Bringing out the mop, broom and dustpan

Sometimes blogs go a little too far, or a site has users who post things a little too much for our mostly American audience - so we have to bring put the 409 and do some house-cleaning.

Our target for the site is a 'C' rating. 'C' is for 'Cable'. If it is OK for cable TV - which is the only TV available anymore - then it is OK here. Well, we allow a little more dirty language - seems to be a staple of the internet and of certain musical genres (yep, talkin' 'bout our kickass rap and hip-hop channels :-), though they are still not as 'beepable' as your average political website these days).

I, personally, watch a lot of the TCM channel (Turner Classic Movies), TV (what is left of it) as well as DVDs of new movies from several different cultures. These also will be used as a measuring stick to determine what is acceptable - both historically and culturally.

First rule has always been: No hate. This is why our smallish politics channel is populated only by seniors (and only those seniors who approach uncalm events calmly). And when we do finally add religious channels, they will be scholarly religious 'studies' channels.

Other rules are that this is an English site [with some minor exceptions] and PG-rated [Playboy-ish cartoons are OK, as is casual nudity if the context of the article in which the nudity appears is not purely focused on the erotic aka 'has redeeming content' *ugh*].

We are bringing all this up now because we are in the process of removing two or three contributors who, although extremely popular, are just not what we want for the site at this time. In a sense, our focus has always been small bloggers and tweeps talking about what they love, often a topic that is not all that popular - but no less important in spite of its lack of popularity. We are happy to continue to focus on these, the 99% of the interests people have, and leave the 2 most popular: sex and hateful politics, to everyone else.