How We Moderate Comments

If your comment is moderated, it may or may not appear shortly. Please read the rules and email admin if you have any questions, do not post about this on the main feed or additional comments will likely be auto-moderated.

This spells out what comments get flagged either by our filters or own hands. We strive to practice what we preach and if comments are being held for moderation that you believe shouldn’t be or you have question about how we moderate comments, please email the IGMR Admin team. Do not complain by posting another about moderation.

The conversations you have can be insightful and opinions are welcome. We love facts the most, but this really is a grapevine so theories and rumors are great too— as long as we can keep the difference clear to readers. It is important to delineate fact from fiction and theory, and doing this will make our site the most useful. Cite your sources when possible or say in your comment that it is an opinion or theory. All comments are welcome, with only a few exceptions that have to do subverting our “do no harm approach”, our goals for this site and the sense of community here. Comment “cool kids club” on homepage or on the Where Are the Moderators topic in the forum, if you really read this whole thing.

While we try to go through comments that have been held for moderation and rescue valid comments that do no harm, we recommend that you avoid doing any of the following:

Comments in all capital letters. Yes, if the content is relevant and adds value to our conversations, we may allow something in all caps. But ALL CAPS writing is tantamount to yelling; do you really want to shout at the thousands of users who regularly use our site and likely in a similar position as you?

Posts containing nothing but an URL. They look like spam to filters, and frankly they often look like spam to us too. If you’re sharing an address that answers a question or helps others here, it may get moderated. But if you add even a short description of the info being linked to, it will show up much more quickly.

Now there are comments we remove regularly, some are automatically moderated:

Promoting another website or repetitive comments. This is not about a sense of competition, but rather the overarching goal of aggregating good conversation and information here on the refund grapevine.

Comments that harass, attack individual users, violate rights, laws or any other comment we deem offensive and not in spirit with our goals may, in our sole judgment, or upon request from other users, be removed.

Flaming is anything that is said or done to insult another person. All memebers are to be treated fairly. If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.

No Discrimination this is similar to flaming, but is not aimed at a particular person or social group, but towards an entire race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

No Illegal Discussions/Downloads. No links to illegal downloads or copyrighted material is permitted. This includes movies, books, software, etc. Do not attempt to sell these products or post links to where this can be done.

No Trolling With Multiple IPs. IPs are provided to us once you have commented. These will be checked to verify that you do not have multiple active accounts.

No Impersonation. Impersonation means trying to be someone else. This is not allowed and will be moderated without prior notice.

Asking to become a Mod. Please do not ask to become an IGMR Mod on the main page. When things are going at full speed your request may not be seen by Admin. To throw your hat into the ring please email Admin.

Off Topic and Niceties. Please keep off topic and niceties to a minimum. Niceties are comments that consist of “OK” and “lol”. While at times some off topic and niceties are OK, please keep in mind these comments will be moderated after at time to reduce feed congestion and make it easier for users to find on topic information.

Content/Pictures. Nude pictures, pornography, or links to like material are not allowed. There are plenty of places to go to find this type of content on the internet, this is not one of them. Please keep all pictures posted within these limits. Any graphic content or offensive materials are not allowed. Please use good judgement on this. If you post anything that we feel is in violation of this rule the comment will be moderated.

Calling out/Treatment of IGMR Mods and Admins will do nothing but get you in trouble. If you have an issue with a Mod, email Admin, but keep it respectful. You may not always agree with a decision and that is fine. The Mods have a job to do, please let them do it. Remember we are here to help you. The Mods and Admin deserve your respect and expect to be treated with it.

Language. This is not too much of a problem, talk how you want, but please do not over do the swearing. Also do not address anyone in a way you would not want to be talked to yourself.

Comment Moderation. If your comment is being held in moderation please read How We Moderate Comments and review your comment. If you feel your comment is being held in moderation in error please email Admin so it can be looked into further. Do not ask why your comment is being moderated on the feed, or comment that you are being moderated. Such comments will also be moderated.  Please read more below about DFTT to understand why some seemingly innocuous comment are moderated.

DFTT.  Don’t feed the trolls.  This is a concept that anyone on the internet should become familiar with as social networks and forums are widely used, but unfortunately are also widely abused. DFTT is an expression used in chat rooms and on forums as a suggestion to ignore individuals trying to start arguments or cause general grief. Feeding the trolls makes it even harder for administrators and moderators to manage them. This is especially true at igotmyrefund.com because of the type of forum we operate. If you respond to people that are obviously causing trouble, it further incites them to do more. And sometimes, when they get a response, others will join in.  This makes bad situations worse. Again, please remember that feeding the trolls makes it even harder for administrators and moderators to manage them.  It’s important to know that some very pervasive trolls have figured out how to subvert tools used to manage a forum. We choose to have an open forum where anyone can post without registering.  There are pros and cons to this type of forum, which we won’t go into here.  But please also know, we are aware of common ways trolls are managed in both closed and open forums.  We simply can’t do some of the things used in closed forums in this type of forum.  But we will vigorously do our best to manage trolls.

Some more general commenting info from IGMR:

We’ve put a lot of work into our site by promoting civil and meaningful comments and do our best to automatically detect and eliminate problems. We will remove vulgar comments and obscene messages, try to restrict spammers and trolls to avoid too much chaos in the feed.  This is an open forum where we invite comments even from those who are not registered.  This allows for anonymity, but again, carries pros and cons.  We have chose this type of forum and it will remain to be this way.  This requires your extreme patience when comments are being moderated and bad actors take advantage of this method of running a forum.  Thank you for being the best part of IGMR, we will continue to do our best to moderate inappropriate content.

Do you have a lot to say? If a topic merits attention and could potentially get lost in our fast paced commenting system, we encourage you to write up any information you have on the topic and email it to [email protected] so we can create a page and give you credit for your hard work!  Or, you can start a new topic in our forum and gain your own following.  But remember, it comes with pros and cons.

Congestion.  Often the answer to questions appear in our forum, old comments, HOT topic and FAQ pages. So, we encourage you to use the search in our sidebar for answers. You might find more focused results. And we encourage you to help other users by linking to that content so that you can help them find their way around.

If you really read this whole thing.  You know what to do because you are in the cool kids club.