ShayiriOnline Message Board Rules of Conduct (RoC).

ShayiriOnline Message Board Rules of Conduct (RoC)

The ShayiriOnline Message Board is a public forum and, while we encourage a free flow of discussion and sharing of information and ideas on the Message Board, we also ask that you follow a few basic rules. By using or participating on the ShayiriOnline Message Board, you agree to the Rules of Conduct as stated below, as well as the ShayiriOnline Terms of Service.

Moderation

The ShayiriOnline (S.O) Message Board is a moderated forum. If you see something and feel that it is offensive or against the S.O Message Board Rules, please report it to the Moderators by using the REPORT TO A MODERATOR link found in the lower left corner of all posts. This will alert the Moderators immediately that there is a post that needs attention. The Moderators shall then take action as necessary at the first possible opportunity. If you wish to add some comments while reporting, you may do so as well. Note that the Moderators have the final say and simply reporting an incident does not guarantee an action. They will evaluate the situation on a case-by-case basis and take action as deemed appropriate and where needed.

It is also worth mentioning here that all reports made to the Moderators are kept confidential. No bias or partial behaviour shall be shown, regardless of whether the complaint is made about a member who may be a close friend of a Moderator or even a Moderator himself. So please do not hesitate for this reason.

Having said that, the Moderators are not expected to be online all the time, to be everywhere or see everything and therefore they cannot respond immediately to every problem that arises on this Message Board. If you report an incident or complaint to a Moderator, please give them sufficient time to respond. Do not assume that a Moderator is ignoring your concerns merely because he or she does not respond as quickly as you would like.


What is a Moderator?

Moderators are members of the ShayiriOnline Message Board who generously give their time to help other users with problems and questions about our site and Board. They also are the peacekeepers and are here to ensure that all visitors enjoy their stay. This means enforcing the Rules of Conduct and ShayiriOnline Terms of Service.

All Moderators on this Message Board are volunteers. They provide their time and their good judgment to this website free of charge. They do not make the Board Rules. This is the responsibility of the S.O Crew. The Moderators only enforce the rules. For all this, the Moderators deserve a high level of respect and not to have scorn heaped upon them either publicly or privately.


What is the role of Moderators?

The Moderators monitor Board posts and respond to complaints to keep posting free of undesirable content as described in the Board Rules and ShayiriOnline Terms of Service. The ShayiriOnline Moderators reserve the right to edit, delete, move or make any other changes found necessary to threads and posts that are offensive, cause confusion, are off topic, or warrant a thread of their own. The author may or may not be notified of changes depending on what caused the change to be made. They also reserve the right to ban anyone who willfully or repeatedly violates the Board Rules. The Moderators shall try their very level best to remain unbiased when applying rules, disregarding the age or seniority (number of posts) of any member.

If a Moderator lets you know you are close to crossing the line, take heed of the warning. Likewise, if your thread was deleted or locked by a Moderator, do not repost it. They deserve respect and appreciation for their time and actions.

The Moderators are members that are considered by the S.O Crew to be highly capable and proficient in doing their job and are not responsible to answer or give any justification to anyone about the action(s) they take except to the S.O Crew or Administration. Therefore, when a Moderator takes an action to enforce the Board Rules, members are expected to respect their authority and abide by their decisions. If you for any reason disagree with a Moderator's decision, you are encouraged to politely explain either to another Moderator or to the Administrator why you disagree off-line. (Off-line means e-mail or private message, not on the message board.) Do not send rude, dismissive, or disrespectful responses to the Moderators.


Bans

If you log onto the S.O Message Boards and upon trying to post material, receive a message that you have been banned, please submit an unban request and wait for a S.O Message Board Moderator to get in touch with you. You can submit this request by either sending a Private Message to a Moderator or by mailing them. Bans are private matters between the Moderators and the person banned and will not be discussed publicly or through third parties. It is not acceptable to return to the Boards under another username. Doing so would lead to further severe action.


