The Verge Community Guidelines

Welcome to The Verge!

At The Verge, you'll find a vibrant and growing community of tech enthusiasts and smart, knowledgeable people. Our goal is to foster conversations that are helpful, informative, and fun. We very much would like you to help us do just that, so here are some guidelines for how to participate.

How to register and customize your profile

You can register by clicking 'Join' at the top of the page and then you can either register directly or register with your Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID. You may be interested in checking out our privacy policy and Terms of Use if you're the legalese type.

The next step is to customize your profile. You can upload a photo and tell everybody a little about yourself. You can also edit your account settings to link your Facebook and Twitter accounts and set up how you'd like to read comments. You can always edit your profile by clicking your own name in the upper-lefthand corner of the site.

Now that your account is all set, it's time to start talking!

How to post and comment

There are three ways to interact on The Verge. We'll get into the guidelines for what to do and not to do below, but here's the basics on how:

• Post a comment: We love comments, and simply by registering you can comment on any story on The Verge. Comments are threaded, so you can reply to just the person you're talking to. There are also some really great keyboard shortcuts on comments - they're listed on the right of the comments area.
• Join a Forum: You should really check out our Verge forums, which has areas to talk about your favorite gadgets and get questions answered. In order to post in a forum, you need to "join" it. To do that, just visit the forum you'd like to join and click the "join" button in the upper right. When you do, your membership to forum will appear on your user profile. Why do we ask you to "join" a forum before posting there? More on that in the Q&A below.
• Tip us!: Don't forget that we have a way for you to send us tips, anonymously if you like, right here.

Forum Posts vs Comments

Although there is no hard and fast rule for when you should make a comment on somebody else's post or when you should make a new forum post, we do have some pretty clear guidelines. Essentially, if there is already a post on a topic you're interested in talking about, it's better to comment on that post rather than make a new one. We have a very large search box at the top of the forums and we encourage all users to search before you post. Duplicate posts may be frozen, removed, or merged into a previous forum post.

Forum Posts

The Verge offers a full WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor on forum posts.

Our moderators and users will be watching out for great content to promote on the site as well as inappropriate content. In other words, all the rules below about spam, abusive behavior, and basic human decency apply double to forum posts.

The most important thing to keep in mind with forum posts is to search before you post. Duplicate posts make it harder to read the forums because they split conversations up into too many places. Always do a search before starting a new forum post and if something similar to your topic exists, comment there instead of starting a new post. Don't worry about your comment not getting seen — comments can be recommended and users can reply directly to your comment in a thread.

Finally, please post in the appropriate forum. Have a question about the new iPhone? Apple Core is the place. Want to talk about The Verge itself, we have a Meta forum. Want help compare an Android phone to a BlackBerry? We have a general Mobile forum for that. Not sure where your post belongs? Ask in Meta or email us at moderators@theverge.com

Comments

Comments are a lovely way to talk about the stories, forum posts, and reviews you find on The Verge. They can also be a lot to keep up with, so we have some tools to make it all easier. Every comment has a few links associated with it:

• Reply: Use this to reply to that specific comment. Your reply will be threaded to that comment.
• Recommend: We love great comments, we know you do too. Click the "Recommend" link to vote up a comment and see it get more love and affection from the site.
• Flag: This is the link you use to report a post to the moderators. Use it on spam, on personal attacks, or on racist or sexist language. Do not use it to report stuff you disagree with or to hassle users. Our moderators work really hard, please help them help you!

Now, this is important: don't feed the trolls! What we mean by that is this: comments are threaded and if the top comment in a thread is a problem, we may delete it, and that will delete all the replies to it. So if there's an inappropriate comment and you reply to it with something eloquent and heartfelt, there's a very good chance that your highly intelligent and meaningful comment will nonetheless be lost. The same applies to all comments on a forum post -- if that forum post gets deleted, so will your comments on it.

Rules of the Road

Here are things that will get your comment or forum post removed and quite possibly your account banned. Note that this is not a comprehensive list. Our moderators reserve the right to remove anything we deem inappropriate.

• Spam: Zero tolerance, of course! If it comes from a human or a robot, spam will be deleted. Any comments that are a reply to spam will also be deleted, so don't reply — just flag!
• Illegal activities: posting links to illegal downloads, ways to steal service, and other nefarious activity will put your account on the fast lane to bantown.
• Pornographic material: Nope, not allowed. Even images or links that could be considered borderline are not acceptable. A good rule of thumb is that anything beyond PG-13 will get you in trouble, but we reserve the right to remove any post we deem offensive.
• Personal attacks: Don't attack or insult another user. It's not helpful and it doesn't make The Verge a friendly place.
• Racism, sexism, and other discrimination: Harder to define, but we know it when we see it. Attacking entire classes of people is just like attacking a single person: we'll ban you for it.
• Foul language: Cussing, swearing, or just plain nasty: all of the above are not cool here.
• Trolling: "Trolling" is a big, messy term, but we know what trolls are and we won't tolerate it. If you're abusing the good conversations here at The Verge, we will take your comments and posts down. This includes taking a thread off-topic, by the way. The internet calls that "thread crapping," but we call it "frustrating and unhelpful."
• Multiple accounts: We don't allow multiple accounts per user.

Q&A

Q: Why do I have to "Join" a forum to post or comment in it?
A: Look, we get it: the internet is filled with fanboys and girls who love Android and hate Apple, or vice versa. When you join a forum, you're doing so with the understanding that it's a place to talk about that forum's topic, not to get into flamewars about whether Linux is better than Windows. Joining a forum puts a badge on your user profile and tells the world that you're a little bit of a fan ...and that you're not going to go in there and derail every conversation about DIY hacks with your personal thoughts on why the Neo Geo was the greatest gaming system of all time.

Q: Hang on, you're censoring me!
A: Sorry, no. There are plenty of places on the internet where you can speak however you'd like, but here at The verge we work very hard to keep the conversation informative, and fun. We will remove any comment or post that we feel is harmful to that endeavor — the bottom line is that the editors and moderators have the final say on what's allowed here.

Q: I have a question or complaint about moderation
A: No worries, we're happy to have a discussion with you about it — in private. We've found from long and hard experience that public complaints about moderation just leads to trolls, no matter how well meaning the original intent. If you have a question about moderation, email us at and we'll have a talk. If there's a big policy change or something we would like to say publicly about moderation, we'll post it in our Meta forums and update this document.

Q: What's so great about moderators?
A: Everything! Moderators work very very hard with your best interests at heart. Please help them out by flagging inappropriate comments and take heed when they ask you to change your behavior. It's not easy fighting trolls, so never forget that ultimately they're on your side.

Q: I'd like to help! How do I become a moderator?
A: That's great! The best thing you can do is be awesome: help users when they have questions, flag inappropriate comments with good explanations of why, help users relax when threads start to look like flamewars, and generally just show us that you're a helpful and real human being. When the time comes, we may tap you on the shoulder and ask if you're interested.