Community Guidelines Reminder

The offseason is always the time when we see the most off-topic and heated comments, so I'm taking the chance to remind everyone of the community guidelines that we all agreed to when we signed up for this site.  

Intelligent Discussions: If you visit the Cleveland.com discussion boards, how many posts do you find that are actually worth reading about the Browns? Not many. And, a significant amount of people who do talk about the Browns do so without much thought, posting comments such as "mangini sucks...can't we just ship rogers and take crabtree omg that would be amazing".

The thought itself is not stupid - the way that people go about conveying the thought is what can sound ignorant. A more appropriate way to post a take on the sentence above would be something like the following:

"Honestly, I think this offseason has been a train wreck so far. I know it's still early, but I'm very weary of some of the unusual decisions Mangini has made thus far, like his "issues" with Shaun Rogers and the releasing of a beloved player like Joe Jurevicius. 

Hopefully everything comes together around draft time - getting a player like Crabtree might be enough to offset the voids left by Jurevicius and Winslow."

I hope you see the difference. If not, it doesn't mean you need to leave DBN. Just enjoy reading the discussions and hold back posting yourself until you feel you're more comfortable conveying your thoughts better. Granted, you might feel hatred towards a coach or player, but it really annoys a lot of other people when statements are made without proper justification. In the end, everyone else might disagree with you, but that's fine as long as you backed up your argument in the first place.

The emphasis is mine, as I feel that line is the most important.  This is an area that has been slipping recently.  Typos, spelling and grammar issues happen, and nobody is going to jump down your throat about it as long as it isn't too frequent.  But ending sentences with five exclamation points, obviously not proofreading posts, absolutely refusing to capitalize anything, and typing like you're texting don't belong here.  We try to keep a civil atmosphere here, and you can't have an intelligent discussion if you don't at least pretend to be over the age of 13.

Many of you are going to see this as me being anal or too strict, but I've heard from more than one former regular (and a few current ones) that the site is slowly becoming difficult to comment on.  The articles themselves remain top notch, but the discussion is slipping.  I haven't been here twice as long as some people, and even I've noticed the level of discussion slowly falling as membership goes up.  Our standards shouldn't drop to accommodate more members.  It is the responsibility of each member to live up to the guidelines in place, they agreed to them after all.

the rest of the guidelines can be seen here, and I recommend everyone take a look at them, especially in light of some topics that will inevitably come up this offseason, such as the CBA.