WELCOME TO BUFFALO RUMBLINGS!
Here at Buffalo Rumblings, you'll find a passionate, diverse community of Buffalo Bills fans that is constantly growing and learning. Our goal for this community is to foster conversations that are thought-provoking, helpful, and most of all, fun. In order to facilitate this, however, we need your help. Here are some guidelines to get you started.
HOW TO REGISTER AND CUSTOMIZE YOUR PROFILE
You can register by clicking the 'Sign Up' link at the top right corner of our home page (or by clicking here). From there, you can either register directly, or do so through your Facebook, Twitter or OpenID account. You may also want to review Vox Media's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy if you're extra sensitive about your personal information. Bottom line: you can trust us.
The next step is to customize your profile. You can upload a profile photo, give your fellow Bills fans a little background about yourself, and list your other favorite teams and athletes. You can also edit your account settings to link to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, which will allow you to easily share your work in our community in those channels.
If you need to make any changes, you can always edit your profile by clicking your username at the top right-hand corner of our home page, then clicking the "Edit Profile" link under your avatar on your profile page. You will find extra functionality and navigation in that space, as well.
Now that you're all set up, it's time to get in there and start talking Bills football.
HOW TO POST AND COMMENT
There are three basic ways that you can contribute to the community.
- Write a FanPost: Our FanPost section is where any reader can write their own articles and share their opinions in longer-form postings. In many cases, these posts are worthy of our front page, and these discussions are often the very best of what this blog has to offer.
- Share a FanShot: This section is where you can share interesting or off-beat links related to the Bills from around the web. The best of the best end up in our popular Web Rumblings section.
- Post a Comment: This is the basic functionality of a registered account, and the best way to discuss the various stories on our site. You'll find a comment section on every front-page story, FanPost and FanShot posted here.
If you aren't sure where a specific thought you have should go, feel free to ask the community at large, especially if it's on a Community post. You may also contact the blog directly; see the very last section of this page for contact info.
Most of the time, you'll be posting comments if you're actively participating in our discussions. There are four basic commenting functions that you should be aware of.
- Reply: Use this to reply to a specific comment. Your reply will be threaded to keep the conversation organized, and the author of the original comment can keep track of the number of replies to his or her thought on his or her profile page.
- Recommend: If you like (or love) what someone else said, or even how it was said if you don't agree, be a pal and recommend their comment. Enough "recs" will turn a comment green to highlight the best parts of our discussions.
- Flag: This function allows you to report a post to our moderation (read: editorial) team here at Buffalo Rumblings. Use it to report posts that break blog rules or fly in the face of common human decency; just don't use it to mark something that you disagree with, or to hassle other users. Please use this feature responsibly - but in good practice, this is one of the most useful features of the blog as we try to keep discussions as lively, civil, and fun as possible.
- Hotkeys: Press the 'Z' key to mark an unread (highlighted in yellow) comment as read and move to the next comment. Press the 'R' key to reply to a highlighted comment. There's no need to manually scroll through hundreds of comments with these shortcuts in place!
RULES OF THE ROAD
Here's a list of things that could get your comment, FanPost or FanShot flagged and/or removed, and possibly result in a warning or ban on your account. This is not a comprehensive list, and the staff of Buffalo Rumblings reserves the right to remove anything deemed inappropriate.
- Spam: It's not tolerated here. Nobody likes spammers. Posting the same comment on multiple threads is spamming, as is relentlessly linking to your own work on another site, even if said work is legal.
- Personal attacks: Attacking someone's person is unhealthy, both for yourself and for our community. We are part of the same fan base, with the same goals for our time in mind; there's no good reason to talk about the team and the sport in an unfriendly atmosphere. Any such post could result in a warning or a ban. This is your most challenging charge as a member of our community: posting respectfully and focusing on the subject matter, not the subjects discussing it.
- Illegal activities: If you post (or even request) links to illegal game streams, downloads or the like, your request won't be around for long.
- NSFW material: Not allowed, of course. Try to keep images and GIFs shared on our pages to a PG-13 rating, as we do have younger community members. When in doubt, don't be gross. We're talking about football, after all.
- Racism, sexism, religious, political, and other discrimination: Without defining it (because you should know it just like we know it), these are personal attacks aimed at groups of people. The same principle applies: it's unpleasant, and it's not tolerated.
- Trolling: If you're making off-topic comments, derailing threads, or posting flamebait, you're probably not going to be around for long (and your comment won't, either). An example of that would be spelling names using dollar signs (such as Jairu$), or wordplay like "Doug Moron" or "Aaron Maybust." It could also be going off topic on what constitutes newsworthiness, or discussing editorial decisions made by site management. Those are just a few of many, many examples of trolling. Don't do it.
- Offensive usernames: If your username contains language or terms that could be construed as offensive, we'll ban your account and start a dialogue with you to change your username to something more appropriate.
- Multiple accounts: Believe it or not, you only need to have one account to post here. If you are having a problem with your primary account, let us know about it (or email support@sbnation.com) rather than creating a new one. Using a disposable email address signals to us that you're not here for the right reasons and we'll go ahead and block those. You also may not create accounts designed to impersonate another person.
- Cross posting: Don't make duplicate posts across different threads — it clogs things up and fractures the conversation.
- Site bashing: Whether it's Buffalo Rumblings, or another website, don't bash them or their staff. It's not cool and it's disrespectful to a lot of people.
- "First post" rule: If you made an account on Buffalo Rumblings specifically to engage in any of the behavior above, it tells us that you aren't here to contribute in any meaningful manner. If your first post breaks the rules above, we'll usually go ahead and issue a ban - but we'll also engage in dialogue with you if you genuinely goofed in doing so.
MODERATION POLICY
Buffalo Rumblings is a self-moderated community. We do not have a staff of moderators; instead, we are entrusting our well-established community to keep conversations in line. Here's how it will work:
- Flag, flag, flag: Your moderation tool as a community member is the flag feature mentioned above. If you see something that you find offensive and/or which violates any of the guidelines here, flag it. Any comment, FanPost, or FanShot that is flagged by our community members will raise an alert for our editorial staff.
- Review process: Chris Trapasso, Matt Warren, and/or Dan Lavoie will handle all flagged content on a case-by-case basis. When a flagged piece of content reaches our attention, it will be reviewed as soon as possible. In many cases, the content will be allowed to stay as is. In some other cases, the content will be removed with no warning issued, as the transgression will not be severe enough. Alternately, the author of the content may be contacted to remove the offending material if said content is editable. And, yes, there will often be cases where content will be removed and a warning or ban will be issued.
The power is now in your hands to keep Buffalo Rumblings as civil, friendly and passionate a community as possible.
FAQ
Q: You removed one of my posts. Doesn't that mean you're censoring me?
A: No, and yes, sort of. It means that we have posting rules that you agreed to abide by when you signed up for the blog, that you broke one of said rules, and that our community moderation and review process flagged your comment for removal. We are striving to create a healthy community here, and some behavior is not tolerated.
Q: I have a question, comment or complaint about moderation.
A: Excellent! You should email our Editor-in-Chief, Matt Warren, at mattrichwarren @ gmail.com. He runs point on any and all moderation questions. You definitely should NOT complain about it on the site in the form of a comment or FanPost, because those will just make everything worse - especially if the transgression is a mild one, easily rectified by an email.
Q: How do I stay up to date with Buffalo Rumblings?
A: Our blog, which lives on the SB Nation United platform, is built to render on any device (whether it be computer, tablet or mobile). There is built-in RSS functionality if you're into that technology. Following us on Twitter (@BuffRumblings) is a great way to get to our new work (or breaking news) as fast as possible. If you're interested in sharing our community (or your contributions to it) with your friends, our Facebook page would be a great place to start.
Follow these guidelines, and you're very likely to find yourself a valued member of an outstanding community of Bills fans. Know that we're always just an inquiry away, as well. Thanks, and enjoy yourself!