This is just a basic set to start; we can add more if they become necessary. I am not expecting them to, though.
1) Respect. This is first and foremost a safe space for people to learn about science and evidence-based medicine. No background in science is assumed; so if you are making a serious attempt to learn, even if you do not have any background, your process of learning will be respected. This means that--in the academic tradition that connects us to centuries of scholarship---opinions, statements, and arguments can be disagreed with, but no personal attacks are permitted. In this sense, this blog is different from some others where 100% freedom of speech is allowed. Here, we are behaving more like a virtual classroom than like a virtual pub. You can disagree with others, but you have to argue with ideas, not with people. Commenters who do not respect fellow commenters will be warned, and--if the problem continues--banned.
2) Evidence. Dissenting opinions are welcome, but you must back it up with your reasons for dissenting. We do not shy away from principled controversy or dissent (in keeping with the principles of respect and academic debate, above), but counter-arguments must be more substantive than just "because I say so".
3) Science. We're here to learn about science and evidence-based medicine as it relates to massage, and so we confine our discussions to that domain. If a discussion wanders too far off-topic, it needs to either have its own topic started (as long as it's still appropriate to the larger mission of this blog), or--if no longer relevant to learning about EBM and massage--it needs to be taken elsewhere, perhaps to email between the participants or somewhere similar. Additionally, this is not the place to debate non-science, pseudoscience, or antiscience--there are other venues for those discussions, but not here.
4) Spam. A very brief reference in a comment to a commercial source, as long as it is clearly relevant to the topic under discussion, is appropriate. Turning a comment into an infomercial, on the other hand, is not. If you have a commercial product relevant to the mission of MJC that you want people to know about, send an email to massage.research@gmail.com for my review. If it is appropriate to the blog, I will post a link to it under Commercial Resources.
Not rules so much as commentary: I will be watching the discussion, but I want it to unfold among you as much as possible, so I will not be injecting myself into it too much. However, I will step in if anyone needs to be reminded to respect fellow commenters.
Registration: not required to comment, but a nice option nevertheless. You don't have to use your real name; you can choose any name you want. If everyone is called "Anonymous", then if a discussion really takes off, it will be hard to keep track of which Anonymous said what. Still, I won't insist on it, at least not now.
I think these will be enough rules to create a safe space for discussion, but--as this is an experiment--we will see. If we need new rules, they will be announced as they become necessary. I like a minimum of rules, but as this is more of a virtual classroom than a virtual commons, then we need a few. Let's see how these work out--and as always, I am very interested to know what you think.
