Hi everyone! Thanks for spending your time visiting Cageside Seats and participating in the community here. We appreciate that so many of you strive to engage each other in a respectful discussion about all things pro wrestling.
It’s that time of year to remind everyone about the community guidelines and moderating practices that are followed at Cageside Seats. The rest of this post includes an extensive list of guidelines that we would like all community members to follow. It’s a lengthy list because we’re trying to cover the vast majority of issues that we see in the threads.
First and foremost, please be good to each other and treat everyone with respect. Any community member who resorts to using insults and personal attacks risks being banned. It’s okay to disagree with someone’s opinion, but don’t attack the person who posted it.
This also applies for general insults like “settle down, marks.” Comments like these add nothing of value and are not welcome here.
Trolling and spamming is not allowed and offenders will be banned.
Things like sexism, racism, misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia will not be tolerated.
Please don’t make light of serious crimes, sexual assault, domestic violence, DUI, and so forth.
Please don’t make light of any physical, mental, behavioral or psychological disorder.
Comments that objectify women are not welcome here. Comments like “Dat ass” don’t add anything of value to the conversation and will be removed.
Please don’t wish death or harm upon anyone, including the wrestlers.
If you post a gif or picture with your comment, please keep the image at a reasonable size, otherwise the comment will be removed. The content of the image must also abide by our guidelines. So if you get into a heated argument with someone, it’s not ok to post a gif of Steve Austin flipping them off.
Multiple accounts are not allowed for any individual member. Anybody who creates or uses multiple accounts risks having all of their accounts banned. Please take this rule seriously, because it’s one of the most common causes for bans.
We’re all here to hang out and talk wrestling, not try to act like we’re performers in a show. Nobody gets to treat others poorly and excuse it by saying they’re “a heel.” Anybody who does that will be banned.
Generally disrupting threads is also not something we want here. If users can’t get along without making an issue in the threads and completely taking it off topic, we’ll remove the offending issue or party. We strongly recommend ignoring those commenters who you just can’t get along with, rather than engaging them in an inappropriate manner that risks violating the community guidelines.
Please keep the conversation on topic in any specific thread. For example, if the article is titled “Kevin Owens needs to turn babyface”, please don’t use the comments section there to discuss John Cena’s movies. For those members who want to discuss other topics, we have a dedicated thread for that called The Daily. It publishes every morning and is a great place to talk to other Cagesiders about anything that is on your mind, even if it is not related to wrestling. Make sure to check it out!
Comments dripping in a condescending tone, smug arrogance, and holier-than-thou language are not welcome at Cageside Seats. Most of our conversations here will be focused on subjective topics. I might be strongly convinced that Baron Corbin is not a top guy, but that doesn’t make it ok for me to talk down to others and treat them like their opinion is worthless or inferior to mine if they think he belongs in the main event of WrestleMania. It’s really easy to passionately debate the topics and express our views without being jerks to each other. So let’s all make sure to have a respectful conversation and understand that opinions are not facts.
Please don’t try to shut anyone out of the conversation over differences of opinion. Whether someone loves Roman Reigns, hates Roman Reigns, or is indifferent to Roman Reigns, we want Cageside Seats to be the go-to place they feel comfortable expressing their viewpoint, without fear that they will be shamed or shut out of the conversation by others in the community. Everyone has different preferences when it comes to pro wrestling, and that characteristic will be embraced by our community, not shunned.
Please don’t tell anyone how to be a fan. Some people tend to look on the bright side while others are more likely to express discontent, and there’s nothing wrong with either approach. It’s perfectly reasonable for someone to express negative views on a topic without being subjected to others telling them to “stop watching then” or other dismissive nonsense. Likewise, it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to offer praise for a match or event without being subjected to others telling them to “give me some of what you’re smoking” or being labeled as a “WWE fanboy”. The bottom line is that we can each figure out for ourselves the best way to be a fan without the need for others to mock us or lecture us because of our personal approach. We’re all here because we’re fans of pro wrestling, and we should be mindful that no two community members will consume pro wrestling the same exact way.
It’s ok for commenters to be offended by things. Please don’t call community members snowflakes or tell them to retreat to their safe space if they are offended by something. Anyone who uses that tactic in responding to others risks being banned. Lazy labels like that can easily devolve a thread into a mess, and there’s always a more effective way to express an opinion. More generally, anyone who comes here to revel in the tears of others and call them salty, whiners, etc. is a troll and will be banned.
Please don’t try to push others out the door because you think the party would be perfect if only that one guy would leave. It’s solely at the discretion of the moderators to determine who does and doesn’t belong here, so comments like “Go away” are not appropriate.
Most of the topics we write about don’t warrant a political debate in the comments, but politics does occasionally come up. If you end up engaging others in a conversation about politics, please keep it civil and do not blanket label an entire group of people in an irresponsible manner. If that’s not possible, then don’t discuss politics in our threads.
Hulk Hogan is one of the biggest stars in the history of pro wrestling and his name pops up in the news every now and then. When this happens, the topic of racism often comes up in the comments section. If you are a fan of Hulk Hogan, or have forgiven him for his racist tirade from years ago and want to express support for him, that’s fine. We don’t have a problem with someone expressing support for Hulk Hogan. What we do have a problem with is anybody who tells others to “get over” racism. The astounding lack of empathy conveyed by that sentiment deeply disturbs us, and we don’t want it in our discourse. Please don’t do that here.
Please keep in mind that no two fans think about wrestling the same exact way, and so it’s usually not a good idea to speak for anybody besides yourself. Comments like “Everybody knows AJ Styles is the best worker on the roster” or “Nobody wants to see Bobby Lashley pushed as a babyface” are simply not accurate. Anybody who writes these kinds of sweeping universal statements is going to justifiably draw the ire of Cagesiders who don’t think AJ Styles is all that great or do want to see Lashley pushed as a babyface. We’re not going to warn or ban anybody for this, but for the sake of having a smooth conversation we recommend being very careful with speaking for anybody besides yourself.
Anyone who takes this too far and says condescending things to another user like “You seriously need to have your head examined if you think Lashley is a good babyface” or “You clearly don’t know much about wrestling if you think Ambrose is better than Styles” will be issued a warning. Just because someone has a different opinion from you doesn’t mean they need their head examined or that they know less about wrestling than you.
Please use factual information in a responsible manner. We are not in a land of alternate reality here, so yeah, you can certainly take someone to task for claiming that Finn Balor hasn’t won a match on pay-per-view this year or that the Raw rating was 3.1 when it was actually 2.5. Cold hard facts like that are not in dispute.
However, the conclusions one might draw from factual information are often still open for debate. You might be convinced that Brock Lesnar is not a draw based on certain facts, but that doesn’t mean “Brock Lesnar is not a draw” is a factual statement. We often must make assumptions about the best way to interpret certain facts, and assumptions always come with uncertainty. Some people will use a different set of assumptions to interpret the information than you do, which can lead to different conclusions. You are welcome to passionately argue your side, but please treat others with respect if they draw different conclusions from you.
Here’s a common case that illustrates this point: Just because you might happen to think YouTube views are the most meaningful indicator of fan interest in a performer doesn’t mean you can shut someone out of the conversation or treat them like trash if they happen to be skeptical or unsure about the value of that specific metric. Please engage each other in a respectful manner while expressing your views.
If you read an article at Cageside Seats and disagree with the author’s take, we encourage you to go into the comments and respectfully express your opinion. We will never ban someone over a difference of opinion with the author on the topic. However, our writers put in a lot of time and effort into producing interesting content at Cageside Seats and we try to always make your click worth it. So anybody who comments with obnoxious nonsense like “Clickbait!”, “Slow news day...”, or “Who cares?” risks being banned.
We encourage you to use the flagging system if you see any comments that violate these guidelines. Please understand that we’re very busy running the site and occasionally things slip through the cracks, or we sometimes aren’t able to deal with a questionable comment in a timely manner. We’ll do our best to get to it when we can, and flagging a questionable comment ensures that we will get our eyes on it.
I have personally been a moderator for over two years at Cageside Seats and can’t stress enough how appreciative we are of those members who help keep our community clean by flagging troublesome comments. If you aren’t sure whether or not a comment is breaking the rules, please just go ahead and flag it and we’ll check it out. Plenty of comments are flagged that we then deem to be acceptable, so don’t worry about getting in trouble with us due to excessive flagging. I think I’ve only banned one or two people ever for blatant abuse and misuse of the flagging system.
As far as flagging is concerned, please be mindful that simply because someone expresses an opinion you don’t agree with doesn’t mean they are being sexist or a troll. A comment like “I thought Ruby’s match with Ember was boring” by itself isn’t sexist, it’s just someone giving an opinion on a match or performer. A comment like “Why would Kenny Omega ever sign with WWE, he’ll just be fed to Roman Reigns” by itself isn’t trolling, even if you think it sounds completely absurd. These are the most common types of unnecessary flags that we see.
For those of you who are sometimes frustrated with an occasional troll in the comments, please understand that some trolls are harder to identify than others. Many cases are clear cut and those trolls are quickly banned, but sometimes we wait to see a more convincing pattern before we ban the offender. Please have patience with the moderators while we deal with these kinds of issues, or send me an email and we can discuss the situation.
If you receive a warning for violating one of these guidelines, please don’t take it personally. A warning is our way of giving you a chance to adjust your future comments towards fitting these community guidelines.
We are aware that some Cagesiders get upset when they see their comment has been removed. If you notice that a comment of yours is missing, please don’t assume that means we have an issue with your comment. Oftentimes your comment will be removed because a comment you were responding to was the problematic one, and they all got wiped out together. In other cases we will remove comments when we believe there is high potential for it to devolve a thread into a mess. If we have an issue with something you wrote, you will receive either a message or warning from us, so don’t read too much into stray missing comments.
Please don’t discuss moderation in the comments. We won’t tolerate our threads turning into debates over moderation practices. If there is an issue within the community that you want to discuss, please send me an email. If you received a message or warning and feel that the situation warrants further dialogue, send me an email and we’ll discuss it in private. Many users have been banned after they reacted to a warning by raging in the comments about how awful the moderators are. Don’t get banned over something silly like that. When we give someone a warning and then they go off the deep end in that way, it tells us that they have no interest in making the desired adjustment, so we’ll just issue a ban at that point.
We usually include a note to explain why a user has been banned. But if you have been banned and either don’t understand why or think there was a misunderstanding, please send me an email and I’ll talk to you about the situation.
You won’t always agree with the decisions that the moderators make. There’s nothing wrong with that, just be sure to understand that the moderators are the ones driving this bus. Commenting here is not a right, it’s a privilege, one that can be revoked for any reason or for no reason. We aren’t ever going to ban you just to ban you, but if you’re causing headaches for us, including coming into our house and telling us how we should run said house when you’re a visitor in it, don’t be surprised if you’re shown the door.
Please try to remember that there are many, many people from all walks of life of varying ages who are reading the comments. Play nice with each other, and if you can’t you’ll be warned and then banned.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments below regarding the community guidelines and moderation practices, and I’ll do my best to respond to them in a timely manner.
The staff at Cageside Seats greatly appreciates the community we have here, and we’re thrilled that the overwhelming majority of you do your best to abide by the rules outlined above. Thank you for spending your time here and making this the best damn pro wrestling community on the internet!