"The-N" to Change Daria Messageboard Policy

Ranger Thorne is 39 today. Happy Birthday!

WacoKid completed the third (and possibly final) part of his alternate universe story (Jane has a different best friend).

The Sheep’s Fluff has been added to the links at the left.

There is a change in policy coming up at The-N Daria message board. "The-N" is a preteen version of the children's cable channel Noggin in America, and edited episodes of Daria are shown late at night.

Many people are probably unaware of The-N's Daria message board. Most likely, for two reasons:

a) A very heavy moderation policy. Since most of the board members are in the pre-teen age range, EVERY post has to be approved by a moderator before going on the board. If it is even suspected that an adult is posting there, the post never shows up on the board.

b) Most of the questions asked on the board aren’t that involved. A possible sample topic would be "Brittany is my favorite! How about you?" or "How cool is Trent?"

Believe it or not, there is also a message board at The-N devoted to fan fiction. However, the board is not separated by show, and a work of Daria fiction might be buried under several Degrassi fan fiction works.

Recently, the following message appeared on the board. You can find the link here . The post follows:


Hey alls,

So, if you hang out on the boards you've heard The-Val and I talking about the fact that they're about to get way faster. Well, I'm about to fill in the deets for you, because this isn't the kind of thing we'd want to spring on you out of nowhere.

WHAT'S THE DEAL?
The deal is, starting one day in February, YOU GUYS will basically start moderating the boards yourselves. You heard right. Posts will go up immediately, without being approved by our moderators first. In other words, posting will be instantaneous. YAY!

So what about the rules? Well, if YOU see something on the boards that you know goes against our editorial policy [see the "message board rules" button above], you'll use that "Report This Post" link at the bottom of the post to alert a mod. A mod will then check the post, and if it's true that it violates a rule, the mod will delete the post.

If you correctly report a post that gets taken down, you'll earn creds.

But, if someone abuses that button and just reports a post because they don't like someone, they might actually lose a cred or two. If people get carried away with grudges, or try to report posts just because they disagree with them and not because they break the rules, the mods will know and will suspend or deactivate their accounts.

WHY ARE YOU GUYS DOING THIS?
Besides being sick of the boards being slow, we really want to put YOU GUYS in charge of making this place a cool place to be, because it's YOURS.

We know you guys don't need babysitters, and we think you're ready for the responsibility. And with the number of you that ask to be mods and want new ways to earn creds anyway, we think you're up for the challenge.

Which means that sometime in February, new board members can post directly to the board.

However, if one looks at the message board rules, one sees the following:

7) This isn’t the place to put advertisements, even if it's for cool stuff you made like homepages,'zines, user groups or any other websites.

Which probably means that not only are links to other Daria message boards likely a violation of policy, but that users are given “creds” (whatever they are) for reporting such posts.

This leads to two questions:

a) Who will be the first person to advertise a non-Noggin Daria web site on Noggin’s board? (Note that the moderators disappear "some time in February", but no exact date is given.)

b) Will boards such as the PPMB and SFMB be able to accommodate Noggin viewers and the needs of Daria fans who are much younger than the average fan?