Welcome to the Planet Green Community!

Welcome to the Planet Green Community. We're so glad to have you here! My name is Alan Graham and I'm the Community Liaison. My job is to make sure you enjoy being a part of our community. To become a member (it's free!), all you have to do is create a profile. This guide is intended to help you get the most out of that community and have the best possible experience. So before you dive into the citizenry, please read through so you'll always have an enjoyable time here on Planet Green.

Sharing, Voting, & Commenting

At the end of each article on Planet Green you'll find an area where you can share an article with someone via email, submit it to social networking sites like Digg and Reddit, print the article, or simply vote for it on Planet Green.

When you hit the Vote For It button, you are telling our community that this is an article you think is valuable. The more popular an article, the more people will read it, so your vote really does count! It also helps us keep track of the type of material you like to see here.

Below that menu, you'll also find an area where you can leave comments or thoughts on the article you just read. The best comments are generally those that are encouraging, thought-provoking, or share some insight you might have on the subject. We love to get comments and quite often a good comment will spark a great discussion. (Tip: If you want your comment to be read by the largest audience, sometimes short-and-sweet comments generate the best results.)

Our general rule is to let everyone have their say, however, comments with profanity, personal attacks, or antisocial behavior such as spamming or trolling, will be removed from the site. If such behavior continues, we reserve the right to take steps to ban a person from making any further comments. This is a self-reliant, self-built community, so please remember that you are responsible for the words that you post. Civil and intelligent comments and questions will create a civil and intelligent community. (A dash of humor never hurts either!) We're also here to ensure that you have a pleasant experience on Planet Green. If you feel offended or are being targeted for abuse, feel free to contact me at alan (at) treehugger (dot) com.

Planet Green Forums

Forums are a collection of community-created discussions based on a range of topics that members post to get answers to questions, share ideas and projects, and even have a spirited debate. If you start or join a discussion, don't expect that everyone will agree with you. We like to foster a good environment for discussion and tend to allow the community to police itself as much as possible.

Tips on Creating a Good Discussion
If you want to have great conversations in the forums, I'd like to share some tips that can help you get the most out of your experience.

1. Pick the Right Forum
We split our forums into three categories:

The Everything Green/Everything Else forums are meant for general discussions on green topics and then everything else that might not fit as a "green" topic.

The TV Show forums are dedicated to any comments, discussions, or questions you may have about a particular show on Planet Green.

The Support forums are for any issues, complaints, of support you require regarding the forums or the Planet Green site.

Picking the right forum for your topic is crucial to getting the best audience response. If you post a support issue in a TV Show forum, it may not be seen for a while, and we want to address your issues as soon as possible.

2. Create a Good Title
A good forum title is like a good newspaper headline. If you want to have people read your topic, use words that are on topic and get your point across; avoid ambiguous or misleading words. It is also good to keep it short and snappy (but not so short that's it's uninformative or not compelling). For example, if you want to debate the scientific merits of global warming, a title such as:
"Is Global Warming Real?"

will perform better than:

"I'm a skeptic"

You want people to visit your topic and make comments, so ensure they understand what the topic is before you post.

3. Make Strong Salient Points
If you start a topic for debate, be sure to be thorough and clear with your message. Point out why you feel a certain way and if you can, link to other subject matter on the Discovery family of websites or elsewhere on the Web that helps make your case. Posting an opinion can make for a passionate debate, but if you can't make a strong factual argument or back it up with good examples from credible sources, you can expect to be called out on it.

4. Include Good Background Info
Regardless of whether you are starting a topic for debate, asking for advice, or simply making a comment, you want to ensure your post is as complete as possible. The more info you give, the better the responses will be from the community.

5. No Blatant Promotion or Advertising Please
People come into forums expecting honest discussion. Postings that purposely use the space to promote product websites, pitch products or solutions, or that act as advertisements are a bummer and a misuse of the forums. These types of posts are frowned upon and will be deleted, and users who continually use the Planet Green Forums for such purposes will be banned from making future posts. You are, however, welcome to include a link at the bottom of your post as a "signature," but you are not allowed to promote it. We would love to have you add your experience and contribute to discussions, but if you are continuously "selling" something, we will delete those posts and may even eventually ban you. We really, really hate doing that, so if everyone uses common sense and acts considerately, we won't have to.

6. A Note on Profanity, Flaming, and Insults
Nothing turns a conversation sour faster than an insult. Calling someone a name is not only disrespectful of an individual, but also of the community. You can expect that a conversation will turn nasty, and that the community may turn against the insulter. Consider that the audience is made up of people who will often fall on two sides of a subject. Creating a statement like:

"Greenies are stupid"
or
"Conservatives are jerks"

is neither healthy or acceptable. If a discussion gets ugly we may have to step in and shut it down, and we hate doing that, so just be cool, okay?

7. Encourage Civility and Positive Discussion
This is a self-built community. That means that it is what YOU make it. It also means you can also help patrol it and keep it healthy. If you find a conversation is taking a negative direction, you can step in and try to encourage both sides to take a deep breath. One way to help shift a conversation from bad to good is to encourage and support the good points made by both sides of the argument. The nicer you are to people the harder they find it to stay negative.

8. Don't Take Anything Personally
Easier said than done, but remember that generally, most forum members are strangers to each other, and since we are in a virtual environment, we can't often tell sarcasm or hear the inflection in a voice, or see body language. Try not to take offense to something not intended to be insulting.

If you do find a comment offensive, ask for clarification, try to shift the discussion, clarify your position, or, if at all humanly possible, ignore it. If you feel that a comment is being made to deliberately infuriate the community or is personally targeted at you, and is abusive or rude, please contact me for help correcting the situation. My stepfather use to bring a sign to children's baseball games that said: "Parents Please Behave Yourselves." I think that is a good rule to follow.

;-)

Using the Planet Green Forums
After selecting a forum, you can do one of two things, Start a New Discussion or Start a New Post.

Starting a new discussion allows you to create a brand new topic to discuss. Starting a new post is intended for you to reply to a forum topic you are already in.

Forum Tools
At the bottom of every post you'll find three buttons. New Post, Reply to this post, and Report Abuse

New Post works just like the Start New Post button in that it allows you to create a new post in a ongoing conversation. Reply to this post, basically allows you to reply to a specific comment in a discussion by quoting what that member said in a new post of your own. Some times a discussion can get out of hand or something inappropriate or offensive may be said. In this case you'll find that in each discussion there is an icon called Report Abuse.

Feel feel to use this button to report what you find offensive, and know that I read each of these personally. Please be sure to include a description of why if offends you. We want to make sure we're being even handed to all parties.

WYSIWYG?
Typing a comment in a forum post is pretty much "what you see is what you get." There is no current support of HTML code, but any properly formatted URL (for example http://www.flickr.com/) will work as a link. We don't currently support inline images, so if you wish to use a graphic or photo in your post, you may want to use an online gallery like flickr and simply put a URL to those photos in your post.

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