Royals Review Community Guidelines

The Royals are on a truly historic post-season run, an amazing, joyous, wonderful run that should be the complete focus of our attention after years of suffering. However in the last week this site has been distracted by an incident that has lessened the experience for many of us, the banning of a long time member

While I was not involved with the banning of a longtime member, I do understand the point of view of SBN management and bear some responsibility for allowing the situation to deteriorate. Fortunately that member, management, and myself have come to an understanding that will allow that member return to our community effective immediately.

I want to emphasize that no one on this community will ever be banned for simple criticism of myself, our writers, the site, or SB Nation. We encourage feedback and free speech, whether it be positive or negative, and we will not take retributive action simply because we do not care for the message.

What will get you bounced from our community is persistent abusive harassment towards a user or users. Specifically, this means any more harassment of writers at MLB Daily Dish will get you banned immediately. The definition of "harassment" can be difficult to spell out, but I think we all know trolling when we see it, and I will generally give one warning to steer you in the right direction, but after that I cannot accept that kind of behavior and I personally will ban you.

What will get you banned without any warning:

• Racial/ethnic/homophobic/misogynistic slurs (this includes the word that rhymes with bunt)
  
• Posting of pornographic images
• Revealing personal details about another user
• Obvious trolling with no positive contribution of any kind

Beyond that, you are the community, so if you feel there are any other guidelines or amendments to these guidelines we should have to make this the best community we can have, I am all ears. Kirk Gibson thinks we should probably have something about bunting when up by five runs, or bat-flipping during home runs or something.

I want to hash things out in this thread, but beyond that I consider the McKinney incident over, and I won't tolerate all of the threads being derailed with discussion over it. This doesn't mean you can't discuss it, but I don't want a random Ned Yost story to turn 20 snarky comments about SBN and an argument over Scott McKinney.

The main reason I took the job as editor of this site is because I recognized many years ago that this community was a special community, in my mind a more enlightened baseball community that I could commiserate with over the many failings of the Kansas City Royals. The fact that many of you were so upset when Scott was banned I think is a testament to that. But that is also why it is so important that we conduct ourselves in a respectful manner, because the actions of one member of a community reflect on us as a whole.

I consider the matter closed and I hope you'll join me in welcoming Scott back to the community.

I'll try to answer any questions you may have about policies with the understanding that I probably won't say much about the McKinney incident specifically other than what I have already written.