Rules ~ Forums ~ Ridertown.com

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Ridertown Forum Rules ~ Don't think of them as "rules," think of them as guidelines that are mandatory

We have adopted these policies for the Forums in order to encourage their widest possible use while discouraging their shallowest possible use. With luck and your cooperation we hope to arrive at the optimal cross section of canned, Kant, cant and can't.
No personal attacks

Everyone is entitled to his opinion and all opinions backed up by reasoning are welcome here. But a holder or proponent of an opinion is not the opinion itself. It is fair game to make an argument against an opinion, it is not fair game here to argue against the holder of the opinion. This is a distinction difficult for many to see; another way to state it would be -- It is all right to attack the message, but not the messenger.

Respect member anonymity

Do not speculate on or reveal the real-life identity of anyone in the Forums against his wishes. Identifying yourself in the Forums is absolutely voluntary. We promote anonymous participation in the spirit of open discussion, recognizing that every post therefore must stand on its own merits.

Exclamation marks

The mother tongue is under attack from all sides, nowhere worse than on the internet. The Forums quixotically swim against this tide by encouraging proper grammar, spelling and punctuation as symptoms of civilized intelligence. To illustrate our commitment, we actually attempt to enforce correction of one small example of the mongrelization of the language: the misuse of the exclamation mark.
Contrary to the Madison Avenue stylebook, the appearance of an exclamation mark does not make an otherwise common remark exciting or exceptional -- it makes it incorrect. Two exclamation marks make it incorrect on stilts, and more than two exclamation marks destroy life as we know it. An exclamation mark is the punctuation equivalent of a bullethole in the forehead, and should only be used under similarly sudden or surprising circumstances.

Horace