Rule Reminder: Spam, Word Count, and Harassment

The blogs are one of the best places on Mibba to let out personal frustrations or to ramble about nothing in particular. That's the great thing about blogs; they are incredibly versatile, pretty much like public diaries or personal articles. But just like with the rest of the site, there are a few rules that should be followed when posting blogs on Mibba. I spoke about all of the blog guidelines earlier this month, however in this article I'm going to go more in depth with some of the rules that are most often broken and that have a bit of a vague description to.

Who monitors the blog section? The Blog Moderators look through every blog to make sure the guidelines are met. If a blog fails to meet the requirements, it is usually taken down and sent back to the author to fix up and re-post if the author wishes to do so. The guidelines can, as always, be found in the Knowledge Base located at the bottom of the page.

Guidelines

1. Blogs must be 100 words of original content.

Blogs are not meant to be Facebook statuses or tweets on Twitter. Blogs can contain almost anything, within the guidelines, but they cannot fall short of this word count. Repeating the same word, group of words, gibberish, lyrics, quotes, anything a user did not write him/herself, chain mail, IM messages, and any other kind of spam will not count towards the word count. I suggest using Word Counter to check your word count before posting. Also, don't forget to remove codes when checking word counts, moderators copy and paste from the posted blog into Word Counter, so the coding won't appear and thus won't count.

2. Swearing is not allowed in the title.

Swear words and their censored equivalents are not allowed in the title. A list of words that may not be used is available in the Blog Guidelines. When a swear words is used, the blog is removed and sent back to the user.

3. Harassment is not allowed.

When a blog is posted that means it is open to everyone on Mibba, meaning that people can and probably will comment. However, sometimes debates are sparked or someone just doesn't want to talk any more. When a user requests the other to not comment any further, that user has to stop. Further badgering could be seen as harassment. Mainly, because the user is making a direct request and is showing how uncomfortable he/she may be within that conversation. Also, when they ask a user to stop commenting on that blog, that does not mean a user should carry on over to the author's personal profile unless given permission.

4. People can blog what they like.

People don't have to blog about just their life. Users can blog about their stories, poems, projects, questionnaires, etc. Just because one user doesn't like a certain type of blog doesn't mean that it can't be posted. If it meets the guidelines, then it's good.

5. Users are allowed their opinions.

I see a lot of, “if you post your opinion you'll get banned,” which isn't true in the least bit. We all have opinions and we all may share them, even the negative/unpopular/controversial opinions as long as it is stated in a respectful manner. Bashing is against the rules all over the site, so sharing your opinion while bashing what you dislike can get you banned. It's easy to express one's opinions without being insulting.

Rule of thumbs is if it sounds like an insult don't send it. Condescenion can be read through the comments, sometimes. Such phrases like, "Do you not know how to Google?"/"Have you not read anything that I've typed." Can be read as an insult on that person's intelligence.

If a user spots another user breaking the rules, Mibba asks that you report the incident in question to the proper staff. Do not approach the rule breaker as that can lead to more problems. Send a PM with a link or a screenshot of the problem and it will be handled accordingly.

Special thanks to Fandango and psychotic secrets; for editing.