High Blog Morals Vindicated

I made a decision right from the start to make CelticsBlog a family friendly, safe environment for fans to communicate with each other.  In fact, it was never really a decision, there was just no other way I'd do it. 

Of course that meant that I would have to moderate comments strictly.  I felt that the rules were pretty straightforward and boiled down to "always show respect to other people."  That included no swearing, no personal attacks, etc.   In fact, as the site grew, it meant banning people from the blog that couldn't follow the guidelines.   Thankfully as the site grew, I was able to find people willing to volunteer to assist with the moderating.  Of course, when you ban people or restrict what they can say, you get called lots of nasty names.  People have said horrible things about me and gone to great lengths to let people know what they thought of me.  All of which I put up with knowing that I was doing the right thing.

Not only has the site grown by leaps and bounds, but lately people have been praising the forums and the community atmosphere we've cultivated.  Here are some comments:

I just wanted to take a minute to give a much deserved THANKS! to the CelticsBlog staff and their fantastic forums.  The topics, discussions, and moderation of these forums is a refreshing escape from my usual time on the ESPN NBA Board. 

Whenever I get on here at CelticsBlog, I know the discussion will usually pertain to basketball, and if it ever strays outside of the board rules (that I admit I found a little strict when I first joined here) the post will be locked quickly and with an explanation by the mods. - Big Ticket

I know I've mentioned it in passing in comments and forum posts before, but I really can't stress enough how increasingly amazed I am by what it means to be a part of this community.  Sad as it is, we live in an Internet world full of forums and comment threads that become nothing more than scream-fests and contests of who can type in all caps and competitions of who can call whom the worse name, where productive discussion tends to go by the wayside all too quickly.  It means a ton to me when family, friends and other acquaintances who read my work (and often, as a result, that of others on the site) make a point of telling me how different the feel of reading CelticsBlog is.  Over the past few weeks alone, I've had several people comment to me on how impressed they are with the tone of the comments (dissenting and otherwise) on CelticsBlog, the knowledge level of those who post and the general level of interaction our members have with each other here. - Steve Weinman

I truely feel blessed to have seen this through and seen the fruits of our labors which were set upon the foundation of Christ-centered values.