Rules Of The Road

electric minds believes that a sense of community ultimately emerges from the groups of people that make up that community. Communities create norms, which emerge from the group and are enforced informally by members. Such norms grow over time and are handed down to new users. It's these norms - not rules - that form the matrix of a community. The few rules we have are meant to encourage the development of norms and nurture the spirit of community.

We believe that freedom of expression is important and censoring should be avoided when at all possible. We also recognize that tensions inevitably arise online and from time to time inflammatory topics surface. Keep in mind that it is possible to disagree civilly. Hosts will make every effort to deal with these tensions, and encourage all users to participate in conferences and discussions peaceably. We hope that you, our subscribers, will create discussions about appropriate norms. If instances arise where the norms the group creates are not sufficient, if modeling good communication fails, and if e-mail fails, we will pull accounts. This last strategy is something we take seriously and never do lightly - it is because of our commitment to maintaining a community where people can have conversations.

We provide conferences in the Virtual Community Center to discuss the craft and art of online conversation. We believe in the axiom "tools, not rules," so rather than tell you what to do, we give you the ability to do things, and let you decide how and when to do them. For example, we provide you with the "bozo filter," which you can use to make the words of a specific user disappear from your view without censoring them. Please visit our Help conference to learn how to use this tool and for other information about navigating the electric minds interface.

Your messages are your words, and you are responsible for them, as well as your overall behavior as a member of the electric minds community. As a member of the electric minds community, you agree not to post messages that or use electric minds to harass, solicit, threaten, offend, embarrass or impersonate any other person or that disrupt the dialogue in the electric minds community. In addition, you agree not to post messages that violate other persons' intellectual property, privacy or other rights.

You recognize that electric minds (or its affiliates) may use and reproduce your messages, in whole or in part, in the "Editor's Choice" and other content areas of the electric minds site.

electric minds does not control or edit the content of users' messages. electric minds is not responsible for the accuracy or integrity oftheinformation contained in those messages and will not be liable forany damages of any kind incurred as a result of any message posted on the electric minds site.

electric minds reserves the right to remove or hide any message from the site, and to block or terminate any user account, for any reason.