Here on Polygon, you'll find a vibrant, platform-diverse community of gamers, enthusiasts and smart, knowledgeable people. As always, our goal is to foster conversations that are insightful, helpful, and most of all, fun. In order to facilitate this though we need your help, so here are some guidelines to get you started.
You can register by clicking 'Sign Up' on the drop down login box up there on the navbar; and from here you can either register directly, or do so with with your Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID. You may be interested in checking out our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use if you're the paranoid type. You trust us though, right? Of course.
The next step is to customize your profile. You can upload a photo, give your soon-to-be new best friends a little background about yourself, and you can even share your online handles for services like Xbox Live, PSN, Steam and CompuServe (coming soon). You can also edit your account settings to link your Facebook and Twitter accounts and post conversational updates to those networks.
If you need to make any changes, you can always edit your profile by clicking your avatar in the upper-right hand corner of the site navigation bar.
Now that you're all set up, it's time to get in there and start talking.
There are several ways to get involved with the discussion here on Polygon. We'll cover specific guidelines for what's cool, and what's not below, but here's the basics on how to:
Whilst there's no definitive rule for when you should comment on somebody else's post, or even when you should make a new post of your own, we do have some pretty clear guidelines to help you out.
If you see that there's already a topic involving a particular aspect of a game you're interested in talking about — like "Where's the Secret Warp Zone in Super Mario Bros?" — then it's better to comment on that post, rather than make a new one. Any duplicate posts risk being frozen, removed, or merged into a previous forum post in order to keep things fun, organized and on-topic.
Polygon offers you a full WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for creating forum posts, and our moderators and users will be watching out for great content to promote on the site, as well as inappropriate content to send to the Phantom Zone. In other words, all the rules below about spam, abusive behavior, and basic human decency also apply to forum posts.
The forums on Polygon are not only broken down into specific gaming platforms — such as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC — but you're also able to start conversations about your favorite games too. Got a great topic to raise like how refreshing Dishonored is? Then drop it in the Dishonored forum and you'll reach all the folks who want to discuss that game, regardless of which platform they might play on.
If you have a question, or want to talk about Polygon itself, we have a Meta forum just for that. You can put any suggestions and feedback you might have for us in there as well.
If you're not quite sure where your post belongs, then you can ask in Meta or email us at moderators@polygon.com and we'll help you get sorted.
Comments are a great way to talk about the stories, forum posts, and reviews you find on Polygon. 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:
Simple, flag them. There's nothing more irksome than when someone intentionally goes out of their way to make your community experience a bad one, and nine out of ten times if someone replies it escalates out of control. Nobody wants that and it just adds more unnecessary drama to the cooler parts of the conversation.
Flagging those comments or posts as either spam, trolling or inappropriate — depending on the content — will allow a moderator to dive in, and deal with it appropriately. Meanwhile you get that warm, fuzzy feeling that you've helped keep the Polygon forums and comments section a fun place to socialize.
Once the troll is reported, you'll need to stop feeding them. As comments are threaded, if the top comment in a thread is a problem then we may take action and 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.
If someone really continues to lower the overall enjoyment of Polygons' content and participation in the community by ignoring the rules/guidelines, then email the moderation team directly at moderators@polygon.com. That way it's pushed closer to the top of the queue, and dealt with appropriately.
Here's a list of things that will get your comment or forum post removed, and quite possibly your account banned. Remember that this is not a comprehensive list and our moderators reserve the right to remove anything we deem inappropriate.
Q: Hang on, you're censoring me!
A: Nope! There are other sites on the internet where you can go and join in conversations with no boundaries, but our priority here is to provide a fun, informative and welcoming environment. We'll remove any comment or post that we feel is harmful to that endeavor, with the bottom line being that the editors and moderators have the final say on what's allowed here.
Q: I have a question or complaint about moderation A: That's fine, we're more than happy to provide answers, but in private. Talking about moderation related activities in public, we've found doesn't lend itself to insightful conversation, rather the reverse. If you have a question about moderation, email us at moderators@polygon.com and we'll have a chat. If we've anything to say publicly on a specific matter we'll do so via an announcement in our Meta forum, as well as updating this document.
Q: What's so great about Polygon moderators?
A: Everything! Moderators work super hard to keep Polygon a fun place to hang out. Think of them as a buffer between you and all of the bad stuff! As it's hard work, we'd love it if you could help them out by flagging any inappropriate comments, and take heed if they ask you to dial back 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: Awesome! There are a few ways in which you can do this; by helping other users when they have questions, flagging inappropriate comments with good explanations of why, helping to diffuse threads which start to look like flamewars, and generally just show us that you're a helpful, inspirational member of our community. Then, when we're looking for more moderators, we might just approach you next!
Q. How do I stay up to date with Polygon?
A: There's a few ways you can stay connected with Polygon throughout your social media world and here's a handy list of ways to do so: If you want to subscribe to Polygon via RSS to get full updates on their content then here's a direct link for that. The Polygon Twitter feed is great for getting the latest breaking news the minute its posted. You're probably on Facebook on another tab right now, yeah? Check out our Polygon Facebook page, like it, share it with your friends and spread the word. Like us, and we'll love you right back.
Keep to these guidelines and you'll always have a place by our hearth here at Polygon. We're glad you've come to our home, and we're never far away if you need to ask us anything.
The Polygon Team
