Reminder: Site Rules and Guidelines

As Bad Left Hook grows over time, community moderation becomes a bit more difficult. We've always prided ourselves on the fact that our community (growing from non-existent to tiny to small to wherever it is now) has been moderated fairly heavily, remained peaceful even with disagreements between posters, and in short, was somewhere where mature boxing fans could go to discuss the sweet science without being bombarded with flames, insults, trolling, and all things of that nature.

The tone of the comments with the Mayweather-Pacquiao fiasco has gotten close to over the line, so I'm going to remind all of you now of our rules and guidelines, which everyone agreed to the moment they signed up. If you did not read them before joining, that's your fault. They were displayed prominently.

A refresher:

Keep these things out of your discussion:

1. Homophobia (This includes phrases such as "Gayweather")
2. Excessive, unnecessary profanity (we're not prudes, but if you think for a second, "Maybe I shouldn't say that," then probably phrase it some other way)
3. Racism
4. Personal attacks on other users

These things will result in a banning, and it'll be hard to welcome you back. This is not the other boxing forums out there; we're here to discuss boxing like adults, not children with attitude problems. If you can't get through a paragraph without calling someone "gay," then this is not the place for you. Also, criticism of fighters/promoters/writers/etc. is fine, but don't get overly personal about it. Stay respectful.

Other than that, the floor is yours. Contribute, discuss, hang out, and have fun. We all love boxing, even if we disagree on something, and the more you add, the more we'll all get out of the site.

These rules should indicate our feelings on calling fighters "pussies," which is something that's happened lately, or calling other posters stupid (not always in so many words, but you know when you're doing it).

The endless back-and-forth does not have to be endless. You don't need to reiterate your thoughts on every post even sort of about the subject on which you posted them before.

Be smart, is what we're saying. Don't bait, don't attack. Let us do the moderating. One thing that you can do here is flag a comment if you think it's inappropriate in some way. I can't guarantee we'll agree or even do anything about it, but it's an option, and there are many cases where you'll see something before we do.

I also hate to put it this way, but another thing: This site is not a democracy. Decisions on what's appropriate are not up for popular vote. They're made by myself and the other moderators.

That said: If you do get banned, feel free to email me. I think about 70% of the people I've ever banned have had it reversed because we discussed the issue and came to an agreement. A couple of times I've even been flat-out wrong and willing to admit it, and generally in these cases there was a misunderstanding on some level.

In other words, we're fair but we're firm, and we'll try not to give you a DQ loss on what should be a TKO win.

There are no comments for this post because nothing is up for debate. These are the rules of the site, you've been given fair warning, and now we move on. I truly enjoy running this site and talking boxing with everybody, but even for the sake of growth, our philosophy on how to run it will not be changing. We have rules here, and if you don't want a site with rules, then try another boxing forum. There are many that may better suit your desires. And yes, we realize we're a bit strict for a boxing site, but that's just the way it is.

Thank you, everybody.