The Political Forums Revised Rules and Regulations

[ADMIN]

Posting Rules

1. No threats or harassment toward any member or person (this includes a thread started for the express purpose of singling out an individual member, or attacks on a member's family).
   
2. No divulging of any members personal information unless this person is in the public domain (ie: in the news or a public figure/celebrity)
3. No racial or bigoted attacks to any specific member/person.
4. No excessive vulgarity.
5. No SPAM or gratuitous promoting of blogs, forums or websites. Links are allowed as sources of discussion.
6. No posting illegal and/or pornographic material or anything that otherwise is in violation to the forum Terms of Service.
7. When posting articles from other sources, post a link to the article and three or four paragraphs to that article - not the entire article. Referencing the source by posting a link to that source and only a small part of the article adheres to the Fair Use Act.
8. General discussion of forum rules and moderation is fine in public, but questions and challenges involving moderator actions must be communicated via PM.

Posting Guidelines

1. A certain degree of “chippiness” will be loosely tolerated, however at such point it becomes excessive and a distraction to the forum, a Moderator may issue a general thread warning. Civility is expected to resume at such point.
2. Members are expected to maintain topic discussion and to post threads in appropriate forums. Moderators may post a general warning in threads gone awry from the original topic if it becomes distracted. Threads may also be merged or moved if they clearly are beyond the scope of the forum subject matter or are duplicate or similarly duplicated threads. Excessive flooding with topics will be limited.
3. Members are encouraged to report posts if they feel insulted or threatened. Moderators may not always notice offending dialogue in the forum and may not react in such cases. You will always receive a response and/or a reaction from a Moderator on a reported post. Trolling reports will be considered only if you can point out violations of rules. Otherwise, the best advice for dealing with trolling is to simply ignore it.
4. Members should feel free to post their thoughts freely in an environment of minimal interaction from the Moderator team, however members are encouraged to consider the statements that they are expressing. We are promoting “world class” political discussion and remember that the thoughts and statements that you express are a direct reflection of your personality and intellect. Reactions to your expressions will ultimately depend on how you express them.
   
5. Members are expected to post in good faith. You are expected to engage in and contribute to discussion. A pattern of behavior of breaking rules, trolling, going off topic, attacking other members--in short, acting in bad faith, will not be tolerated.
   

Members are expected to read and fully understand these rules.

Common sense and decency apply, and while these rules are not all inclusive, the Administrator and Moderators of this forum may act or react accordingly in response to specific situations. And remember, this is our forum. Please help us help everyone.

Last Updated 15 May 2013

[ADMIN]

Infraction system

Members may receive an infraction for violating rules or disregarding in-thread and/or PM warnings.

If, after moderation requests and warnings, a member receives an infraction, he or she will be restricted to posting in the Hole only for 24 hours. The rest of the forum will remain readable.

If a member accumulates 3 infractions in a seven day period, he or she will be placed on post review (you cannot post unless that post is reviewed and released by ADMIN and you will not be able to use the PM function) and a subsequent ban may result. Bans can range from a number of days to a permanent ban and will depend on the infractions accumulated.

Depending on the infraction, members can be put on post review or temporary/permanent ban at the discretion of ADMIN and the Moderator team.

[ADMIN]

Thread Banning

tPF uses a thread banning process where members may be banned from participating in specific threads. If a member is disrupting the content and spirit of a thread, an in-thread warning will be issued. The in-thread warning may be directed at the offending member(s) or given as a general warning. If the thread continues to be diverted, Moderators may choose at their discretion to either issue another warning or thread ban the offending member(s).

A member who is thread banned can no longer participate in that specific thread but may otherwise participate on other threads which they have access to. Multiple and frequent thread bans may, at Moderator discretion, result in infractions and/or temp/permanent bans.

Examples of thread diversion include (and are not limited to) trolling, off-topic posts, heckling and/or otherwise causing the discussion to substantially deviate from the original topic.

[ADMIN]

Members,

Please make note of a new standard added at the request of our forum leadership.

As stated in Guideline No. 5 above, "Members are expected to post in good faith. You are expected to engage in and contribute to discussion. A pattern of behavior of breaking rules, trolling, going off topic, attacking other members--in short, acting in bad faith, will not be tolerated."

Thank you all for your contributions.

[ADMIN]

New Standards on Flooding and Conduct in On the Serious Side

As stated above, members are expected to maintain topic discussion and to post threads in appropriate forums. Moderators may merge or move threads if they clearly are beyond the scope of the forum subject matter, or if they contain duplicate content. Posting multiple threads on a similar subject, without intention of follow up discussion, is considered flooding, and will be met with warnings and infractions based upon Moderator judgment. Upon receiving complaints, Moderators may also issue general, in-thread warnings to maintain the standards of a discussion in response to member complaints. Members in violation may be subjected to banishment from individual threads.

Our all-volunteer moderators enforce the standards that our membership has agreed upon. Moderators do not actively seek violations, and are already overworked by the noble effort to respond to each and every report individually. We can all support them by reporting witnessed violations, rather than responding to such offenses with similar behavior. In doing so, we will not only lighten their burden, but also promote the kind of forum which we all hope to be part of.

[Chris]

The VIPs have decided to remove the following paragraph from post #1

Moderation of these rules and guidelines with be lighter under forum areas "The Political Forums" and "Politics and News", but will be stricter under "On the Serious Side" where more serious discussion is expected. This forum area is highlighted with a blue border. The stricter moderation will include thread banning as well as banning from the "On the Serious Side" section.

And the following sentence from paragraph 1 of post #5:

While enforcement of these rules and guidelines will be lighter outside of "On the Serious Side", members in violation may be subjected to banishment not only from individual threads but from that section of the site entirely.

will be replaced with

Members in violation may be subjected to banishment from individual threads.

In short, we will no longer have two levels of moderation but only one.