Better Know A Website: Notes For the Commentariat

Editor's Note: The SBN tech team has endowed us with an amazing site platform with a lot of great features that help foster a strong community. Over the summer we'll be highlighting them as a refresher for older commenters and as an introduction to the tonnes of new members we've picked up over the last month. Using these tools helps to highlight the best comments, fanposts, and fanshots. That'll be especially useful during the season when there will be an even higher volume of all three things.

The Pension Plan Puppets community would be nothing without the fantastic commenters that are here on the regular. We're going to try something new and do a bit of a quote round up to cover what you might have missed in the threads that was exceptionally witty, hilarious, or insightful. In order to help me find these gems you're going to have to use the rec feature to make this all work.

Those who are new to PPP you'll notice below every comment there is a "reply" button. The commenting engine on SBN is fantastic because it allows for threaded and organized comments that automatically refresh and display new comments without having to refresh the browser. There is also an "actions" button that you can click that gives you the option to Flag or Rec a comment:

Much more after the jump

Flagging is useful in the rare event we have a troll infestation or a comment is offensive or malicious, though often you all take care of this before the exterminator/banhammer needs called in.

PPP: This helps me deal with trolls that I might miss or to give gentle reminders to people that sometimes forget that most people read the site at work.

Don't worry if you accidentally flagged someone when you intended to rec a comment, I've done it. It happens. Rec'ing is like awarding a gold star to a comment or a post.

PPP: This is instead of writing +1 or +whatever as a comment.

When a comment gets so many recs it becomes highlighted green:

When a fanpost or fanshot has so many recs it becomes featured in the sidebar which moves it to the top of the list under the Recommended Fanshots or the Recommended Fanposts header:

What shapes and builds PPP is the community which is evident from the creative impact reflected in the site's dictionary of terms and references as well as adherence to the guidelines and rules which can be summed up best as: have civility, tact and some fun. Or more specifically:

Feel free to disagree. Defending your view point is encouraged but keep it clean. In fact, keep it well-written too.

Swear if you must but picking your spots will make the swearing much more effective.

If you are a fan of an opposing team, play nice. We have it bad enough as it is. We welcome opposing viewpoints but trolling will not be tolerated.

That's pretty easy, isn't in? Just use the reply button, stay on topic in the front page posts, go nuts with hockey talk in the FTBs and if you want to socialize then that is why the Chatty Cathy threads were invented.

PPP: If you want to get an idea of where the boundaries lie here are two posts I've written when things have needed to be reined in: In Which I Explain Some Simple Truths and A Friendly Reminder

For the most part, y'all are great and this is a functioning self-governing system and rarely do we need to warn anyone or knock them into line. If you ever have any question or concerns, just drop down to the very bottom of the page and you can email Triple P.