Official Forum Rules

[Kloaked Spirit]

I couldn't find a copy of the old rules that I wrote, so this is a basic draft. With every update/revision to the rules, a new post will be made so that way this thread shows up as new. This will direct your attention to the rules every time they change so you can re-read them again.

For all future mentionings of it - NSFW = Not Safe For Work. Basically would the stereotypical mom and boss approve of you viewing this image at work? If so, then it's ok. If not, it's NSFW.

Update: 05/17/2007: This is how the rules work. We believe the forum can police itself in most cases, and we will only step in if it's reported to us or otherwise necessary. We will be consistent in how we decide whether or not something warrants our action as well. The rules below illustrate what could/should be reported to us if you want us to do something.

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Rules of the Shoutbox:

- No NSFW imagery. You can't forewarn it as you could in a thread. This includes NSFW smilies.
- No excessive swearing. The moderators/administrators will be the ones making the call for what is deemed excessive.
- If you're going to flame the hell out of someone, take it to A/I/W or the Battlezone.
- No advertising. We have a section for that.
- No flooding the chat with multiple lines of pointless crap.
- Moderators are required to warn you either in the SB or via PM's if you violate these rules. They are also permitted to prune all offensive posts. If you continue to violate this after the moderator warnings, you can receive infraction points for offenses (normally a random post will be given an infraction in that case.) You could also become banned from the SB.
- Administrators don't need to warn you. We most likely will ask you to stop before we do, but it's not mandatory.

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Rules of posting in the forum:

- Use some common sense. We really shouldn't have to spell everything out for you.
- No more asking Admin/Mods for favors without a valid reason. This includes name changes, custom titles, vcash, rep, etc.
- If the forum staff makes a reasonable request, follow it. Don't harass them or sass them just because they're staff (same for the SB.)
- Keep flames to the A/I/W and Battlezone sections of the forum.
- Keep pointless spam to a minimum.
- Keep advertising to the appropriate section.
- NSFW avatars and signatures are not permitted. NSFW images must be marked beforehand, and preferably just linked to. A thread containing mainly NSFW material can be marked as such, and therefore people won't need to mark the images inside.
*Exception: NSFW imagery is allowed in A/I/W without marking it beforehand.*
- No forum necromancy unless the post is extremely relevant to the topic at hand.
- No multi accounts without prior administrator approval. No using multi accounts to get around any punishments you may already have to serve with your main account.
**** If a banned person uses another person's legitimate account to post in, that account will be banned for a small period of time and the originally banned will have an extension of their ban just as if they used a multi account.
**** If you are planning to speak or make a thread "on behalf of someone" that is already banned, you need moderator/administrator approval prior to making the post/thread.
- No more being a forum wiseass. So don't push things to where it's "technically ok" according to the rules. This is usually done in accordance with the failure to follow a staff member's reasonable request.


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Rules about signatures:

- All dimensions and file size restraints are for all images and text combined, and not on a per image basis.
- Maximum dimensions - 600 pixels wide by 200 pixels high.
- Maximum file size - 600kb
- Once again, NSFW material is prohibited from being used as a signature.
- Moderators will be required to ask you in PM's to take it down willingly or resize it if it violates these rules. This may be done via an infraction warning. Upon being asked, you will have 24 hours after you receive the PM to change the signature or ask for help to resize/change it. Failure to change it will result in the signature being removed. This does not apply to repeat signature offenders or extreme cases where the signature should be removed immediately.
- Administrators, while they usually will ask, are not required to.

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Rules about Avatars:

- No NSFW avatars. Those will follow the same protocol as with inappropriate signatures.

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Rules about posting images of others:

- If the picture of you in question was posted by you on this forum, it is fair game for photoshops of non-malicious intent.
- Photoshops of malicious intent will be removed, even if the original picture was posted in the forum already.
- Forum staff will have to use their own judgment call on what is malicious intent, however it will generally be a case of photoshopping an image to flame someone on purpose.
- If the picture of you in question was not posted by you on this forum, it will be up to that person as to whether or not the photoshop can stay.

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Punishments:

Punishments will be given via the infraction system below.

[Kloaked Spirit]

The Infraction System and You: How does this all work?

Ok, in the past one of the forum's problems was the lack of consistancy with punishments. What may be a 3-day ban if X moderator did it might be a 1-week ban if Y moderator did it. That's where this infraction system should help out.

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Basic information you must know:

- Everyone starts out with 0 points.
- Once you've accumulated 12 points, you receive a 1-week ban.
- Any points that you accumulated will disappear within 30 days from the day you gained the points.
- Once you have received a 1-week ban, all points that were accumulated toward that ban will disappear, resetting you back to zero points.
- You can view all infractions that you have received by going to your control panel (same area that you can see your reputation comments.)

From now on, each infraction will add a number of points based on the severity of the infraction, or how often you've committed that particular infraction. All infractions (with the exception of signature/avatar violations) will be graded by this following scale:

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Low Level Infraction: Infractions that are considered low level are ones that occur very rarely, or are a first offense of that nature. For example, if you accidently double/triple post in a thread or get a http://www.joker-bikes.de/tim/egghunt/eggs/a02c47002.68 (http://www.joker-bikes.de/tim/egghunt/egg.php?id=68&key=a02c47002) little bit carried away with spamming up a thread, but it's something you rarely ever do. Mainly this is more of a warning than much else.

All low level infractions will give out 1 point on the infraction scale.

Mild Level Infraction: Infractions that are considered mild level are ones that are for repeat offenders, or an infraction that was done in a more abusive or readily manner than one we would consider low level. For example, if you're a repeatative spammer, your spamming infractions will eventually be put at this level. Or if you spam many threads in one quick particular time period, your spamming infraction may occur on this level.

