moderator

FORUM RULES

1.Respect No member shall show disrespect to others - no harassment, bullying, attacking, threatening or sniping of any members.

2. Posting Posts, mail messages, PMs, usernames, and avatars that may offend shall not be tolerated (including impersonating others avatars). Offensive content includes
excessive swearing, racism, sexism, homophobia, images of an adult nature and porn links. webmaster rule

3. Violations The following types of posts are not permitted:
-trolling (inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic)
-offensive (racism, sexism, homophobia, images of an adult nature and porn links, misandry, misogyny.)
-purposefully disruptive
-"Your SA is not as bad as mine", "you don't have SA" posts
-armchair psychiatry (online drugs, unqualified diagnosis and treatment) webmaster rule
-obscene
-spam (advertising/selling/dating) webmaster rule
-encouraging crime (including illegal drugs and piracy/file sharing) webmaster rule
-encouraging suicide and methods webmaster rule
-carrying on an *Closed thread* argument in a new thread
-pretending you are admin/moderator
-personal attacks

4. Global This forum is a world forum, so members should respect each others religious and cultural differences, this also requires athiests and religious members to show respect when debating

5. Privacy A post should not include personal information about another member.

6. Favouritism A poll or post that favours one member will not be allowed.

7. PG-13 The forums are PG-13 rated, so bear this in mind when any content is posted. Medical issues in medical terms are obviously allowed but crude terminology will be deleted. Pictures of people semi clad (shirt off, underwear) are not allowed but a shot on a beach is OK as it is in keeping with the surrounding. This is due the the rating of SPW's server webmaster rule

8. Accounts Only one account per person. Also using proxy servers will get you banned (and other hacker based actions) webmaster rule

9. Moderating No arguing with moderating actions in open forum. Posting about moderation actions in the public forums constitutes a violation. Discussion of moderation actions in the public forums is not permitted. Rules are also not up for debate until the Moderating team create a thread for feedback.

10. Disciplinary action/Moderating decisions:
1. Moderators may,at there own discretion, delete or edit any and all threads, posts, visitor messages, usernames, and avatars that break any of the rules above.
2. Any one moderator may give warnings, infractions, or outright bans to any member for any breach of the above rules.
3. If you have a problem with a moderator on the board, a moderator breaking rules or a moderating decision, PM moderators and they will independently
look into your complaint. Please provide a screenshot if there is abuse, moderators will keep this private from the moderator concerned. False reporting will constitute a violation.
4. Week, Month or Permanent bans require the approval of three moderators after reviewing the documentation.

11. Reporting postsTo use this function to report abuse/rule breaks, click the little exclamation triangle you see on the panel beneath an avatar. Often we select people to moderate who help us run this site by reporting posts/spam.

Note * The webmaster rule breaches can possibly result in him deleting accounts with all posts and not just banning them, this is subject to his visting the site, usually responding to a PM complaint. He also checks the reported posts section.

Remus

Notes on new moderating practice:

Mods will be more autonomous now, act solo and impose ban/infraction instantly, this is to react to arguments etc and nip them in the bud early (to avoid flame war) rather than two days later when you have found other mods to support a ban/infraction. If a ban is imposed it will be posted in the mods forum for other mods to approve. If it is not approved, it will be reversed and apologies given.

This is about mod conduct, for e.g. we get a new mod, they have a pet hate for someone on the forum, they want to get rid of the board member and say nasty things, threaten or ban for no valid reason/fabricate a reason, this user will appeal to other mods without knowledge of the offending mod, no mod should be above the rules and certainly not receive special treatment if we have misconduct, in fact to abuse the position should carry a heavier punishment for the moderator in question.

Do note that false reporting will not be tolerated, be this for a moderator or a regular user, so if you have a complaint make sure there is evidence to back it up, a screen shot of a message or report a PM, not just hearsay. This rule is not meaning petty offenses or breaches you are not sure about but much more severe misconduct.

The ban system will go like this from now on:

infraction, day ban, week ban and then permanent ban. If the infraction is severe, say porn link, you will be looking at a permanent instant ban.

These new rules are stricter for everyone (and mods too!) but also more clear, hopefully ironing out grey areas, if you have queries or even suggestions, PM a moderator.

Rule discussions and feedback will be opened up on the forum when the admin decides, members should not do this (or face infractions). We will have a yearly review from now on.

These rule/moderating changes have come about due to forum feedback and feedback from the webmaster

"Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE"