community for you -- it's really not for everyone, for reasons that are detailed in the terms of service and, especially, in the posting guidelines (links are in item #1 below).

If you decide that you'd like to register and join our discussions, before you register, please read the Terms of Service and the Posting Guidelines (later in this thread).

• Follow the registration procedure. Be sure to provide a real, functioning email address; the system will reject your registration without it.

• We may send you one or two email messages. The first is an automated message sent by the system to all registrants, to verify the email address you provided. In addition, we may send a second message, asking you to confirm that you have read and understood the board's terms of service and posting guidelines. If you receive this second message, you must respond before your account can be activated. If you use a bogus email address, or never check your email - or if you ignore our questions - you will not be activated on our board. Unless you respond to this email in a reasonable period of time, we will be unable to activate your account, and your registration will be deleted.

Newly registered users will be automatically placed into a "Newly Registered Users" group. As long as you are in this group, your access to advanced board features will be restricted, and your posts may be subject to moderator approval before they appear on the board. Active users will not stay in this group; it's simply a way of preventing people from registering to use our board for purposes other than to join our discussions.

MOBILE SUPPORT
The Discourse software that powers Philliesphans.com provides direct support for mobile devices. No third-party software or special settings are required.

[mvpsoft]

POSTING GUIDELINES
What makes this board different from many other internet message boards is our insistence on civility, respect, and discussions backed up by sound reasoning. Here are some guidelines:

EVIDENCE AND REASONS
Arguments in posts should be supported. Give your reasons for believing what you do, and, whenever possible, support your reasons with evidence. Simply asserting your belief, or stating that you believe what you do and are entitled to your opinion leads to an endless exchange of "did not!"-"did too!" posts that do not carry the conversation forward. Evidence need not be statistical, but statistical evidence is usually highly regarded on this board, and is frequently used by many of our veteran posters.

Also, philliesphans.com is not Reddit. Arguments should be built from reliable bases, and should avoid "leaping" to conclusions that do not follow from the evidence presented. Remember that correlation does not imply causation. In particular, presenting speculative theories as if they were fact is discouraged; making this kind of "argument" repeatedly will be considered a form of trolling (see below).

CIVILITY AND RESPECT
When you make a post, and particularly when you disagree with a previous poster, you must engage the poster's ideas and not attack the poster himself. You must also endeavor to address the poster's ideas respectfully, and in a way that shows you respect him and his position. This always requires that you carefully read what you're disagreeing with, and that you restrain an occasional impulse to be belligerent, mocking, or confrontational. We all find some ideas to be irritating, but the conversation moves forward more profitably when we are respectful, even of ideas we find bizarre or annoying. Please make every possible effort to be gracious and not to offend other posters; we all root for the same team here -- be passionate but courteous. In this regard, we'd appreciate posters not making the titles of threads, especially obviously controversial threads, provocative or incendiary.

TROLLING
Posts that are intentionally antagonistic, that harangue or harass other posters, that are intended simply to provoke reaction, that are intended to be disruptive, that are inflammatory, or that are mischievously erroneous or obtuse are considered trolling and should be reported to moderators. Publicly accusing another poster of trolling is bad form -- PM a moderator. Posters who troll will be banned.

"INSIDE INFORMATION"
Some posters will inevitably cite inside sources. Our experience has been that most such claims are fictitious, but there is no way to know whether those sources are genuine or not — even posters who continually post information that doesn't pan out might have genuine sources, and their source might be mis-informed, or the Phils might have changed their minds, or the other team may have backed out. If you choose to respond to inside information posts, please be polite. It's OK to say, "I don't think the Phils would do that." It's not OK to say, "You're a lying piece of doo-doo and made all this up." Keep that opinion to yourself--it gets us nowhere when the thread degenerates into a blind (and inevitibly hostile and disputatious) exploration of a poster's credibility.

If you do actually have access to inside information, and wish to post things that depend on that information, it would be helpful if you provide evidence to support your claim (in confidence) to the administrators or moderators — this will allow us to recognize that the information is likely to be genuine.

MODERATORS AND ADMINISTRATORS
Decisions of the moderators and administrators are final and not subject to public questioning. If you have a question, PM one of us. Moderating and administrating this board is not fun, and we don't get paid. If you don't like the way the place is run, it's probably not the place for you. Public abuse of a moderator or administrator, or public criticism of the board's policies, membership, or rules will result in having your account deactivated without warning.

LANGUAGE
This forum tolerates no profanity of any kind, including the so-called "prime time" swear words. Replacing one or more of the letters of a swear word with symbols is also not permitted. There is a swear filter on the board, but it's there to prevent accidents, not to constantly clean up your language.

COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
Please refrain from reposting copyrighted works in their entirety, including articles you read elsewhere online. You may post short quotes and a link, but do NOT post the entire article. Doing so is a violation of copyright law and is illegal. Material posted on the internet may not be reposted anywhere else unless the copyright holder has granted written permission to do so. US law permits violators to be fined up to $100,000 per violation.

COMMERCIAL POSTS/ADVERTISING
As a rule, we do not permit posts which involve or promote commercial activities, or advertising of any kind. We may, on rare occasions, make an exception to this rule if an established member of our community has a special opportunity to make available to other members. Such exceptions, if any, will occur only after thorough discussion of the proposed posting with one of our administrators. Any commercial message which is posted without prior approval will be deleted, and the poster will be sanctioned.

THREAD PROLIFERATION
One aspect of being respectful on a message board is not to create lots of threads so that other important topics scroll off the bottom of the screen. Please check if a thread has been posted recently on the subject before starting your own topic. Use common sense: If you're posting breaking news of importance to our community (trades, signings, etc.), it's best if you DO create a new thread, rather than burying that news where others may not see it. If you encounter duplicate or unnecessary threads, please politely post a link in the offending thread and report the post to the moderators. We'll merge or delete the thread.

