Designer News

Welcome to Designer News, a community of people in design and technology. Launched on Dec 31, 2012 as a place to discuss and share interesting things in our industry.

Community Guidelines

Last edited: April 15, 2016.

About the Community

Designer News is a large, global community of people working in design and technology or those interested in the topics. Our definition of “designer-friendly content” is very broad and we let the community decide by voting on stories. Designer News values open participation, and above all supports inclusion within the community.

Designer News began as an invitation-only community and was largely self-regulated. However, factors such as opening up the registration process, the surging number of users, and traffic require us to be a bit more specific in the Community Guidelines.

Please remember that these are guidelines only. Specific user activity may be governed as much by the spirit of these guidelines as any specific rule. Content, users, or anything deemed clearly unrelated or purely spam may be deleted.

Where the design community meets.

The general rules remain the same since DN was first launched:

• Be respectful and act professionally
• Critiques happen, but don’t insult anyone
• Disagreements happen, but don’t take things personally
• Show your support for a story or comment with an upvote
• Make your comments thoughtful

Unacceptable Content

Before you post a story or comment, ask yourself if you would say the same thing to the person’s face. Content is prohibited, and subject to moderation, if it falls into any of the following categories:

• Spam (defined as such per moderators discretion)
• Illegal
• Harassment, or unfair treatment of any sort
• Racist, sexist, or discriminate
• Pornographic, mature in nature, or overly obscene
• Inflammatory, offensive or demeaning material that is NSFW
• Impersonates someone in a misleading or deceptive manner
• Content deliberately attempting to start a flame war

Unwelcome Stories

We realize there is a bit of gray area regarding both appropriate and beneficial content. The following types of stories are frowned upon, and subject to moderation:

• Anything overly advertorial in nature
• List-format articles, especially those intended for SEO purposes
• Requests or offers for invites
• Excessive self-promotion, including posting to the same URL multiple times in a given timeframe or exclusively to the same domain
• Asking for new features (instead send us an email)

Inappropriate Activity

Activity is prohibited, and subject to moderation, if it falls into any of the following categories:

• Any attempt to break DN or anything that interferes with normal usage
• Attempting to game the story rankings algorithm
• Asking for upvotes
• Bullying of any sort including threats, harassment, or encouraging others to do so
• Registering multiple accounts or dummy accounts
• Voting rings - either among friends, within a company, or using dummy accounts
• Using inflammatory, misleading, or click-bait headlines on otherwise acceptable content
• Attempting to use DN in a way to publicly shame or embarrass users or otherwise
• Using the front page to post jobs (use the Job Board instead)
• Registering accounts under a fake name
• Posting a URL as part of your name or business title
• Using a URL shortener to hide destination URL

Moderation and Enforcement

There are different levels of moderation, some manual, some automated. In all cases, we enforce the guidelines in a variety of ways. If a post, comment, or user violates the letter or spirit of these guidelines, the following may occur:

In most cases:

Contacting users directly (via comments or email) Users may be contacted directly within the comment or via email, warned of their violation, and reminded to behave like respectful adults. Multiple warnings are subject to further moderator action as noted below.

Editing content This includes both story titles and story comments. While it’s most often used to fix grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, or similar concepts where the story needs a little help.

Sinking stories A story being sunk means that it will not appear on the front page notwithstanding the number of “upvotes” garnered.

In some cases:

Removing content Content may be removed for a number of reasons, most notably: Unacceptable Content, Unwelcome Stories, and Inappropriate Activity. Any content being removed may be done so without notifying the user.

Banning account Accounts may be banned for a number of reasons, most notably: Unacceptable Content, Unwelcome Stories, and Inappropriate Activity. Banned accounts may be reinstated on a case by case basis per moderator discretion.

Removal of account An account may be deleted entirely if it is clearly a spam account or is involved in significant violations of community guidelines. Multiple accounts and dummy accounts may also be deleted.

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New Members

New accounts will gain full permissions within one week. To keep the quality of content and discussions high, members are expected to register under their real names (fake names are assumed to be fake accounts, and are subject to moderation).

Existing Members

As DN grows and guidelines evolve over time, existing members may be subject to random, manual verification to ensure accounts are still active and authentic. Anonymous accounts will be banned and in some cases deleted. In the future, we may go to another system to verify members’ identities.

Flagging content

To report spam or other offensive or inappropriate content, please use the reporting tools or email us directly at hello@designernews.co.

Guidelines will evolve

To maintain a great community, members are expected to adhere to the spirit as well as the letter of the Community Guidelines. Also, these guidelines will evolve over time as issues arise. The community is welcome to voice opinions and suggest changes on the Designer News Guidelines GitHub repo.