RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

(Last updated 4/1/2007)

ShotGunAlley.org is a site for the Blairsville.com family to get together to talk about the important issues of today.  Whenever there are important issues, there are strong opinions, and this can result in both enlightened discourse and fierce debate.

The following is a brief summary of some the rules on ShotGunAlley.com to help distinguish them from the rules of Blairsville.com and BlairsvilleSquare.com.  If there is any conflict between a statement on this page and on the Usage Policy, the Usage Policy provision will control.

Who is allowed to post?

Anyone who is 18 years or older and is a member of the BoeBro Ventures, Inc. family of sites - which includes Blairsville.com, BlairsvilleSquare.com, and this site, ShotGunAlley.org.

What can we talk about here?

Any topic is fair game, subject to three simple rules:

1) If it's particularly pertinent to Blairsville, Georgia, we may move it back to Blairsville.com, or if it's more of a casual "How do ya do?" then we may move it to BlairsvilleSquare.com. 

2) It still has to meet the requirements of our Usage Policies.  That means libel, copyright violations, flame wars or personal attacks, and invasion of a person's privacy are still a violation of the usage policies.

3) The topic should not use profanity or be obscene in its own right.

So, what's different then? 

On ShotGunAlley.org - we don't care if the topic is about Blairsville, related to Blairsville, or anything like that.  If it's about Missouri, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, or Frank Sinatra - all of those topics are good.  You can talk about religion, politics, taxes - whether they're state or national.  Local politics may be moved over to Blairsville.com if we decide to do so.

So can we talk negatively about real people or companies?

If that's what makes you happy - as long as its your own personal opinion.  You still can't libel someone - it's against our policies and they can come and sue you.  So if you're trying to claim that someone did something bad - it had better be true - even if they're a public person.

Are you going to remove topics left and right like you do on Blairsville.com?

We certainly hope not - on Blairsville.com there's the rule that a topic has be actually about the town itself and not just something that affects it or is of interest to people on the site.  Here, without that rule, the only topics that would be removed are the ones that clearly violate a term of our Usage Policy. 

There are two main reasons why we'll remove a topic:

1) A person with a legal right to request its removal makes that request. 

2) It violates a rule against obscenity or profanity.

Other than those two primary reasons, anything else would be subject to a user reporting the problem with Report Abuse and us then taking a look at the message to see if it clearly violates the Usage Policies.

How often do you review messages on your own?

Very rarely.  Messages are posted by end users and become immediately available on the site for anyone in the world to see.  We have a Report Abuse feature that lets people tell us when they think someone has crossed the line.  We will randomly skim topics to see if they contain any obscenity or profanity, but other than that, thorough moderation is unlikely to occur on a regular basis.  In other words, you post and read at your own risk.