Bloomington Web Cafe Netiquette

Bloomington Web Cafe "Netiquette"

We are breaking new ground with the Cafe, and we're learning as we go. There are very few "rules" here, but that doesn't mean we want this to be a free-for-all. The founding premise of the Cafe is that it is to be a safe, intelligent, harassment-free environment in which a variety of people can come in, talk, listen, have fun, teach, and learn.

In any such gathering of diverse minds there is bound to be disagreement. We would like to see disagreement as a starting point towards discussion and learning, not as an excuse to harass and disparage. Some other forums on the Internet have become virtual battlegrounds and can be unfriendly places to visit. We do not want the our Cafe to turn this way, but neither do we want to create hard and fast rules.

We would like to think that the people who come into the Cafe are friendly, intelligent, compassionate, and understanding enough to be self-policing. Getting out of hand, aggressive, and abusive does us all a disservice. Please understand these underlying principles, and let them be your guide to Cafe netiquette.

A few other guidelines:

Please do not use the Cafe to pitch your product. It's perfectly fine if you like something and want to talk about it, but don't come in if you have no intentions other than to sell something.
When you create a topic it should be with the intention of opening a discussion. You do not need to create a new topic if you just want to ask a quick question -- you can do that within an existing topic.
If you find yourself getting into an extended discussion in a topic with just one other person, remember that dozens of other people may be read that topic, and they might not be interested in reading what amounts to a personal discussion. When this happens, consider moving the discussion to e-mail.
The use of profanity or promotion of anything illicit or illegal are not acceptable in the Cafe.

Finally, the Bloomington Web Cafe reserves the right to delete any message (or edit out any inappropriate content), for any reason, at the sole discretion of the conference moderator(s).

If the Cafe is down, or if there is some other problem, please send us an email.

Thanks for visiting us here in the Twin Cities Web Cafe. We hope you have a great time meeting with your neighbors in our virtual cafe!

Click Here To Enter the Twin Cities Web Cafe