A Note on Moderation and Conduct Policies by Robert Bloomfield

Metanomics is always searching for new and better ways to add your voice to add to our conversations about virtual worlds. Our focus now is on text chat during live broadcasts, comment threads on blog posts, and open community forums…if you have other ideas let us know.

We trust that most community members, who take virtual worlds as seriously as we do, will use their voices constructively. But we monitor community input just in case, and take action when necessary.

We won’t be laying out detailed policies on appropriate conduct. Instead, we allow you to use your own intuition in applying the following guideline, which springs from Metanomics’ roots as a guest lecture series for students at Cornell University and my position as a Professor at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management: if your instructor wouldn’t let you behave that way in a Cornell classroom, you can’t behave that way here.

Please do not interpret this as meaning that Metanomics is committing itself to abide by Cornell’s Code of Conduct, which is a highly legalistic document describing many rules and procedures that we have no intention of following. Instead, we will use our own judgment in responding to behavior that concerns us. However, we believe that the essential interests of moderating conduct in the Metanomics community are similar to those expressed by Cornell:

The essential purpose of the University’s governing of community conduct is to protect and promote the University community’s pursuit of its educational goals. The University, as an educational institution, has a special set of interests and purposes, the protection and promotion of which are essential to its effective functioning. These interests, with respect to the governing of community conduct, include the following:

1. the opportunity of all members of the University community to attain their educational objectives;

2. the generation and maintenance of an intellectual and educational atmosphere throughout the University community; and

3. the protection of the health, safety, welfare, property, and human rights of all members of the University community, and the safety, property, and reputational interests of the University itself. These general interests, of course, are also the subject matter of the public laws of the state and nation.

Replace ”University” with “Metanomics,” and expect us to follow strategies that protect and promote these interests to the best of our ability.