Fascinating guidelines for manners of well educated people

Because of Jim Acosta, there will need to be specific, written guidelines for behavior of journalists. He can only lose his press pass if he violates written rules, not common decency rules everyone understands.  In the past, there was an unwritten, decency code which journalists recognized in order to be welcomed at the White House (or anyone’s house).  Many groups on Facebook or online content services now have guidelines on how to post comments or content.  This one is from PLOS, a science publication website. Imagine having to tell well educated people not to plagiarize or defame each other.  Or not to yell opinions at the president or refuse to shut up.

• Don’t plagiarize.
• Don’t defame others.
• Don’t name-call, attack, threaten, or use profanity.
• Don’t use posts to promote products or services.
• Limit the number of links in your comment to three or fewer.
• Don’t use third-party content without permission.
• If you have permission to use third-party content, give proper attribution.
• Arguments based on belief are to be avoided. For example the assertion, “I don’t believe the results of Study X” must be supported.
• The content of comments should be confined to the demonstrable content of the specific blog post and should avoid speculation about the motivations or prejudices of its author.
• In its moderation of comments, PLOS BLOGS reserves the right to reject, at our discretion, any comment that is insufficiently supported by scientific evidence, is not constructive, or is not relevant to the original blog post.
• PLOS BLOGS reserves the right to remove any content that violates any of these guidelines, to block repeat and/or egregious violators from posting, and to suspend accounts as we deem necessary.
• PLOS Blogs is the final arbiter of the suitability of content for inclusion on its PLOS BLOGS Network.

Wouldn’t most of these seem like common sense, the basic rules of courtesy we should have learned in school or at home.  It’s the adult equivalent of playing in the sandbox with classmates in kindergarten.  This list came from the PLOS blog guidelines.
https://blogs.plos.org/about/