If you hadn’t noticed, I’m back from vacation and getting excited to begin another season of coverage here at Stampede Blue.
I’ll be at Anderson University for the entirety of camp, so we’ll have plenty of coverage from training camp. It’s always one of my favorite times of the year and you all always seem to love following along during camp, so it should be fun once again this year.
We’re only a few days away from the start of training camp, so I thought it’d be a good time to provide a little update on our community gudelines. We have a very large following and one of the things people like most is the opportunity to discuss all things Colts with other fans on our comment boards. We realize that for most of you who have signed up on our site over the years, we’ve become your go-to site for interacting with other fans, and we want to continue to encourage that.
As we do so, however, we want to help make it an enjoyable experience for everyone involved. Every person who signs up on our site agrees to our community guidelines, and based on discussions with many readers I’ve been considering changing - or clarifying - our guidelines. Instead, SB Nation is moving to a unified set of community guidelines that will help make it easier to interact on multiple sites (if you wish) as there will be a set standard. To be honest, there’s not a lot different than what Matt and I have been moderating by anyway, but I think it’s now a bit more clear what we expect. Here are the new SB Nation guidelines that we will adhere to:
1. Comments, FanPosts or usernames that are intolerant or prejudiced (sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-religion, etc.) in nature.
2. Personal attacks or threats on community members.
3. Gendered insults of any kind in comments, FanPosts or usernames.
4. Posting or creating FanPosts for the sole purpose of trolling or disrupting the community is not permitted. Posts made for such purposes are subject to deletion without notice. Creating multiple user names for this purpose is not permitted. Persons creating such user names will have those names banned and/or deleted without notice.
5. Offensive imagery of any kind is not allowed, including violent, explicit and demeaning imagery.
6. Comments, FanPosts or usernames that make light of serious crime of any kind; specifically domestic violence, DUI, sexual assault.
7. Comments, FanPosts or usernames that make light of any physical, mental, behavioral or psychological disorder.
8. Excessive profanity is not permitted. Different SB Nation sites have different guidelines regarding profanity -- i.e., some do not allow it at all -- but across all of our communities, please keep use of profanity within reason.
9. Posts created for the sole purpose of advertising or other commercial purposes will be deleted without notice.
10. The sharing of illegal game streams is not allowed. Legal streams (via NBC Sports, WatchESPN, etc.) can be shared freely, but links to or requests for illegal, pirated streams are not allowed.
11. The “first post” rule: if you break any of the above guidelines in your first post at the site, it likely means that you are creating an account just to disrupt the community, and that won’t be tolerated. We will ban your account, and you can reach out to us via email if you believe there was a misunderstanding.
A 12th guideline that we are also adhering to at Stampede Blue is this:
12. No politics. We know you have political thoughts, but this isn’t the place for them. We’re here to talk about sports, not politics. There are plenty of other sites where you can discuss political things, so please avoid doing so here.
You’ll notice that the guidelines are basically the same thing we’ve had - don’t attack other commenters, don’t troll, etc. One thing I will point out is that we want to cut down on the profanity somewhat, which the guidelines state: cut down on “excessive profanity.” We don’t mind profanity as much as we think there is no need for it in excess - in other words, profanity for no reason other than profanity.
As always, if you ever have any questions you can find my email by clicking on my profile and let me know your comments or concerns. We hope to continue to provide top-notch Colts coverage and the best place for Colts fans to interact, so we ask that you be respectful with other people and have fun discussing the Colts as we approach yet another season of covering and following the team.