All mild level infractions will give out 3 points on the infraction scale.

Moderate Level Infraction: A moderate level infraction is a step up from the mild level infraction. As such, it is reserved for people who continue to violate the same rules after they've already received mild level infractions for that particular violation. There may be times where a particular infraction was bad enough that it immediately becomes a moderate level infraction (e.g. you performed forum necormancy on 40 different threads within an hour.) Most often this will not be the case of a moderate level infraction.

All moderate level infractions will give out 6 points on the infraction scale.

Severe Level Infraction: The worst of the worst. Either you just consistantly choose to never learn from the previous infraction warnings, or you've done something that would be worthy of an instant ban for some length of time (e.g. racism, posting nude pictures of forum members, etc.)

All severe level infractions will give out 12 points on the infraction scale, which will be enough to trigger an automatic one week ban.

Signature/Avatar Infractions Exception: If you have a Signature/Avatar that violates the rules, and then refuse to change the Avatar/Signature, you will be given the following points:

- 1 point for the first offense.
- 4 points for each additional offense.

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Basic Questions and Answers

Where do I find out what infractions I already have?
If you have any warnings or infractions, they will appear in the User CP.

What about violations that occur within the SB?
- All SB violations will be graded in the same manner that forum violations are graded. If we need to issue points for an SB infraction, we will use the appropriate infraction option, and then indicate that this was for something that occured within the SB.

What if I receive multiple infractions for the same post?
- If the infractions were received for the same reason, then we will delete all infractions pertaining to that post except for the original infraction. The only exception to this is if the same infraction had two different level ratings. At that point we will review to see which rating level it should be at and that rating level will remain.

- If the post violated many infractions, all points from the multiple infractions the post violated will remain.

What if I wish to object the infraction?
- First, contact the moderator that made the infraction. State your case to them as to why you feel the infraction was unjust. They will give you the reasoning as to why they placed the infraction/severity of infraction in the first place.

- Should this not be satisfactory, you will then state your case to one of the supermods/admins. The staff will discuss it at that point, and the majority vote at this point becomes the final word.

Can you be banned for shorther or longer than a week under this new system?
- Any bans for longer than a week will be left up to forum staff to discuss. Generally if discussions have to reach that point, we will be looking toward implementing more of a permanant ban for said account.

- We may consider shortening a ban length for extreme circumstances (disputed points for example.) However, if you earned your week ban through the infraction system and the points were legitimately earned, it will be highly unlikely that this will happen. You're far more likely to have a shorter ban given from losing in a staff game of doom or something similiar.

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If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me and I will do my best to answer them.

[Kloaked Spirit]

Updated - 05/12 - 4:00 EST - Changed wording of how moderators handle SB infractions for the new infraction system.

[Kloaked Spirit]

Updated - 05/17 - Included the new staff stance on rule violations. Also noted that sometimes you could receive an infraction warning (no points) for signature violations, indicating you have 24 hours from the warning to change the signature.

[Jacx]

Update:

Here are the rules for the Oddthought forums....READ THEM!

Oddthought.com is both a social site for the community of users that like to frequent our site, however it is also a gaming site... What will that mean to you? It means we will have users of various ages, colours, race, sex and interests wanting to do different things and talk about different subjects!

SO??? So in order to help you enjoy the site and the forums, keep some things in mind!

Keeping things in place!
Question: Is the Dopewars online forum the right place to talk about last night's football game???
NO, Look at the forums, you can see we cover a range of subjects and for those subjects we don't cover we have general discussion areas to cover! So look, think and post in the correct section!
The additional joy in this is that by respecting the sections and other peoples threads, the chance of a forum mod kicking you in the privates reduces dramatically...JOY!

Flaming
We provide a section for ranting and raving, its called AIW...use it, we do not need to see non-relevant flaming elsewhere!
Also note - Offensive terms such as "faggot" or "nigger" may or may not be bannable based on context of the sentence. If they were meant as humour with absolutely no offensive slurs meant, the user may not be banned or probated. This rule is completely, 100% subjective and is based on the mod reading the post at the time. Use at your own peril.

So the rough guide is:

Rules of posting in the forum
- Use some common sense. We really shouldn't have to spell everything out for you....unless you're French, we understand, really we do!

- No asking Admin/Mods for favours without a valid reason. This includes name changes, custom titles, rep, etc. We will charge you for it!

- If the forum staff makes a reasonable request, follow it. Don't harass them or sass them just because they're staff! If you do not like the Mods or the moderation, feel free to not post here.

- Keep flames to the A/I/W section of the forum. Failure to do so may result in a ban!

- Don't spam or troll...we fucking hate you guys and we will kill you and your pet rabbit...that or ban your sorry arse!

- Keep advertising to the appropriate section....what? there is no section for advertising?...take the hint!

- NSFW avatars and signatures are not permitted EVER. WHY? because Uncle Bob and your boss might not want to see it on their computers when at home or work!
NSFW images in posts must be marked beforehand, and preferably just linked to. A thread containing mainly NSFW material can be marked as such, and therefore people won't need to mark the images inside.
*Exception: NSFW imagery is allowed in A/I/W without marking it beforehand.*

- No forum necromancy unless the post is extremely relevant to the topic at hand.

- No multi accounts without prior administrator approval. No using multi accounts to get around any punishments you may already have to serve with your main account. If you was on a short ban, the creation of a multi will extend the ban lots and lots and lots and..................

- You cannot post illegal material, harass others by posting their personal information or nude photos. Life bans for those that do!
Thanks.