BICKERING OR STALKING
Bickering with another poster is disrespectful -- learn when to let an argument go; two people sometimes need to realize they're going to continue to disagree and simply move along. Do not "stalk" another poster on the board by following him around from thread to thread and quibbling with everything he posts. Repeated instances of this behavior will also result in your account being deactivated. Do not stalk or harass other posters outside of this forum. Posters here must be free to state their views without threat of harassment or ridicule here or elsewhere.

PRIVACY
Do not disclose personal information about members of this community on the board or elsewhere on the internet. If it is determined that you have violated another member's right to privacy you will no longer be welcome in the community. Some violations of privacy are subject to civil or criminal penalties, so, for your own good, please err on the side of caution.

RESPONSIBILITY TO AID IN FACT-FINDING
In some cases reports of misbehavior will need to be examined to determine whether a serious violation has occurred, and who committed the alleged violation. We expect members of the community to cooperate willingly in such an investigation so that a decision can be reached intelligently and with all pertinent facts.

FOLLOWING THE GUIDELINES
Know these guidelines; follow these guidelines and the other rules explained in the TOS. If you disagree with the structure of this community it's probably not for you. If you agree to abide by these guidelines (and especially if you understand the spirit behind them and the kind of community we're trying to build) you're welcome to join in.

[mvpsoft]

[Note: The following are comments from one of our posters - bkeich - offered to the community after several months of active participation here.]

This is not a typical internet message board; it is a very conservative (not politically) board. No off-color language, no attacks on other people, and nothing even close to these is permitted. In order to effectively join in on the conversations on this board, you need to respect this. Part of the responsibility rests not on Julio, PC and allentown (our moderators), but on all our posters.

The expectations of a poster on this board are higher than on most boards.

• You need to know who Dave Snyder was. I spoke with him once, never posted while he was on the board, but his spirit is still here. People here feel they lost a friend they never met. Every poster on the board should at least understand the history of the board, at least in this area; he is an important person on the board, as are his opinions and "rules."

• Obviously you don't have time to read every post, but IMHO before you post it is the poster's responsibility to spend an hour and page through some of the past topics. You will quickly figure out what the posting rules are (you can read them but it is better to see what posts are acceptable) and how to "handle" yourself.
  Some unwritten rules:

• Be very careful about starting too many threads. No reason not to start one when you have a thought, but see if you can include it in another topic first. The only person that I know of that was banned, this was a major problem (along with other things). The moderators don't want to have to clean up the threads too much for one person. A few mistakes is fine, but daily issues are not going to be acceptable.

• Attack other peoples' opinions freely, but respectfully. If you attack other PEOPLE you will not be listened to for very long. The moderators will delete your post quickly and anyone who reads it will remember it negatively. (e.g., "YOU ARE STUPID"... bad; "I disagree strongly with your opinion because".. .good.)

• Freely express your opinion, even if you make a mistake. No one is counting errors. If you make an error, admit it.

• You don't have to agree with the consensus. Really boring board if we all agree.

• Don't take others disagreeing with you personally, even if they seem a little sarcastic about that. Attack their sarcasm or dismissive nature as part of a response.

• Spelling. Everyone should enable a spell checker; trust me it makes your arguments more persuasive if we don't have to guess what word you mean.

• Grammar and punctuation. Do your best; I am not good at it, but try. It does matter when someone is reading and not hearing what you are saying.

• This is not a cell phone. Do not abbreviate words like you might on a cell phone. Most people over age 35 (?) find this annoying. There are lots of people on this board over that age.

There are real rules for posting, and they are well written, please read them (see above). This is my list of unwritten rules after being on the board for 9 months (still somewhat of a newbie).

[julio]

TABLES

The Philliesphans software (Discourse) allows you to create formatted tables in your posts, using standard html table syntax. (I'll refer to the html codes as "tags" in what follows.) WARNING: Not for the faint of heart; it's not trivial to master all this...but if you're patient and persistent, you'll get it!

Always remember that all html tags must be opened and closed; e.g., you have a "table" tag at the beginning of the table, and a "/table" tag at the end of the table. The first tag turns on the characteristic you want; the second tag, with the "/", turns it off again.

Also, all tags (opening and closing) must be enclosed in angle brackets; e.g. < >.

Here's a list of the various table-related tags. Keep in mind that each "open" tag should be enclosed in , and each "close" tag should be enclosed in with a front-slash as the first character inside the brackets.

• table - creates a basic table.
• tr - creates a row within your table.
• th - creates a header cell within your table row. Header cell content, by default, is boldface and centered.
• td - creates a basic data cell. content is regular font, and left-justified by default.

To set up a table, you need to use the following structure:

table
..tr (first row)
....td (or th, if you are creating a header row with column labels)
....td (or th, if you are creating a header row with column labels)
....td (or th, if you are creating a header row with column labels)
.tr (second row)
....td
....td
....td
etc.

Example:

Player	OBP	SLG	OPS
Rolen	.380	.455	.835

Note that every tag - table, tr, th, td - MUST be properly closed (e.g., you start with < tag>, and you end with < /tag >), and in the proper order, or the tags will not be parsed correctly.

You can control the alignment of text/data in table cells as follows:

to right-align a cell, add < div align="right"> after < td>, and add < /div> before < /td>.

to center, use < div align="center"> after < td>, and add < /div> before < /td>.

to left-align, use < div align="left"> after < td>, and add < /div> before < /td>.

Tables can get pretty complex - please use the Preview function, and be sure your table (and your whole post) is working properly before you actually post it. If you need help, send me a PM.

[julio]