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Do not post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violative of any law. Posting any of the above may lead to the offending material being removed from the board by a moderator and an official warning being issued to the offender.

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Has been added to the rules section. This is in the sign up agreement, but we felt it would be wise to add to the main board policy too.

Next up:

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Do not let others use your account, and do not give anyone your password. Do not post messages on behalf of banned members. Either of these may lead to the issue of an official warning.

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This used to be in the policy but somehow got lost in the last update.

Two new paragraphs are next:

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Plagiarism, Pirating and Adult Content

Generally speaking, you are not allowed to post copyrighted text. Most pictures are copyrighted, as well; make sure you credit the image's creator, and look at the Policy section on Posting Images.
Most pictures are copyrighted, as well; make sure you credit the image's creator, and look at the Policy section on Posting Images. Also do not post links to NC-17 or X-rated sites, or post any NC-17 or X-rated material anywhere on the BBS. This will also result in a warning, and the deletion of the offending material. If you would like to post R-rated fan fiction, filks, or role plays - or like material - on the board, please do so in a separate thread, clearly indicating in the thread title and the first post in the thread that this kind of content is included in the thread. Posting links to sites that contain any of these kinds of illegal content is warnable, as well.

Privacy

On the Internet, a person's privacy is very valuable. You cannot post private content on the board. This includes, but is not limited to, Instant Messenger (ICQ, MSN, AIM, etc.) logs, any emails, private pictures, real names of posters, their (e-mail) address or telephone number or other private details - unless the poster has this content in his or her profile, or it is clear through some means that the poster does not mind; for example, it would not be a warnable offense to post the real name of a person who has posted his or her real name in other threads.

Again, if you break this rule, your post will be edited by a moderator to remove the content. In most cases, linking to this kind of material will be considered a warnable offense, as well.

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This makes the whole situation much, much clearer. Its easier for people to see what they shouldn't be posting, and easier for moderators to quickly identify what material shouldn't be on the board.

The ban policy was altered slightly after I went to ban someone and had no idea how long to ban them for. This revision makes that much more clear.

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Bans

When a certain number of warnings is reached, a user will be banned for a certain amount of time, depending on how many warnings he received:

Two warnings received within seven days of each other will lead to a one-day ban.

Four warnings received within one month of each other will lead to a one-week ban.

Six warnings received within three months of each other will lead to a one-month ban.
After having received a one-month ban, the following ban structure will apply to a user for a three-month period:

Two warnings received within one month of each other will lead to an additional one-week ban. Thus, if a user with five warnings manages to accumulate three more, this user will be banned for one month and a week. A user who has seven warnings and has already served his one-month ban, and who receives another warning, will be banned for one week.

Four warnings received within three months of each other will lead to an additional one-month ban.
Warnings do not "disappear" after a ban - they will stay on your record for three months. When an appropriate number of warnings is reached, one of the Administrators will start a thread in the Announcements forum announcing and explaining the ban. This thread will be closed after the initial announcement - discussion of administrative action should take place in the Questions, Suggestions & Feedback forum. Bans will be lifted at roughly the same time as they were imposed, by the administrator responsible for issuing the ban. Note that a ban from the board translates into a ban from the chat room.

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Finally for the policy, a new little bit in the etiquette section - by popular demand.

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When using the reply with quote feature - please don't quite the whole of another message. Just the relevant parts. As a general rule, posts should contain at least 70% original material.

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On other little updates to the board, you may have noticed that a few forums that were on top are now at the bottom. We wanted to make the announcements forum more visible.

If anyone can think of a better category name for the top one, I'm all ears.

the announcements forum is now read only. Don't worry, threads that have some room for discussion will have a corresponding link to a QSF thread pasted into them. You'll see In the past we'd had a few problems keeping the ANNC forum moderated. And when discussion takes place in there, the original announcement, or message that we were trying to get across, can get lost. This way things should be much clearer.

Cheers
-Lis

If you'd like to discuss the things in this thread, hop over to this QSF thread to do so.

[This message has been edited by Lisa (edited January 16, 2002).]