Dun dun dun... Yes, we're making a Community Guidelines for FTF. Aren't you excited!? Don't worry though, this isn't a result of anyone or anything's behavior. We're not going to get a whole lot strict all of a sudden, but we figured it would be nice to set some guidelines for everyone to follow. They'll be pretty straightforward, basic rules.

The Community Guidelines will put a lot of emphasis on "Community." That means if you think something is wrong or out of order, flag that comment, or even send an email. The moderators will see it and take action if necessary for the issue.

Leave your opinions in the comments!

Free Speech on Fear the Fin

FTF believes strongly in free speech and having a diversity of people sharing ideas and opinions can be expressed on the site. Users are, in general, free to express their opinions without fear of retribution. The ability to have so many users with different personalities, beliefs, and qualities makes FTF a strong community.

However, as a community, along with free speech comes responsibility. Users must be sensitive and respectful to the community as a whole.

The following are simply not acceptable on FTF (excepting, in some cases, for obvious humor between people with an existing rapport); and violate the community guidelines which are listed below:

1. Personal attacks on community members.
2. Comments that are intolerant or prejudiced (sexist, racist, homophobic, etc.) in nature.
3. Harassing/baiting of users.
4. Relentless negativity. (Now this doesn't mean you can't be pessimistic. This is to simply limit users posting "the sharks sux and will never win the SC" 10  and similar lines 10 times in a row. These comments do not reason or propose solutions. There is nothing helpful to reading comments that say their team sucks and it doesn't contribute anything to anyone. There's a difference between somebody using evidence to prove a point constructively and somebody who is destructive in what is essentially trolling.
5. Posts that bring highly inflammatory, non-hockey related topics such as politics.

Consequences of violating the Community Guidelines

Each violation will be handled individually. In general, the violating user will be warned to stop their offense. Banning of users is a last resort and will only occur to users who continue to derail the community.

FanPosts and FanShots

If you are writing a FanPost that requires you to use fillers to reach the 75 minimum words, you should post your comments/ideas elsewhere (whether it be in an existing thread, FanShot or Off-Topic (OT) Thread).

Posting pictures

As courtesy to the readers, if you are posting a comment with a picture, please put a subject title. It doesn't actually have to be a title, just a dot would do. This allows users to collapse the post, which is especially useful in long threads (You can do this by clicking the comments title).

Also, always use the preview button before posting a picture. Sometimes the picture might not turn out the way we expect. It might not show up or the size of the picture could be too big. If that is the case, add "height=X" to the html tag, with X being a number to show the pictures height.

Example how both are done: