A Note on Huskerzone.com Policy
A reminder for our regular readers and an introduction to new and future readers on a HuskerZone.com policy.
Given the state of affairs with Nebraska football, and personal opinions - positive or negative - I just wanted to remind everyone to keep things civil. Everything is fine thus far on the site and I commend all of our regular commenters and readers for keeping it so. Periodically, it needs to be mentioned and that is all this is.
I am also reiterating our (Bugeater and I) official stance regarding criticism directed at players based on recent events here and at other places around the country. Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State had a legitimate beef with a reporter regarding a story written about their quarterback. Husker fans at the game on Saturday had audible booing heard over the audio feed on both radio and pay-per-view tv. At Notre Dame, there was also booing and attacking of players on message boards.
To wit, the HuskerZone.com policy/stance on this is as follows:
1. First and foremost, we are fans. We run this site purely as an outreach of that; hence our tagline, By Husker Fans for Husker Fans. We do not have a corporate sponsor (although we would accept one), and all Bugeater and I get for our time is the small amount of change that comes in from the advertising.
2. We will never call out a specific player for shortcomings on the field. We may speak in generalities or give examples in specific plays, but we won’t hold a single player accountable in our blogging/reporting, nor will we personally attack an individual. It isn’t fair to the players, who are both students and athletes, and do not receive a paycheck for what they do.
3. This does not apply to praise. If an individual player warrants praise, we will do so publicly and give them the recognition they deserve.
4. For off-the field news matters, we will report as such, but will not offer negative commentary directed at the player.
5. Coaches do not get a free pass. They get a paycheck and thus, have earned both criticism and praise in the public arena.
6. University administration are also fair game.
7. We do not censor comments. We have automated systems which detect comment abuse and will delete and retroactively delete comments based on abuse patterns, automated systems which may hold new commenters in a queue before their comments are displayed, and we will delete comments that blatantly go against our policy stated above (in 4 years, I think we have deleted exactly 1 comment due to this).
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Huskerzone.com is a class act.
I will be the first to admit, I may have crossed the line somewhat in the past with reference to Sam Keller. All I intended to say is that his style and character were not what I personally would like to see represent Nebraska and the Huskers. In addition his stats are not stellar given who they were against was all I wanted to attempt to say. Again, this is just my opinion and I wouldn’t pretend to speak for anyone else.
No personal attack was intended with respect to Mr. Keller. If I need to go further to clarify, or if the administrator would like me to retract previous statements , I will be glad to do so, be sure to let me know..
Thanks for the website and the chance for fans to speak up.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
@bigredfred
Your comments on Keller were acceptable. You presented a statistical case which is defensible. I think we all know when the line gets crossed and that has been a very rare case on Huskerzone.com.
My impetus for this post was two-fold, the situation at Oklahoma State and Gundy’s reaction. I felt his reaction went too far, but I also think the columnist went too far in her column. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
The second being Octavien’s comments after the game. I haven’t been in the locker room of a college football game after a win or loss, but I have been there in other sports. When you give your all and have been on the bad end of game, stopping and thinking about what you are saying when you emotionally/physically exhausted is often not the way the brain functions.
If you caught any of the local radio shows this afternoon, there were plenty of attacks and criticisms thrown his way. I wanted to head those off on Huskerzone.com before they got started.