These are the rules for posting to Linchpin.ca, read them carefully as there are sanctions for breaking them, up to and including being permanently banned from the website.

Posting rules

A. General principles

Each individual is responsible for what they write. You are expected to treat others with the same respect you expect from them - do not forget that there are real people behind usernames.

Do not post anything you know to be false, defamatory, obscene, offensive, hurtful or invasive of a person's privacy. While debating and discussion is fine, rudeness, insulting posts, personal attacks or purposeless inflammatory posts will not be tolerated.

This website is for those who are interested in class struggle anarchism regardless of organization. In the real world arguments exist between different organizations and individuals. It is acceptable to discuss these here _but_ such discussions should not include insults or unsubstantiated accusations. Flame wars do no one any good and will just demoralize new participants and discredit all those who participate.

The practice of calling forum members 'racists', 'middle class','politically correct', 'red fascist' 'authoritarian' or 'collaborators with the state' is not allowed as it is only disruptive. Nor do we tolerate blanket statements of dismissal against comrades' arguments which center on content-less insults such as 'American', 'liberal' or 'academic'. This tactic is lazy and counterproductive. If you have a disagreement with someone, please take the time to develop your position. Statements that reduce political discussion to meaningless generalizations do not further debate.

Posts of an openly racist, fascist or sexist nature will be removed and the poster will be banned as will those that are homophobic or sectarian (in the religious sense).

Childish humour doesn't interest us and may be misunderstood so no off-color pictures or graphics, supposedly ironic' homophobia, sexism, racism etc.

B. Posting methods

Please post comments to the relevant articles.

No multiple postings - do not post the same comment in different stories.

Having more than one username is only permitted if it is for security reasons. Do not use a second username to agree with yourself for example or use multiple usernames in order to cause havoc. Using a second ID to troll or because your posting rights have been suspended will result in a permanent ban for all of your ID's and may also result in the deletion of all posts made from any of these ID's.

C. Other stuff we don't want to see

1. One liners - a common problem with forums is political discussion being replaced by one-liners that may be in-jokes between friends, dismissive put-downs or even simple "I agree"-type statements.. We don't want these on this forum. They either add nothing to the discussion or go towards creating a hostile environment which is not conducive to debate.

In particular:

a. In all threads the following types of one-liner are not allowed:

* put-downs (dismissive or disparaging comments), smart-arse or snarky comments.

b. The following types of one-liner are not allowed:
* one-line sentences expressing agreement or disagreement. These do nothing to add to understanding of the issues under discussion. Develop your agreement or disagreement into an argument for your position.

Similarly, the following types of one-liner are permitted (provided they do not also fall into the above categories):

a. Genuine attempts to learn more about the topic under discussion (e.g. "Where is that quote from?" is OK but "So what?" is not).
b. One-line replies which provide genuine answers, as long as they are in the spirit of fair discussion (e.g. "Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy, p.45" is OK).

Remember that all users benefit from clear and well-thought-out posts in board discussion. Adding a second sentence to your post further clarifying your position does nothing to harm discussion, but can help us all understand better.

2. Individual disputes

The website wasn't set up to facilitate discussions about individuals, but discussions between individuals and organizations about politics and strategies.

If a discussion is about differences between GroupA and GroupB, that's fine. If a discussion is about different approaches to political issues, different understanding or different strategies, that's fine.

But if a discussion is about what X individual said or did, that isn't fine. That is not a discussion for (this) forum, as it's meaningless to people who don't understand who the personalities being talked about are.

Debate has to be at at a level that people from other communities who may face similar questions can participate in.

We also don't want to see people pursuing vendettas against other posters across multiple threads.

Users should think about how their posts look to people from the outside. In-jokes, joshing and cliquish behavior may seem innocuous to those in the know, but from the outside it can be off-putting. Please make sure not to derail serious threads with in-crowd humor.

3. Outing

Don't use people's real name in a post if they use a pseudonym for political activity and do not link a pseudonym with someone's real world identity. Likewise do not post details of someones workplace or where they live. Breach of this may result in an immediate ban. If you think there is good reason to expose someone's identity do so only by contacting us [1] with an explanation of why you think this is needed.

4. Flames in serious posts

When making a serious post don't mix flaming it with it. For instance we don't want you to tell people their arguments are stupid or idiotic while you explain why they are wrong.

D. How to react to problem posts

If you see a problem post please report it to the moderators via the 'contact form [2]'. Do not complain about the post on the thread and in particular do not suggest someone should be removed from the website.

If you consider someone else to be flaming or trolling do not post this on a thread - doing so will result in you being treated as a troll. In such cases contact us with a link to the relevant post and we will take whatever action is appropriate.

E. Enforcement

While these rules cover most common situations, everything cannot be anticipated. Therefore, the moderators reserve the right to take any actions deemed appropriate to ensure the site is not disrupted or abused in any way.

Failure to comply with any of the above rules will lead to a poster's posting rights being suspended for a minimum period of 48 hours after which they will need to apologize and promise to respect the rules in the future before their posting rights are restored. Repeated re-offenses despite warnings will lead to complete deactivation of your account and banning from the site.

F. Discussion of moderation

If you have a question about moderating, please contact us [3]