We are different

To make the G+ Philosophy Community one of the best online forums for philosophy enthusiasts to participate in, I have been working hard to increase the standards and the quality of the contents in the community. That is one reason why most posts in the community have a high engagement rate, no spam of any kind, and you rarely see a post in the community that does not attract any comment and discussion.

Unlike many other G+ communities, when someone posts something in the G+ Philosophy Community it is almost guaranteed that a conversation will ensue. Not a trivial achievement! That is all possible thanks to you and other members of the community. So, thank you! I am proud of what we have been able to achieve with the help of all members and contributors.

Standards

To get even closer to an ideal community, there have been a set of standards that are being enforced upon all contents posted in our community. No post is exempt from these standards. That ensures consistency, better communication, higher quality posts, relevance, a higher rate of engagement, and overall a much better experience for all members.

Your post, if you made any, is one of the many posts I need to approve or reject on a daily basis. I am always excited about new posts and what they can bring to the community. I am committed to the highest level of quality that I can achieve through the moderation process. I strive to be fair, play no favouritism and hold everyone accountable against the same set of standards, and use sound discretion in corner-cases where there is no guideline upon which a situation can be decided. I do not operate in isolation. That is where your posts come into play.

You and the other 41,000+ members of this community are integral parts of the life of this community. Without your help and attention, there will be no community, no posts, no discussions, and no fun. Eventually, it is within your power to make it work or break. My job here is to make this community the best it can be so your discussions can flourish and you get a qualitatively different experience in this community compared to others.

To achieve that goal, I have devised a set of standards, as explained in the community guidelines, that I have been adjusting, polishing, and monitoring for years since 2012. Most contributors neatly comply with all of them. However, every day there are a few posts that do not. Once informed of the issues, the authors of these posts usually adjust their posts promptly and everything keeps moving smoothly. In rare occasions, a poster finds themselves in contempt of the standards and decides to leave the community (happens a couple of times a year; sourly unfortunate).

Behind the scene

If you are curious about what I deal with behind the scene, here are a few issues against which I see the most number of non-compliances:

(1) disruptive writing styles, e.g. disruptive punctuations, all caps, grammatical and mechanical errors, typos, etc.,
(2) images under the posts (a post must not have any link, attachment, or image. Instead leave them in the comment section under the post if necessary).

The 2nd issue is easy to understand and fix.

Not much the 1st issue though. Some might not care about any of the aforementioned errors. They might even like them and feel liberated by incorporating even more errors in their posts as a way to show how carefree or cool they are. They might have made a patented style out of it. Fair enough. That certainly is their choice and I respect it. Nevertheless, I happened not to see those stylistic choices as appropriate in a large community such as this one, and as a result, do not allow such posts in this community. This is not going to go away anytime soon, so we have to live with this disagreement.

Let’s improve!

I have increased my attention to the 1st item lately, and I am going to hold members accountable to a higher degree of professionalism than before. As such, I am going to ask all members to fix their posts, if they contain such errors, before approving them. There is no exception to this rule. This is not a new rule though, and it has already been explained in the community guidelines that has always been available to all members at all time. I am going to enforce them a bit more diligently now.

Who would be affected?

Everyone is held to the same standard. As such, I expect all members to have read and understood the community guidelines upon joining the community and post in compliance with its standards.

Need your help

With your help, we keep having a great community that looks professional, clean, active, enthusiastic, and relevant to all of us. I won’t be able to achieve these goals without you. If everyone helps, we can make it happen and even improve upon what we have already got. It certainly takes a lot of time and effort, but it is worth it.

Editorial Guidelines & Style Sheet

We don’t have an official style sheet for the posts in this community (should we?). Nevertheless, the following items are the bare minimum criteria that all posts need to meet before I approve them (they don’t apply to comments):

- paragraph spacing: there must be one line-space between each paragraph; no more, no less;
- meaningless punctuations: avoid using meaningless punctuations such as ?????? / !!!!!! / …….. / ?!?!?! / ?, / ?. / ?... / !, / !. / !... / ,,,,, / etc. They don’t mean what some think they mean. They don’t mean anything at all, and they are annoying;
- ALL CAPS: avoid using ALL CAPS. Use bold or italic to emphasize a word or a sentence sporadically;
- wall of text: avoid copy/pasting a long paragraph with no proper line-space. It gets annoying and hard to read;
- first-word capitalization: unless it is a list, English sentences must start with a capital letter;
- end-of-sentence punctuations: unless it is a list item or a header, all English sentences end with a punctuation of some sort (list items might end with a semicolon or no punctuation); and
- punctuation marks do not mix: in most cases, punctuation marks do not follow one another in an English sentence. Those few corner-cases have meaningful reasons why two punctuation marks do follow one another (for example a closed bracket at the end of a sentence or something like “this”). See “meaningless punctuations” above.

If you are in doubt, consult the University of Oxford Style Guide for more information (or see the relevant part of this cheat-sheet: http://bit.ly/2wehQpf). As a rule of thumb, “Use as little punctuation as necessary while retaining the meaning of the sentence.” [Source: the same cheat-sheet.]

All Indo-European languages follow similar rules. Most posters naturally follow them since there is nothing exceptional or extraordinary about the rules. Those posters who do not, will be asked to edit their posts before they can be released into the community. Posters have 24 hours to comply. When the grace period elapses and if all the edits are not properly applied, the post will be rejected. It applies to all posts, regardless of their content.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

All we need to do is to pay attention to how we compose our posts when we post. Just follow the KISS principle and all will be good. Remember, if we don’t have time to compose a professional-looking post or if we don’t care, then we cannot expect others to have time to put up with our poorly-written piece of word-salad.

Please comment below

As always, you are welcome to comment below. Don’t be afraid of holding me to the same set of standards. I would love to hear your constructive input.

Thank you for your time and happy philosophizing!