Policies

Explore Superior’s blog is comprised of posts created by registered users of the site. If you’re not the sort to post your thoughts and observations about our community, perhaps you’d prefer to commenting on the posts of others. It’s all about you my friends.

Our goal is to act as a digital billboard for Superior, Douglas County, and surrounding communities. Feel free to display your personality and affection for the area in which we live (weather notwithstanding.)

In order to insure that we all play nice with each other, we believe it is helpful to lay out some ground rules in advance.  Hence, our policy page. (Sorry, we realize that people hate to hear the phrase, “It’s our policy…blah, blah, blah…” but without some rules this could devolve into a mess that no one would want to read!)

Our Mission, and by extension…Your Mission

Explore Superior’s creators hope to provide a forum where local residents, visitors, and former residents can report, comment and analyze what goes on in our community. For most, this will be a labor of love. For some, this could become an opportunity to go negative. While we respect thought provoking conversations, and tilting at windmills, we will likely edit, remove, or decline to publish posts or comments meant to annoy, antagonize, advertise, or generally piss-off your average man or woman on the street….try to keep it positive, or at the very least, productive folks.

Take your time to write posts that are grammatically correct, well constructed, and interesting to read. If you can’t string a couple of sentences together into a readable paragraph, expect your submissions to hit the digital waste can. Similarly, if you like to “work blue” your posts will never see the light of day, and your contributor status may be yanked. We don’t know the ages of our readers, however, we know what we will allow our kids to read and what we won’t.

Self-Serving vs. Community Based Content

While we all would like to promote our latest business venture, or that home-based business selling gadgets that a person just can’t live without, please refrain from doing so via a blog post. You are welcome to purchase an ad on Explore Superior to promote yourself, but resist the temptation to do it in a post. If you’re a starving artist, musician, or actor, we respect your desire to publicize your next show or gig, but please click on Events on the menu bar and slide on down to Submit an Event. You are welcome to promote  to your heart’s content via that platform.

Appeals for attendance at community centric events may receive the green light in a blog posting, but it is wise to also post them on our Calendar in the event we find that your post crosses the line ever so slightly. Better to have some advance promotion than none at all.

Flat-out commercial appeals to move products such as a “Buy One Get One” sale at a retail outlet or restaurant will be rejected for publication automatically. Again, you are welcome to purchase an ad to help us maintain this website for the good of the community.

A news releases that announce actual news, will be permitted in most cases. For example, “the Mayor will conduct a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new……” are acceptable,  Posting a news release that promotes a person, politician, or commercial venture, eg., “Joe’s Donuts announces a drive-thru window” is not acceptable. Like we said above, buy an ad for that sort of thing please.

Negativity, Axes to Grind, and Rants

If you have an issue with a business, please take it up with them face to face. If you are uncomfortable doing that, perhaps you don’t have a point…otherwise, post it on Craigslist under “Rants & Raves.” Don’t like a politician, have a partisan issue…again, this is a community centric blog and we would prefer to celebrate what is good about our city, county, and region. Get into an argument with the friend of a friend of a friend on Facebook if you like, but please don’t do it here.

Promotion of Events vs. Reporting on Events

As we’ve stated previously, if you want to promote and event, the best way to do that is to add it to our calendar and include an informative description, and a snappy photo (if you’re really tech savvy, add URL links to your website if you like.)

That said, if your event turns out to be just boffo, and you want to share your success with the community at large, we encourage you to submit well composed photos of the event, along with inspiring text afterwards. We all like a good story, and while we might not be able to make it to your event, we might like to hear about it after the fact…just sayin.

Constructive Criticism & Reporting

If you’ve attended a particularly engaging movie, entertaining play, or enjoyed a talented musician at a local pub, by all means, share your experience with us. While you’re at it, post a pic or two from your phone that we’re confident you took because you just couldn’t help yourself. While we’re not big fans of pictures of what you had for dinner, if you had a great time at a local restaurant and want to tell us about it, feel free. As stated previously, keep your comments constructive and informative. If we think you’re the owner of said restaurant, or the leader of the band, director of the play, or sleeping with any of the above, we will probably remove your post. Did we mention that you can buy an ad to promote your event?

MSNBC vs. Fox News, et al

We have no interest in your political leanings, and will tolerate civil discourse. However, if you take it to the level of “I’m right, and you’re wrong!”…we will advise you to torture your unfortunate Facebook friends with your emotionally charged opinions.

Be a force for good not evil, you’ll sleep better at night.

Be Kind, Share the Space

If your post turns out to be longer than one or two paragraphs, please use the “continue reading” function so your post doesn’t take over the entire page. Enter and edit your post, then Preview before posting. If your post goes down below the “fold,” by all means put a break in…please!

Images

Don’t upload large images. Sure it’s wonderful to see the pores on your subjects faces while viewing it on your own computer, but over-sized images are a drag on our host and will slow down page loads. Best to use lower resolution photos, or optimize them to 450k or less.

Please don’t steal someone else’s photo. It’s best to ask them first if you can use it. At the very least, you should always recognize them when posting through an attribution.

Jpegs only please! Nothing that sparkles or moves, we don’t want the site to start looking like a video game.

Please submit your own photos whenever possible, but if you have permission to use the URL of a photo from another website, that is allowed.

Videos

Explore Superior does not allow you to upload videos to this website. Instead use a video hosting service like YouTube, or Vimeo. You can then embed the code for the video in your post.

Style

Please follow simple, polite writing conventions.

  • First and foremost, use good grammar and punctuation.
  • The use of all CAPS should be extremely limited, it’s hard to read and implies that you’re shouting.
  • Should you avail yourself of style tools such as Bold or Italics, or event Colors, do so with an eye for ease of reading, and making your post more attractive to the eye. If it’s a mess, we’ll probably delete it and refer you back to your Freshman Comp teacher.
  • In most cases, it’s best to just use the default settings and leave it at that. If you get to cool for school because you learned something cool on Youtube, me may just delete your post in order to keep the site looking pleasing to the eye. If what you have to say doesn’t speak for itself with all sorts of graphic adornment, maybe it didn’t need to be said in the first place.

Categories & Tags

Please make appropriate use of categories and tags help your posts be searchable. In most cases, it’s best to just use one or two categories, three at the most. if you over categorize yourself, we just might add you to the category of “Banned.”

You can ad tags to your posts, but as with categories, please limit them to just a couple.

Moderation of Explore Superior

Explore Superior is not designed to be wildly profitable, but instead as a resource for the Superior community. For that reason, the administrator will not be sitting on the computer 24/7 waiting to moderate, edit, or reject posts. After you place a couple of posts, you status will be raised to a level that allow you to post without interference from above (us), that is provided you seem to be the level headed sort. That said, step over the line one time and we may well banish you to Craigslist and Facebook.

Participating in the Explore Superior Blog, in fact becoming a certified ESBS’er is not a right but a privilege. Play nice in our playground and you can continue to visit, but kick sand in our face and you’ll have to go elsewhere to play.

Finally, if something untoward should slip past us, please drop us a line HERE with your input. We will investigate at our earliest convenience and make a ruling. We may agree with you, or we may not. Then you’ll have the right to decide whether you want to visit us again in the future.

Thank you for visiting!

If something not nice appears on our site, we will remove it and apologize to anyone who is offended. If you’re offended, you have our email address. Be gracious and move on.

Promote your business, buy an ad on Explore Superior

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