THE RULES
1. No threats.
2. No spam.
3. Proselytizing is allowed as long as intelligent discourse follows, and as long as it is not spam.
4. No sock puppets.
5. No chronic flaming.
6. No Posting of personal info.
7. No obstruction.
8. Members are only allowed to publish links to their websites, blogs or YouTube channels or similar items on the internet when they have been a member for three months and have a post count of at least thirty. This rule will not be enforced retroactively from 01-20-2013
About personal messages
For your general knowledge PM's are not accessible by mods or administrators, they are truly private messages. PM's are considered private and not to be published. Remember that PM's are at the consideration of the receiver, abuse of the PM system can be as simple as refusing to stop correspondence when asked by the receiver. That is considered harassment. Harassment or threats may be brought to the council's attention and action will be taken.
DEFINITIONS
Threat
When someone presents themselves as a real-life danger to others on the forum or in pm's.
Spam
Refers to the practice of posting commercial messages or advertisements more than once, outside of our Spam Forum or by a member with fewer than 25 posts. Spam also includes cut-and-paste proselytizing and hit-and-run proselytizing. Sending members unwanted or offensive pm's is also considered spam.
Proselytizing
The practice of attempting to convert people to a religion by means of preaching.
Sock Puppet
Another user account of an already established user on the site.
Flaming
The act of deliberately posting messages to the board that are hostile, insulting or meant purely to evoke emotional responses. Behaviour otherwise known as "trolling".
Personal Info
Other than your own, personal info is not to be posted here at the AF. Personal info is defined to mean info that can be used to identify a private person's real-life identity, address, phone number, employer, etc., without their permission. If the person has posted that info themselves for some reason, it is not an offense to quote them. If it is common public information, such as contact information for public figures such as politicians, it will also not be considered an offense.
Obstruction
The intentional hindering of moderators to do their job.
Note: The admins/mod team may have to make judgment calls from time to time as a result of ambiguity in the rules, definitions, or context of the alleged offense.
Since it is the job of the forum administrators and moderators to maintain general order, it is necessary that the mods and admins sometimes make judgment calls and take action even when a specific written rule does not seem to have been broken. This is especially true when some of the craftier posters among us artfully cause the same kinds of grief we're trying to prevent, while sidestepping the letter of the law as written in our posted rules. Instructions given by a mod or admin must be regarded as a posted rule until further notice or until rescinded by a mod or admin. Legitimate questions or concerns are given serious consideration by all mods and admins in Council.
One more thing: the council is not obliged to handle a complaint or a breach of forum rules, unless a moderator or administrator has received a P.M. (=Private Message) about it, or if you have used the clickable red exclamation mark, that can be found under every post.
