Information Guide Forum Rules/Legal/Terms of Service

[JupitusAdmin]

This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at Information Guide. Please read it and become familiar with it. These terms may be updated from time to time, so please read them occasionally to make sure you are familiar with them.

Forum-wide Policies

• Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below).
  
• Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning. 
  
• Members are asked to not act as "back seat moderators". If members note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of a Site Admin. Only do this if a moderator has not replied within a reasonable period of time. Members who consistenly "act" as moderators may be warned. 
  
• Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning. 
  
• Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc. Re-printing material without permision will receive a warning and their post will be removed. 
  
• Members should respect the bandwidth of other users and sites. The use of inline () image tags pointing to data stored on third party systems for which the user has not received permission to link to may be removed. 
  
• Members should post in a way which is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large, small or coloured text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Users consistently abusing this will be warned. 
  
• Members should use an appropriate, descriptive title when posting a new topic. Examples of bad titles include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "dumb question", etc. Examples of good titles include; "Help with Decoder Install", "Looking for Info on Locomotive X", etc. 
  
• Members are welcome to use the test forum for general "test purposes". These may include checking signatures, testing a link or image, etc. (subject to previous points on decency, bandwidth, etc.). Users posting in the test forum just to increase their post counts will be warned. 
  
• Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed.
  
• The Site Admins and Moderators reserve the right to edit or remove any post at any time. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, etc. as noted in these points is up to Site Admins and not users. 
  
• The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revokation of private messaging.
  
• Do not disclose, either directly or indirectly, information that is not generally available to the public or is otherwise privileged or confidential. (2007-09-19)
  
• Redacting, deleting, or other forms of similarly "blanking" your own posts are against site policy, and will be met with a warning. (2008-9-20)
  

• Signatures may contain up to three lines (one line being that displayed on a browser opened to 800px width) of text (of small or normal size).
  
• Text sizes should be between 9 and 12 (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect to decency, normal writing, emoticons, etc. 
  
• Please refrain for excessive and/or irrelevant commercial messages/advertising in your signature.
  
• Links are permitted in signatures. Links are included within the text and image limits above (we prefer you use the URL tags to embed the link in text). Links to offensive sites may be subject to removal. We reserve the right to edit links or link text to mask URL's that might be construed as advertising.
  
• Users abusing these rules will be warned.
  

• Users are permitted to utilize a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 150 pixels square, contain no animation, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimiking ranks or copying avatars of Site Admins), may not exceed 10KB in filesize and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed). 
  
• Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect to decency, etc. 
  
• Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges.
  

• Information Guide operates a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.
  
• Arguing with Site Admins after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a temporary ban will be put in place as above. 
  
• Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact a Site Admin , e.g. if warned by a Moderator you should contact a Site Admin. If they feel you were treated badly they may remove a warning. Their decision is final.
  
• Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned username, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account of evade an email ban. Circumvention includes posting as an anonymous user. 
  
• An exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact Site Admins or Moderators personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban. 
  
• Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While Information Guide may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurence.