PCTA Guidelines for Posting and Commenting
Welcome to our online community for the Pacific Crest Trail! Your energy and opinions are highly valued. To improve the dialogue, we’ve put together some simple commenting guidelines for the community. When making moderation decisions, we will consider these and the context within which comments are made. Our goal is to be transparent about our moderation process and why some comments are deleted and/or some members banned. We recognize this is your community as much as ours. And we hope you’ll help us uphold a high standard of quality for conversation online.
1. Personal Attacks: Don’t engage in personal attacks, persistent trolling or mindless abuse. The PCT community should focus on furthering the conversation and adding value to the conversation with resourceful and constructive ideas.
2. No Hate Speech or Bullying: Our Page and Groups are intended to be a safe space for all. Bullying of any kind isn't allowed and insulting or degrading comments about race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender or identity will not be tolerated.
3. No Promotions or Spam: Promotion or Self-promotion of products or services, spam and irrelevant links will almost always be removed; posts must be related to the Pacific Crest Trail. Similarly, posts that are made repeatedly will be removed. Most image memes will also be removed, so please avoid posting these as comments.
4. Language and Threats: Please check your language and respect other people’s views, beliefs, and emotions. We reserve the right to remove any content that might be found offensive or threatening.
5. Posts Promoting Fundraisers, Soliciting Donations, Buying/Selling/Trading: We think it’s great if you are using your hike to raise money for an important cause. But we reserve the right to remove any posts asking for money, (whether for a worthy cause or otherwise).
6. Relevancy: Please keep conversations relevant to the Pacific Crest Trail. Off-topic comments are subject to removal in order to keep a thread on track.
7. Personal Information: Share, but nothing too personal. This is the internet. Don’t post your personal information and don’t post others’ contact information either.
8. Quality Dialogue: Members are responsible for the quality of the conversations in which you’re participating. This includes maintaining intelligent discussions within the PCT online community by being respectful and considerate. We won’t tolerate mean-spirited behavior Incorrect or misleading comments will be deleted, including encouraging others to ignore established laws set by the various land managers (this includes, but is not limited to the USFS, BLM, NPS, and State Parks) and processes and procedures administered on their behalf by the PCTA.
9. Zero-tolerance: We maintain a zero-tolerance approach which means that when these guidelines aren’t being followed, we will remove comments and ban members.
10. Report Offensive or Questionable Posts and Comments and Spam: Help us maintain a safe and inviting space by self-policing threads and reporting to admins anything you believe disregards these guidelines. Although we have a hands-on approach to community engagement, we do sometimes miss problem comments, commenters, or trolls.
11. Angry attacks, derogatory comments, and harassment of moderators over their decisions and/or their comments will not be tolerated. Posts and comments containing derogatory or non-constructive criticism, insulting remarks, or intended to spread rumors and innuendo about PCTA and/or our moderators will not be tolerated. If you have questions or issues with any of these guidelines, please contact us to discuss your concerns.
