About the Café Forums

ForumsThe Café forums have been established to offer a venue to discuss interesting topics and interact freely, but with a reasonable sense of decorum that some other forums have not provided.

The Café Forums are self-moderating. First, there will be a Rating System  that will allow participants to rate each other with a ‘Thumbs Up’ or ‘Thumbs down’. These ratings should help establish a visible collective consensus about what participants in that forum like and don’t like. Please take the time to record your opinion about forum posts. The more participants we have, the better the quality of discussion.

We have developed some Rules of Etiquette. These rules address the simple desire of most participants for forum exchanges to remain civil and stay on topic. The rules are relatively simple and easy to understand.  We will evolve them over time based on member feedback.

Finally, there is an Issue Reporting capability to each post that will allow members to flag it as questionable. The Café staff will be able to follow up on these flagged items and decide what action needs to be taken, if any. We believe that most moderation issues can be dealt with by an email requesting the post or comment be modified or removed. Truly offensive posts will be removed. Finally, we are considering a “three strikes and you’re out” process for slow learners.

We welcome your comments. If you have suggestions or would like to help compose the rules of etiquette, please contact us and let us know. There will be a comment period for your feedback after we go live.