What if I disagree with a Moderator?

Moderators are not perfect and are only human. Disagreements occur. Try to communicate with them first on a respectful level and settle your disagreement. They are not targets for your obscenities, flames or general insults. If you do not agree with a decision, you are not entitled to start a thread arguing about the verdict or flaming any of the moderators. Any such messages will be removed immediately. This extends to Private Messages and unban requests as well, and you are not entitled to insult moderators via either of these methods. Also note that banning is a matter between the user banned and the Moderators, and Moderators can not and will not respond about bans publicly. Any correspondence about ban length and reason will be handled through unban requests.

If you feel a verdict is unfair, you may contact the S.O Crew about the problem, but be prepared to review the Board Rules again and know that they are able to verify your accusations. The S.O Crew will not mediate opinion and will only get involved if they find that the Board Rules have been violated.

Rules of Conduct

Following are some things all S.O members should keep in mind while posting on the S.O Message Boards. Please read the rules so you will be familiar with them.

1) Copyrighted Material

S.O Message Board users agree not to post any material that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner(s) of said copyright, trademark or other proprietary right. This includes but is not limited to magazine, book and newspaper scans, television broadcasts and copyrighted photos and pictures

2) Flaming, Bashing, and Trolling

a. Flaming is the act of posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting.

b. Bashing is posting messages that are harsh, gratuitous, prejudicial or attacking in nature towards a person, group or subject.

c. Trolling is posting of inflammatory, rude or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy and antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion. It also includes deliberately posting false information in order to elicit responses from people who really want to help. The best way to deal with such members is to simply ignore them and ask others to do so as well.

All such posts will not be tolerated on the S.O Message Boards. Treat others on these message boards with dignity and respect, just as you would expect them to treat you. Talking trash about another user or posting topics specifically to provoke a negative response from an individual or a group is not acceptable on the S.O Message Boards. Any such threads/posts will be deleted and may result in having the privilege of posting on the boards revoked by being banned.

3) Adult Content

Posts containing offensive, obscene, sexually oriented, violent, vulgar, illegal dialog, images, content, or links to such will be edited or deleted by the Moderators depending on the content. Posting such material can result in an immediate ban for the user.

4) Profanity

The use of offensive language on the S.O Message Boards is unacceptable. Simply editing a few letters with an asterisk or other symbols is not allowed, either. A simple rule to follow is: "When in doubt, leave it out." We do not believe that the use of profanity would help you to get your point across and find it usually better to avoid it altogether. If any such language is used on the S.O Message Boards, the Moderators will edit them out and take some action. Action by the Moderators can be in the form of a verbal warning, a temporary ban or then a permanent ban, as deemed appropriate by the Moderators.

5) Discrimination

Discrimination towards any particular member or group of members, based on sex, colour, race or ethnicity shall not be tolerated at all and shall be edited or deleted by the Moderators immediately.

6) Using all CAPITAL LETTERS

On the S.O Message Boards, using all capital letters in posts is considered as shouting and looks rude. It also makes the text difficult to read. Please avoid using all capital letters in your posts.

Excessive use of punctuation marks like ! and ? (more than 3) also falls under this rule.

7) Excessive images

Only post enough images to make your point. This will in most cases be no more than 2 - 3 images, and you must always be able to explain why you have posted any image. If posting more than 5 images in one thread, you must have a very clear reason for doing so. Irrelevant or excessive images posted shall be removed by the Moderators.

Posting of multiple images is only allowed in the Image Gallery, where there is no limit to the number of images members may post.

8 ) Signatures

Users are allowed to create personal signatures, either in text form or images. Please try to keep them as short as possible. In case of images, only 1 image is allowed at a time as a signature and must not exceed than 300 x 150 pixels in size. If the width of any image in the signature is found to be more than 300 pixels or the height more than 150 pixels, the Moderators shall edit the signature.

Linking in signatures is not allowed.

