Policy Reminder: Keep it Nintendo

Some time ago we implemented some rules for our commenting policy. However, this was done so long ago I feel a lot was lost in translation. We’re also a lot more popular now and serving far more people, so I felt now was as good of a time as any to remind people of just what we expect your behavior to be when talking to other people, and what happens should you go against that policy. If I was to simply crack down and enforce our policy as is without warning, over half the commenters on

this article (which they are just debating Wii U vs 3DS), would be banned from commenting. I felt that was too harsh to push forward and there were far too many to warn and talk to individually.

In this case, we’ve reached the point of our popularity extended past our bounds of maintaining. You guys are talking too fast, conversing too much, for us to keep up and issue individual warnings. Thus consider this the existing policy for commenting here and on our social media. We will make this policy easily find-able in every post after this week with an automatic link back to it for your convenience.

Keep it Nintendo

This is a basic premise we are using across our social media and comment area interactions. We want to foster a friendly environment where folks can feel free to speak their minds without being degraded or personally attacked. That is the basis of our rules. Here is what it looks like spelled out:

• There shall be no attacking of anyone as an individual or group. This includes degrading them, calling them names, or what have you. Feel free to debate or defeat their ideas, not their person.

We do not tolerate bullying of any sort. If we see you doing it from this point forward, you will get a 24 hour ban. If it persists after that, you will be permanently banned. If there has been a long period of time between incidents, we may consider a shorter term ban. The idea here is that we do not want to tolerate that behavior and foster it among our fans. Debate is fine, even arguing can be okay at times, but do not attack each other. It is always counter productive to any conversation and it never moves it forward. You’re doing yourself and us a disservice when attacking someone.

• Certain terms are banned from use, including racial, sexual, and religious slurs.

This point should be obvious – we don’t want to degrade a group or segment of people who are identified intentionally or not by a specific term. Using of these terms gets the same action as above. Initial 24 hour ban, then a permanent ban for repeated offenses. This also encompasses things like porn, link’s to porn, and we’ll toss links to ROMs as well. We want to really Keep it legal, Keep it Nintendo here.

Really, that’s it. We try not to be super restrictive and we certainly allow for criticism and debate, we just want to be sure we foster a healthy community full of actual conversations instead of blatant attacks that really don’t do anyone any good.