History forum posting rules (bomb, state, events, historical)

[PJSaturn]

People, it is extremely important that you refrain from posting copyrighted material unless you are its author. You may briefly paraphrase an article or other source with a sentence or two and post a link to the source. Otherwise, your posts should be your own writing.

When you post images, be careful not to use copyrighted images without permission. If an image is copyrighted, post a link instead of the image itself.

City-Data's Terms of Service clearly state that posting copyrighted material is forbidden.

If you are the author of copyrighted material which you include in a post, please clearly state so in the post.

Thanks.
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[mensaguy]

I want to clarify what PJ has said about posting copyrighted material.

The Terms Of Service says this:

Copyrighted Material - Instead of copying-and-pasting articles, photos, or other material you find on the Internet, you should be posting links to those articles. Posting a snippet from the article and then the link is the appropriate way to post. Repeat copyright infringers may have their account terminated and their access to the Site and any Services revoked.

Note that there are no exceptions listed. It doesn't say you can copy an entire post here if the writer says it is OK. It doesn't say you can post something here that you have posted on your own web site. It doesn't say you can post material that has no copyright notice on it. It simply says don't copy and paste material here that is on other web sites.

Even though we shouldn't be, we are lax about material copied from Wikipedia. Keep it to a minimum please. Post a snippet and a link.

What we will allow is copying material from historical documents, such as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the US Constitution, etc.

If you have questions, contact a moderator.

[mensaguy]

No Politics or Current Events. We have forums for those topics, and they are not History.

Defining when Politics becomes History: Posts about the current Administration and the immediate past administration of the US federal government are off limits. Example: For the purposes of this forum, January 20, 2017, was the date that the George W. Bush administration entered the realm of History. January 20, 2009, was when the Clinton administration became History.

We have to draw as line somewhere so past administrations can be discussed. This has been working reasonably well for several years in an informal way, so all we are doing is putting current practice into writing.

If you think you need to post something about current politicians in the History forum, be prepared to sit on the sidelines until your posting suspension expired.

[mensaguy]

No "Decades" threads. They are arbitrary, bring very little to the discussion of History, and usually end up being about music.

Once again, this is simply putting current practice into writing. We haven't permitted any "Decades" threads for several years.

[mensaguy]

We take a dim view of "What If" threads. This is the History forum, where we discuss things that happened in the past. When the History forum parameters were discussed, people said they see some value in some of the What If threads, so they are not banned, but we expect them to make sense. If they get too far out of the realm of possibility, expect them to be closed. Really bizarre ones may still be deleted.

[mensaguy]

I'm completely tired of editing out "F-Bombs" from posts in this forum. If a word is removed by the language filter, don't use it. Ever. At all. If you alter the spelling to get around the language filter, you will be subject to a posting suspension. Assume your 13 year old child is reading this forum to learn something about History, and speak accordingly.

This is a ridiculous thing to have to say, but it's an even more ridiculous thing for you to post in this forum. I've had to edit or delete several posts. Just today. If I have to keep doing it, offending members will be sitting out infractions.