Rule Explanations

[Jezebel]

The purpose of having rules on this forum is to maintain an environment that fosters mature and intelligent discussion. The moderators do their best to be fair and consistent; however, disharmonious situations may arise that we were unable to predict in the rules. In these cases, we will use our discretion about what steps to take in order to correct these situations.

Please keep in mind that this is a privately run site. As such, we do have the right to discontinue the use of our services to any member for any behavior we see as destructive to the kind of community we want to maintain.

These rules and guidelines are not set in stone and will be changed as necessary.

[Jezebel]

Personal Attacks

This is when another member's character or circumstances is attacked rather than the statements they made.

Ad hominem attacks and personal insults are not tolerated on this forum. Exceptions may be made for context and posts meant as lighthearted jokes. The decision of judging intent falls upon moderators and admins and their decisions are final.


Trolling

A troll is a member that intentionally attempts to create drama and controversy contrary to the well being of the forum. Other members of the forum are baited to respond to the troll's offensive posting, harassment, and other means.

Members are expected to report the posts made by trolls rather than respond to them directly. Responding to posts made by trolls only escalates the problem.

The decision of judging intent falls upon moderators and admins and their decisions are final.

[Jezebel]

Do not make posts that lack substance and do not contribute to a thread. Thought out posts are encouraged. Not all one line posts lack substance, and not all posts are expected to be long. However, excessive one line posts that also lack substance and lower the quality of the forum's content will be removed.

Context of the post in relation to the thread it was made in matters. Fluff posts made in serious threads may be deleted and the member may receive a warning for making excessive fluff posts in such threads, while the same posts made in more casual, chatty and joke threads are fine. The Lounge and Members Only areas are entire subforums where members are free to engage in casual conversation.

The decision of whether or not a post qualifies as a fluff post is the decision of moderators and admins.

[Jezebel]

Acceptable:
Sourcing pasted articles.
Posting links with information that is relevant to the thread.
Posting links in threads requesting links to other websites, as long as the links are related to the kind requested.
Posting links to online tests and results in the Online Tests subforum.Unacceptable:
Members that post any type of link but do not otherwise contribute to the community.
Posts or links that are primarily intended to promote a product or service.
Links to other forums or communities in an attempt to gain members from this community. This includes creating threads announcing that you are starting a new forum or asking other members to start a new forum with you.
Threads made for the sole purpose of asking other members to visit your website.
Displaying URLs in areas that repeat in all of your posts, such as the personal text, avatar, or signature.

[Jezebel]

Examples of this would include:


Asking or telling members where to download illegal software
Asking or giving advice about how to do an illegal activity
Posting pornographic imagesDiscussion of subjects which happen to be illegal is allowed, as long as the discussion does not stray over the line of actually partaking in the activity. Any questionable posts my be deleted without warning. If you have any questions, please ask.

[Jezebel]

Do not post private information that was not disclosed by other members on this forum. Examples of this include:
Pasting private messages on the open forum without permission. This includes private messages from administrators, moderators, and regular members. If a member or moderator has sent something inappropriate to you that violates our forum rules, please send a private message directly to an administrator. If an administrator sent something you find questionable via private message or email, please reply to them directly. Never post a private message from another member on the open forum.
Revealing any personal details about other members without their consent. This includes their name, age, gender, location, details about their personal life, their activity on other websites, and anything else that was not disclosed or inferred from their content posted on this forum.

[Jezebel]

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Please take the time and care to format your posts up to forum standards. Poorly formatted posts are a bannable offense. Members with a habit of consistently submitting poorly formatted posts may be banned without warning.

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This is an English speaking forum. All posts must be in English, even if it is not your native language.

Additionally, posts must be made in proper English. It does not have to be perfect and we don't expect formal English, but do not make posts that completely ignore grammar rules and are littered with misspellings. If you are a poor speller, please refer to a dictionary website or use a browser such as Firefox which has spell check.

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Do not use internet shorthand (chatspeak, txt, txtspk, texting language, sms language). Examples of this include, but are not limited to:
b in place of be
c in place of see
r in place of are
u in place of you
y in place of why
n in place of and
4 in place of for
2 in place of to or too
sry in place of sorry
coz or b/c in place of because
plz in place of please
idk in place of I don't know
w/e in place of whatever
peeps in place of people<hr>
Do not add your own formatting to all of your posts to stand out. Special formatting should only be used sporadically. This includes, but is not limited to:
Making posts in all bold
Making posts in all italics
Using a nondefault font size
adding your own dividers to the tops and/or bottoms of your posts
manually creating signatures<hr>
Do not overuse smilies. Every sentence you make on here does not need a smiley to express your emotion. Posts rarely call for multiple smilies. Smilies should be used when your words alone do not express the sentiment of your statement, or to reinforce it. They should not be used as by default as a way to get your idea across or to express 'friendliness' in every post.

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Use paragraphs with an empty line between them. Most members do not want to read large blocks of text.

[Jezebel]

Avoid registering deliberately offensive or otherwise vulgar usernames. Please refrain from attaching particularly trashy avatars and/or obscene custom titles to your account. The reason being that this material becomes an enduring part of each thread into which you post, potentially spanning hundreds of threads over an extended period, and can therefore become a disproportionately negative bias to thread legibility and presentation.

Vulgar and/or poorly formatted usernames, custom titles, and avatars will be modified or removed at an administrator's discretion.

[Jezebel]

Only one account per member is permitted. The forum automatically checks for duplicate accounts.

If the forum detects a potential duplicate account and it is unconfirmed whether or not it is the same member, an administrator will send private messages to the accounts. The member will need to respond to the message to let the administrator know what is going on. Sometimes shared computers or shared IPs trigger the software warning and we don't jump to conclusions about it being a duplicate until we have more evidence.

If a duplicate account is confirmed, the accounts might be merged, or one of the accounts might be deleted or locked. There is not always a warning before doing this once the duplicate accounts are confirmed. If you are only trying to change your name or drop your old account, please contact an administrator before creating additional accounts.

If a banned member makes a duplicate account to circumvent a ban, the new account is banned immediately.