Frequently Asked Questions

First, registration is free and requires only an email account. BlueNC won't share your email address with anyone without your permission.

We require registration as a way to encourage certain community standards:

• All posts and comments are connected to a user ID, which gives everyone a chance to get to know a user over time and develop a sense context for the user's content.
• Trolls are more easily identified and neutralized (meaning that we still haven't had to call in the crack assassination squad we keep on retainer).
• Registration is a hurdle that most spammers don't take the time to cross.
• If you're brand new here, you have to think about your comment at least long enough to go get the registration link from your email, which is probably a good thing.

Got a question? Click the title of this question and leave us a comment.

In the past, we've been pretty casual at BlueNC about staying on topic in a diary. Please keep in mind that it is disrespectful to a writer to hold a discussion about an unrelated topic in the thread of a diary. We do our best to have open threads and plenty of forum topics that allow for conversations on many different topics. Now and in the future we will be more strict with keeping the discussions in the comments on topic.

BlueNC does not, generally speaking, host images. That means that, before you can post a picture here, you'll need to find a home for it on the web. Popular free solutions include ImageShack, photobucket and (my favorite) flickr.

Once you have uploaded a picture to the internet and you know the picture's URL (image hosting companies like those above will help you get the URL for your image), all you need is a little HTML. For example, typing this:

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/438153255_9530f01350_m.jpg" />

produces this:

(That's a Daisy dog.) The image tag always contains the following: <img src="" />. It's just up to you to put the image URL inside the quotes.

We have only two rules. First, robots are not allowed. And second, anyone can participate as long as their posts and comments do not rise to the level of being "intolerably obnoxious."

That's admittedly a subjective standard, but it's the best we've been able to do.

There are always a handful of authors at BlueNC with special administrative privileges that give them the ability to promote a diary (or a calendar event or a poll, you name it) to the front page.

Not every thoughtful, factually correct, well-written, beautifully researched post winds up on the front page. There are times when our front page is already moving too quickly for us to keep up. This is typically when your masterpiece will be overlooked.

As a rule of thumb, reader posts should be (1) focused on North Carolina politics, and (2) thoughtful, well-written and factually correct to be considered as front page material. Sometimes a quick poll or a couple of sentences will generate a very active conversation in the comments. These posts will also be considered for the front page.

As of September, 2011, BlueNC's front pagers are:

• James Protzman
• scharrison
• Betsy Muse
• Greg Flynn
• usernamehere
• LoftT

If you'd like to help with running the site, please contact James.

If you look at the row of links in the blue bar at the top of each BlueNC page, you'll notice "track changes". You can also get to track changes by going directly to bluenc.com/tracker.

Track changes is a list of BlueNC content. Here's how it works. A piece of content goes to the top of the list when:

• it is first created;
• it is updated;
• someone leaves a comment on that content.

Track changes also shows you the number of new comments on a post since you last visited it (as long as you're logged in, of course).

There is no better birds-eye overview of what's happening at BlueNC than track changes. If you have even a slight propensity towards addictive behavior, you'll find yourself using track changes to jump from thread to thread as you participate in several conversations with the other users on the site. It is the freebase version of BlueNC.

Headline writing is an art form. Nobody at BlueNC has mastered it. When in doubt write a headline using keywords from the diary. Don't promise more than you deliver in your diary. Factual, keyword headlines help with search rankings - which in turn bring more visitors to BlueNC.

On the other hand, a well crafted, creative headline can entice readers who are curious after it shows up on their RSS readers.

We don't have any hard and fast rules about headlines at BlueNC, but when in doubt go with a fact-based headline.

Also, humor is always appreciated.

Tags are keywords that help label your diaries for easier searches. It is always best to select a few strong key words or names for your tag or tags. In the past many of us (me included) have enjoyed using tags for an extra punch line. This hurts our ranking with search engines and it can prevent people from finding what they need in searches at BlueNC.

Also, when writing about a person, please use their first and last name only. Elected officials should be tagged with first and last name, not with their title. Also, do not use middle initials, suffixes or periods. Please separate each tag with a comma.

Do not use creative tagging to add humor to a diary.

Most people follow these rules without being asked. Diarists who consistently muck up our key word tags with nonsensical phrases will find their diaries unpublished or placed in moderation.

RIGHTS: You should check into the license on any photos or graphics you want to include that you didn't create. If you don't find out otherwise, assume that someone owns all rights to the picture. If you don't have the right to use the image, you need to ask permission, or stay within the bounds of "fair use" (as described in some more detail in the FAQ about quoting other sources).

Incidentally, there are some great places to find images that you are allowed to use. For example, check out flickr.com/creativecommons for a searchable database of photos using one of the creative commons licenses (like this one of a North Carolina National Guardsman over the Pisgah National Forest, by Flickr user "soldiersmediacenter"). A creative commons license means that the author (or rightsholder) of a work wants to retain some control over their stuff while allowing certain kinds of use. (There are different kinds of cc license, so be sure to read the license and make sure that you're using it as allowed; more on the different licenses here.) You can also check out search.creativecommons.org for more cc content.

ETIQUETTE:

1. When you use an image that lives on someone else's web server, you're using that person's bandwidth. It's kind of rude.
2. When possible, make the picture a link back to the page on which you found it.

Clearly, copying an entire article or post from another site would be stealing. But quoting a phrase from a sentence in the same article is obviously not stealing. How much can you use? Well, somewhere in between.

"Fair use" is a legal doctrine related to copyright that all bloggers should know about. From the Wikipedia article linked above:

Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. It is based on free speech rights provided by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

If it sounds like a fuzzy concept, it is. This is good for intellectual property litigators, but it means that the rest of us have to use equal parts caution and common sense when quoting. Because fair use is a fuzzy concept, and because BlueNC does not have any intellectual property attorneys on hand, please understand that nothing in this answer is legal advice!

Instead, here are some basic blogging community standards that have developed over the years:

• Always link to the source of your quotations if they are online;
• Whether or not the source is online, be clear about who and what you are quoting – don't bury this information behind links;
• Don't quote more than you need to to make your point – you will find that you're writing much tighter, more persuasive posts if you take the time to figure out exactly what about your source you want to comment on, and limit yourself to small quotations that help you make your point;
• Don't trade quoting in for re-organizing and rewording your source's sentences – this is simply sneaky.
• Even with permission, do not quote complete articles in our comment section. Comments are for personal conversation. You may link to other sources or provide a brief one or two sentence quote.

If you're not sure, don't push it – there really is no substitute for your own words and analysis!

BlueNC has a live-blog series that includes real-time community interviews with candidates, community and Party leaders and experts on topics of interest to the community. We also have community members who attend conventions, meetings, rallies or other events who will live-blog from the event so that the rest of the community can participate "virtually".

Astroturfing occurs when one or more users registers under multiple pseudonymous identities in order to use them to create a phony sense of grassroots support for or against a person, organization or issue.

We do not allow astroturfing at BlueNC. If or when we become aware that an astroturf-style campaign is under way, we reserve the right to block all user accounts involved and ban the IP address(es) of the individual(s) who created the multiple identities.

On the internet, sock puppets are alternate identities of one person that are used deceptively in an online community. We do not strictly prohibit multiple identities at BlueNC because there are valid reasons for some people to have a public identity and an anonymous or pseudonymous identity. We do however ban the creation of multiple accounts when they are being used to create a false sense of support for or against a person, organization or issue

If and when discovered, the owner of the multiple accounts will be given an opportunity to select one identity to use. All others will then be blocked. If this person fails to cooperate, an IP ban will be placed on the user's IP address or multiple IP addresses.