Toledo Talk Posting Guidelines

ToledoTalk is used to discuss the news, events, and issues affecting people in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigian.

Important national or international issues and events can also be posted here. Use your best judgement on issues outside of Toledo. This is an open site that welcomes discussion, so it will have to be extremely inappropriate for the post to be removed.

A post doesn't have to be about a story on another website. Questions, opinions, how-to articles, etc. are welcomed.

Pick the appropriate category for your post. If there isn't a category that fits your post, send an e-mail to admin@toledotalk.com and a new category will be added.

Posting a link to your homepage and asking for feedback is a bad post. Self-promotion isn't what this site is about. Self promotion can be "earned." If you consistently post thought-provoking comments or topics on the site, people will click on your name to know you better. On the profile page, you can put your own URL and people can check that out.

If your topic or comment is better served by referring to information on your personal website, that's okay.

What about making posts to the front page to sell things? No. If there's interest, a classifieds section can be added to the site.

Flagrant self-promotion by pretending to be someone else will result in the account being deactivated.

A new front page posting that is a negative attack against another Toledo Talk user will not be tolerated. We get enough of that in comments. But making the attack on another user the main subject of a new thread will result in the poster's account being deactivated.

Creating multiple accounts and pretending to be different people will result in all of the user's known accounts being deactivated.

And lastly, don't troll, which means posting inflammatory messages for the sole purpose of baiting others to argue the points until blue in the face. People "troll" for kicks and to destroy conversations and communites. Intelligent discussion and debate is preferred.

Follow the golden rule, treat others' opinions with the same respect that you would like to be afforded.

Failure to follow these guidelines may result in your posts being deleted, your posting rights revoked, or your account banned. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

On July 14, 2006, a method was added that allows logged-in users to complain that a comment is inflammatory. The Ouch!!! link appears immediately to the left of the "posted by" line at the bottom of a comment. The ouch link only appears if the user is logged in, and it only appears if the topic is young enough to still accept comments.

A user can only complain once per comment. Trying to issue a second complaint causes the user to receive an error message, telling the user he or she complained already for that comment. After the first complaint, all that happens visually for the user is the page reloads with the comment being complained about appearing at the top of the webpage, as if the user clicked on the permalink.

And a complaint is registered in the database. When a comment receives 'X' number of complaints, the background color for that comment changes to a light red, indicating to everyone that it's a comment not worth reading.

The point of the "Ouch!!!" command is to allow users to police the site and hopefully reduce the noise, especially those comments that probably break the posting guidelines of the site. This is not meant to be used because one user simply disagrees with another user's viewpoint. "Ouch!!!" is meant to highlight obviously offensive or troll-like comments.