Blozzer is a site of value-added structured information sharing, which aim is to promote the contributions and contributors of quality through a system of votes and scores.
Why structured? because, like in a standard forum, but unlike a Twitter or a Facebook, the posts here have a topic and a body, are grouped by discussion threads and, transversally, by categories and by themes.
Why value added? because the articles on Blozzer are expected to contain a personal contribution of the author, unlike a lonely link or a copy-paste of informations published somewhere else: this contribution can take the form of a summary, a review, an analyse, some humor, etc...

Blozzer is born from a few observations on the existing information sharing sites:
- the contributions are often extremely short (shortness sometimes imposed by the site itself),
- they are quickly "obsolete", with few possibilities to find them back,
- they are not organized in a structured way, and the search possibilities are limited, which does not allow the users to easily reach information matching their centers of interest,
- any contribution of quality is embedded in the mass of pointless and trivial messages,
- the best contributors are also embedded in a mass of low quality contributors.

All this leads to a final statement:
- the level of quality and interest of most messages on these sites is globally very weak, either because it is impossible to publish something of quality (in 140 characters only, it's hard!), either because there is no incentive to do it, for all the reasons listed above.

Blozzer is a french site, thus any post you publish must respect the french law, under penalty of being removed by the moderation team and that your account be temporarily or definitely suspended.

The following points, especially, deserve to be emphasized:
- the author of a post is legally reponsible for his/her words.
- in France, nobody is supposed to ignore the law, which means you are supposed to know what is illegal to publish.
- these are especially forbidden by law:
* insulting, defaming or violating the private life of others (members of Blozzer or not),
* inciting discrimination, hatred or violence toward others,
* expressing racist comments or inciting to racism,
* encouraging the use, possession or trafficking of drugs,
* justifying or relativizing the crimes against humanity (cf. Wikipedia),
- pornography, being textual or visual, is, for now, forbidden on Blozzer. If the "need" arises, we will make the necessary adjustments and/or open a dedicated section for adults.
- on religious matters, we allow only writings that are respectful of the beliefs of the others and what they consider sacred. Provocations in this domain are not accepted. If you want to demonstrate that such belief is stupid or such religion is harmful, we are wholeheartedly with you, but not on Blozzer.
- dynamic images (animated gifs) are forbidden, either in posts or as profile pictures.
- needless to say, are also unwelcome on Blozzer: spam, commercial messages, links to pirate files or servers, and of course any message likely to cause serious prejudice to Blozzer.

Anyway, we wish and encourage contributors of Blozzer to show the utmost courtesy to each other and towards others, and to be smart and discerning in their comments. In case of doubt, please let you half an hour of thinking before posting your article.
Of course, we reserve ourselves the right to note negatively any post that does not respect the most elementary courtesy, and to remove any post not complying with the above rules.

Public messages posted in Blozzer are all called posts. Some posts create a new thread, the others are comments, ie answers to existing posts. Only the members of Blozzer are authorized to create new threads, while external contributors are limited to comments.

To submit a post creating a new thread, simply click the "New Post" button from the menu bar; for a comment, hover the mouse over the post you want to reply, then hover over the icon that appears, then click on "Reply". In the form, enter a topic and, optionally, a message body and the web address of an image. Click on "Publish" for an immediate sending, or "Preview" to check the post before you send it and to access additional options, such as selecting an image among those present on the webpage of your link.

We recommend you to always preview your posts before sending them, because, once posted, you can not modify them.

In order to insert a picture in your post, either you already know the web address (URL) and you can enter it directly in the field named "Linked picture" or you add one or more web links (eg "http://www.nytimes.com/") in the body of your message and then you click on "Preview": above the field "Linked picture", click now on the link "Select from linked pages... " and select the illustration picture of your post.

A theme in Blozzer is the equivalent of Twitter's hashtag. The easiest way to add themes in your article is to prefix one or several words with the hash character (#) (unlike Twitter, the # character will be removed in the final message for easier reading).
You can also enter a specific theme or the first few characters of a theme in the field "Theme(s)". Click to check the existence of this theme and/or to explore the list of existing themes starting with the entered characters.

If a theme added to your post does not exist yet, it will be automatically created at the publication of your post, and immediately reusable by all other contributors.

This paragraph applies only to members of Blozzer, ie those who have created an account.

You can vote, positively (you like) or negatively (you dislike), for the public posts of the other contributors. Based on the votes that your own posts receive, several parameters of your account evolve, which determine:
- the default score of your posts,
- the weight of your vote on the other posts' score,
- a possible award for your account.

When a Blozzer's member votes for one of your posts, he/she sends points to your account. These points, positive or negative according to the direction of the vote, add up to the two scores associated with your account, which are impacted the same way: the overall score and the momentum:
- the overall score represents the cumulative points received since your account's creation. It can be negative.
- the momentum is equivalent to the overall score, except that it is decremented by one point per day as long as it is positive. It therefore represents the cumulative points received over a recent period.

These scores can also be impacted by some actions of moderation, such as the removal of an article for non compliance with the rules (see Rules of moderation), or when cases of cheating are detected.

Each new post starts with a default score that depends on its author's history, especially on the following items:
- is the author a member of Blozzer, and, if yes, since when?
- the number of public posts since account creation,
- any current award,
- the momentum.

Naturally, the more your posts start with a high score, the more likely they are to be read, the more votes you receive.

When you vote for a post, the number of points you send to the post's author depends on the following items:
- your current award, if any,
- the number of posted posts since account creation.

In any case, a positive vote always brings more points than a negative vote would have removed.

Awards are automatically granted to the deserving contributors, based on their momentum, following the scale below:

Momentum	Award
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900

These awards have an impact on:
- the default score of your posts,
- the weight of your votes, ie the number of points you send to a post's author each time you vote.

Awards appear below the profile picture, beside the posts that are posted during the time the award is owned.

If you become eligible for a new award above your current award, it will be immediately granted. If you become eligible for an award below your current award (or for no award at all while you have one), the lower award is not granted until a period of 7 days has passed since you got your current award.

A special and permanent award is offered to some members, upon decision of Blozzer's Administrators, based on the quality of their publications. These publications may have been made on Blozzer or on other websites as well (blog, forum, etc...). The benefits provided by this special award are equivalent to those of the classical third level award (); it is recognizable by the logo appearing below the member's profile picture.