Below are the main Policies of Blog Content Control here at the Sentral.
Any suggestions are welcomed in the comments section!
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General Policy of Blog Content
Articles should :
- Be legible (ie no messenger language) and understandable
- Contain adequate substance
- Have a clear, non-ambiguous title
- Be of average reading quality (length is not a factor)
- Be family-friendly
Articles may not contain the following elements :
- Material illegal in Malaysia or within breach of Blogger.com’s Terms of Agreement
- Material that is excessively offensive to the main target audience, being Maresmartians (and all related groups of majority)
- Sexually explicit writing/visual or any wanton references to the genitalia and/or related anatomy
- False or unfounded information
- Overtly subversive/biased political critiques
- Ambiguous religious opinions and/or religious opinions that require sufficient authority on the writer’s part
- Full excerpts of other writers’ works, unless they are news articles, provided a clear link to the original article is given
- Xenophobic/unjustfully discriminative opinions directed at any individual, group or entity
- Excessive use of abbreviations or messenger language
- Announcements*
*Announcements are accepted as long as they are clearly marked with the statement “This is a temporary post” at the bottom, and are temporal in nature.
The above elements are open to debate and discussion in their interpretation but the final word of the administration is exactly that - final.
Please be assured that we try to mantain a policy embracive of free speech and will not censor post content unless they are within breach of our guidelines. As such, blog posts do not go through moderation before posting.
However, the Admins and the Editors reserve the right to edit blog posts that are in breach of the policy. The Admins also reserve the right to remove any article deemed out-of-line or inappropriate for the blogtal, regardless of whether the rules have been appropriately elaborated beforehand or not.
All articles should be of at least average reading quality (a long article does not necessarily mean better, nor otherwise - length is not a factor).
In case you were wondering, we do tolerate/accept the following :
- Mild swear swords
- Minor and common abbreviations (e.g. etc, yg, wbt and such)
- Mixed and/or informal language
- Articles of critical thought
- Personal stories
Regardless of whether or not an article has been edited, contributors still remain 100% responsible for the articles they submit and the Administrators and Editors should not be made liable for any reason.
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On Socio-political and Religious Articles
Articles of religious opinions should remain free of sectarian bias, must be in line with mainstream Sunni opinion, and should work, at most, only as a light reminder, rather than a collection of too many heavy themes. While we acknowledge the fact that some issues need to be addressed to and by the public, the administration mantains that this blogtal is not the appropriate medium for such advocacy. Otherwise, religious articles should also remain free of group- and/or person-bashing, and should adopt a polite, straight-forward tone of writing. Sarcasm is only allowed in small amounts, or in the case of mild satire.
Socio-political articles should remain only mildly biased in tone and content. Rather than present the opinions in a manner that is offensive to persons or groups, writers should be wary of readers’ sensitivities and present those opinions in a matured, objective, open-minded manner that encourages friendly debate. Writers are also encouraged to adopt a policy of “agreeing to disagree with the opponent” when writing, and advocate the issue at hand in a non-aggressive and non-provocative way.
We would like to emphasize that the Sentral is purely a blogtal cum online magazine for ex-students of Maresmart, and should not be used as a platform for the advocacy of political opinions.
Remember, freedom is a responsibility.
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Policy of Post Segregation by Semi-arbitrary Means
Two consecutive posts should have a gap of a minimum of three days between each publication (the days are counted on the date of the physical publication itself, not the dates as written in the posts).
However,
Exceptions are made if the preceding post has 7 comments or more, or if one date within that gap of three days is of particular significance to the succeeding post (eg. National Day, Eid Fitr, someone’s birthday, etc), or if the preceding post is an announcement, whereby a gap of only two days is required.
The purpose of this new policy is to provide enough time for our writers to receive anonymous readership and probably feedback in the form of comments to their articles or personal work, while also ensuring that all posts (deemed as site updates) are more evenly and systematically spaced out throughout a given month.
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Policy of Content Originality
Articles must be the original work of the contributor. However, contributors are allowed to quote excerpts from other blogs if permission is given by original blogger or if no copyright infringement ensues.
Contributors are still obliged to provide their own commentary pertaining to the subject matter, and blog quotes must be excerpts only, and not a copy of the full original article.
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Policy of Equal Scrutiny
All posts will be subjected to relatively equal content quality scrutiny by the Administrators and Editors, regardless of the status of the poster (be they peers, seniors, juniors, established writers, royalty, or even teachers). We don’t vouche to be persons free of bias, but we do try. As such, polite protests are welcomed by the contributors. However, any final word from our party should be respected.
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Policy of Open Comments
All comments - regardless of provocative content - will never be deleted by the admins unless things really blow out of proportions, ie fights. However, this policy of non-deletion applies to non-anonymous comments only. Anonymous comments with intolerably provocative content will be deemed as needless trouble makers and deleted.
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Policy of Open Invitation
We allow non-Maresmartian writers to contribute material for this blogtal. However, all materials can only be forwarded through our e-mail. Works will be fully credited.
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