9) Posting HTML in Threads

While you are allowed to use HTML in posts, this is a privilege that will be revoked if it is abused. Do not use any codes that alter the way the forums pages are displayed, or that affect other's browsers in any way. Any code which modifies or changes the appearance of any element of the page outside of the post in which it is made will be edited/deleted and the user's account may even be banned. Embedded media files must be set to NOT auto-play, and must be reasonably sized.

10) Open-mindedness

During discussion, sometimes you will be faced with views or opinions you may not agree with. It is imperative you keep an open mind towards all inclusive people, and keep a neutral and objective focus when replying, instead of being subjective, personal or judgmental. We all as human beings have the right to form our own opinions and beliefs and where we expect our own to be respected, so must we respect those of others. Please try to steer such discussions into a positive direction without engaging in negative behaviour.

11) Multiple User ID’s

Please register and use only one User ID at the Message Boards. Posting under or having multiple user accounts is not allowed and will result in action by the Moderators. If anyone is found to be using multiple ID’s for any purpose, the member can be banned with immediate effect.

12) Impersonating other users/accessing another user's account

You may not impersonate another S.O Message Board member or create an account specifically for the purpose of provoking other users. Also, accessing or using someone else's account or attempting to access another poster's account is strictly prohibited. Members engaged in this type of behaviour will be banned from the boards permanently.

13) Advertisement

Advertising of any sort is not allowed on the S.O Message Boards. Advertising and promotion of event(s), product(s) or site(s) on the S.O Message Boards are also forbidden, whether they belong to a member or a third party. Such threads or posts will be edited or deleted by the Moderators.

If you wish to promote or advertise your site, you are advised to please use the S.O Directory or the S.O Banner Exchange Program.

14) Spam

Purposely spamming the Message Board with senseless, irrelevant, vacuous, one-word or empty threads/posts to increase the number of posts is highly frowned upon. This includes such things as party posts, chain letters, two-word “I agree” or “me too” responses, continually posting the same thread in a particular category, posting the same question across several boards and using the quote feature without contributing anything new to a thread.

On a similar note, participating in spam attacks (post riots, etc.) on the S.O Message Boards or planning a spam attack is unacceptable. Members found to be involved in any such activities shall be banned permanently with immediate effect.

15) Questionable Content

Though these rules cover most common situations, they can not anticipate everything and we simply cannot have a rule to cover everything. Hence, this is the rule to cover everything.

ShayiriOnline is a public Message Board, so act like you would if you were in a public place. The S.O Crew and Moderators reserve the right to choose the guidelines of objectionable content based on their knowledge of users. These issues are left to the discretion of the S.O Crew and Moderators, but may include any material that is knowingly false and/or defamatory, misleading, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, racist, sexist, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy or that otherwise violates any law or encourages conduct constituting a criminal offense. Consequently, the ShayiriOnline Moderators reserve the right to take any actions they deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not disrupted or abused in any way.

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There are hundreds of messages posted each day on the S.O Message Boards, so we cannot always promise you will receive a warning every time action has to be taken. By registering at the S.O Message Boards, users agree that any post deemed inappropriate may be removed at the sole discretion of ShayiriOnline. ShayiriOnline also has the right, at its sole discretion, to revoke Board privileges at any time without notice or reason. Think of these rules as a forewarning and, if you break them, you are taking your account status into your own hands.

Also note that the Board Rules extend to all categories/services of the S.O Message Board system, including but not limited to Private Messages and Signatures. This also includes asking for or offering anything against the Board Rules via Private Messages.

S.O is not responsible for messages posted on the S.O Message Boards or the content therein. ShayiriOnline reserves the right to reveal the identity of or whatever information we know about any user in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by said user.

ShayiriOnline has the right but not the obligation to monitor and/or moderate the S.O Message Boards. ShayiriOnline also reserves the right to change any or all other parts of this User Agreement at its sole discretion and without notice, including but not limited to implementing Rules of Conduct, Terms of Service and/or other measures.