What this is, Why this is, What the rules are.

[scalzi]

Hey there, everyone. Welcome to Whateveresque, the new forum for Whatever readers.

The reason for the forum is pretty simple: With up to 30,000 visitors a day, the Whatever has reached a point where the community of visitors pretty much stands on its own; I thought you all might like a place to congregate where you didn't need to have me start the conversation every single time. And also, on the occasions when I'm so busy that I'm just no fun at all, you all have somewhere to amuse yourselves. So, here you are.

I've set the place up with a whole bunch of general topics on lots of different subjects; I'm going to leave it to you guys to fill them up. I'll be moderating and participating here, but I'm not going to actively seed the topic threads with discussions -- that what I have the Whatever for, after all. This really is meant to be a community playground, and I hope you'll enjoy it and make it an active and vibrant forum.

Whateveresque does come with rules, and by posting here, you're bound by them and are assumed to have read them. They are:

1. You have to register to comment and create topics. This is to keep the spammation and trollage to a minimum. You don't have to register to read, however.

Update 2/17/08: Because of so many spam accounts attempting to join Whateveresque, I am limiting the days when people can sign up for accounts to the 1st of each month, give or take a day or two. On those days, registration will be unlocked and you can join.

2. I hope (and expect, actually) that everyone here treats each other decently. The Internet is famous for having people turn into dickheads because they don't have to worry about having the other person in front of them; I would like to avoid this whenever possible. It's possible to have intense and even heated discussions without commenters devolving into personal attacks. It helps to imagine that the person you're talking to is standing in front of you, is built like a linebacker, and has both a short temper and excellent legal representation.

3. As moderator, I really don't expect to do a whole lot of moderating: if this place has the same sort of folks as frequent Whatever, I won't need to do a whole lot of refereeing anyway, which makes me happy, because I'm a busy man. That said, I reserve the right to edit all posts, and to moderate all threads, as I see fit. Your comment is more likely to be moderated if it contains phobic content (based on race, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, etc), is a personal attack or threat toward another commenter, is entirely unrelated to the topic, has such poor grammar and spelling that it annoys me, is an obvious piece of trollage, or if I find it or you obnoxious and decide I've had enough. Don't like it? Don't post. Simple.

4.I also reserve the right to suspend or ban people who can't or won't behave, as I define the word. Usually there will be a warning before a suspension or ban, either in the comment threads or through e-mail, so you'll have adequate warning if you get on my bad side. Please heed the warnings.

5. I've left image capabilities on in posts for now. If people start posting inappropriate pictures (basically, anything pornographic or aggressively offensive/stupid) I'll edit them out. If I have to do this too much the poster will be banned. If it becomes too much of a headache, I'll just turn off the picture posting capability altogether. Please, show some taste and restraint when linking to pictures.

Technical Note: Whateveresque is listed as being in "beta" because the message board software is beta software. It might have a few glitches here and there. I'll upgrade to the non-beta version as soon as it becomes available.

If you have questions about Whateveresque or have suggestions on how to make this place better (new topics or categories, etc), drop them into the Questions and Suggestions topic.

Thanks, and enjoy!

John Scalzi