Guidelines for Posting in Symposium

[robert brown]

Because Symposium is a moderated forum, we offer the following guidelines so that your contributions can appear on the board as swiftly as possible.

New posts in this forum go into the moderators' queue, an area where we can retrieve your post. The odds are overwhelming that we will put your post on the board as soon as we read it. If we send back your post to you, it would be for one of the reasons mentioned below.

Starting a discussion. We welcome your suggestions for new topics. Please send them to either or both of us through the private message system. We will correspond with you about new topic proposals so that together we can arrive at a final discussion starter for the forum. Before proposing a topic for discussion, please check whether another eGullet forum is more suitable. For example, if you want to review a restaurant, consider posting in the forum that covers its geographical location. On the other hand, a thread about a particular chef's influence on international gastronomy could be suitable for Symposium.

The site administrators have asked us to limit the number of topics under discussion at any one time. Therefore proposed new topics may have to wait longer than other posts. Because of a software limitation, starter posts will, for the next few months or so, have to appear under one of the moderator's names, though of course we will clearly emphasize and credit the member who proposed each post. Especially in topic starters, we encourage you, wherever appropriate, to include links to other sites, cite printed sources, and provide links to order books through Amazon.com.

Contributing to a discussion. Symposium is a forum for serious and focused discussion. The governing rule is that posts must be both civil and on-topic. While we do not wish to stifle wit, humor, irony or frank expressions of views, we will ask you to remove off-topic, uncivil, sarcastic or personal comments from your posts.

If we see a way to make an improvement in your post, we will suggest it to you, but it is up to you whether to accept our suggestions. As long as your post is both civil and on-topic, it will go onto the board. We will never stand in the way of posts whose content we disagree with. Nor will we change your post without your permission.

Although we try to put posts onto the board quickly, time may elapse before your post appears. If you refer to another poster's comments, please indicate the post you are writing about, ideally showing the author you are referring to and the date of their post. The QUOTE button provides a simple and reliable way to accomplish this. We ask, however, that you quote only the relevant portions of posts to which you are replying.

We welcome feedback on our moderation: please send us a PM. We will update these posting guidelines as the forum grows and develops.

Robert Brown and Jonathan Day