DRaysBay is nearing its fourth year on the internets and coming off of its most successful season yet. These next few weeks will involve some change however. Patrick L. Kennedy, who served as "owner" this season, has to take an extended leave of absence due to academic work. I'm also feeling the strains of academia, but I will remain on board, however, not as the owner.

Instead I would like to introduce to the reader base and welcome a good friend of mine, Tommy Rancel, as the new owner of DRaysBay. I've known Tommy for quite a while now, and he's easily been the most underappreciated Rays blogger around. Not only will his content and personality mesh well with what we all ready have going, but for the first time in a long time DRB is going to have a sense of reliability from the ownership position that's been missing for most of its life. Joining myself as a senior editor will be Erik Hahmann.

To be concise: the former "OutsPerSwing" staff will be merging with DRaysBay's current staff to form the new DRaysBay. Not much is planned to change outside of adding some excellent talent to the existing core, but at this time we do feel it's necessary to reintroduce, and begin enforcing, our community guidelines a little more strictly. This site has reached the point where we're no longer a secret, but rather a community, and a level of professionalism is required from the writers as well as the readers. Which is why we extend the following guidelines to try and make this site even better:

Keep an open mind.  Everyone is going to be wrong sometimes.  Instead of defending your point of view incessantly, just move on, and maybe even admit you're wrong.  That's a great way to earn the respect of other users, by the way.

You can disagree with everything and everyone, as long as you don't make it personal and you back up your arguments with logic.  Logic does not include excessive capitals, ad hominem attacks, cliches, or quotes from ESPN "experts".

We like numbers.  Love 'em, in fact.  If you are not familiar with sabermetrics, we encourage you to stick around and learn something.  If you disagree with an argument made using statistics, make sure you understand the methodology before disagreeing with the results.  Asking questions is a great way to advance both the discussion and your understanding of sabermetrics.  We also realize that numbers aren't perfect and are always looking to improve them.

Keep the language PG13.  Sure, we've heard and seen it all, but most comments that rely on colorful language aren't worth posting anyway.  We are especially intolerant of ignorance -- racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. Note: gameday threads are the exception.

No babe/hunk photos. No exceptions. No .gifs. No links.

We love user-generated content.  We welcome links to any and all articles you think are worth discussing, including your own, via FanShots.  Use FanPosts for any in-depth content that doesn't make sense as a comment in someone else's article. If your FanPost consists of mostly filler, it is subject to being deleted. 75 words is not difficult. Seriously.

Use proper spelling, grammar, and capitalization.  Using them will give your comments more credibility and make your comments easier to read.  Paragraphs are your friend. Note: gameday threads are the exception.

Keep the pictures small.  Simply add the code <img src="imagesource" height="Ypx" width="Xpx"> to make sure they don't get too big (change X and Y).  Preview your comments and always use a post title so that people can hide them if they choose.

No political or religious discussions.  We actually think politics and religion should be discussed more often in the U.S., but those topics always tends to degenerate into mindless drivel, and people actually get more worked up about them than baseball.  We've got enough on our hands with America's past time.

Use the reply button.  Nested comments are awesome and keep the discussion organized.

We love sarcasm.  But if you use it, don't blame others when they don't pick up on it.

These ground rules are meant as guidelines only.  Although we tend to be fairly hands-off as moderators, decisions about conduct and banning are entirely at our discretion, and the ground rules above may or may not apply to those decisions. We may suspend a user's account any time we find that, in our judgment, it will make the site more enjoyable, more successful, and more fan-friendly overall.  Usually, although not always, we will explain to a user why their contributions aren't meshing with the site's philosophy before taking any official measures.

If you have ANY questions about the items on this list, please e-mail one of the authors.