P&OC Forum Guidelines (ethical, illegal, lawyers, regular)

[NewToCA]

Folks, I really want to keep the postings intact to the extent possible. I understand folks don't like seeing their postings deleted or portions of it removed.

The site has been reviewing copyright issues, and the need to respect sources of information. Many of us are violating the copyright rules by extracting far too much into our postings from the source articles.

The proper way to bring source data into the discussion is to paraphrase the idea or concept that you want to convey as briefly as possible, but generally only a few sentences. Add the link in your posting to the sourced material.

Also, when referencing postings with quoted sourced material, please edit the reference down to the extent possible to minimize copyright issues. Repeating quoted sources can become a bit of a problem.

We will be deleting postings which violate copyright rules, and we really don't want to damage the discussions. Please keep this in mind when posting.

[TnHilltopper]

In case some of you haven’t noticed, the tolerance for what is allowed in our discussions in this area of the forum has been tightened. You may have noticed the added presence of some extra moderators floating about, if you haven’t, I assure you there are.

Please read and review the Terms of Service agreement and the forum posting rules, which you can find on the top of this very page. Most notably, the portions on the use of copyrighted material, personal attacks, and using accurate and descriptive thread titles. Please use the reporting feature when you find threads and posts of a trolling or inflammatory manner and do not respond or engage, just report and move on.

[Ibginnie]

*When starting a new thread, please do not post only a link or a video. Other members may not know what your intent was if that is all there is. Also, subsequent posts may be off topic if they have no idea what topic you wanted to set forth with your link/video. Add a line or two to let the readers know your thoughts.

OPs in a thread that have no supporting thoughts will be deleted, but may be re-posted with commentary.

*Chain emails and copy and pastes are not permitted.

*When reporting duplicate threads, please include a link to the original.

*Threads that can be construed to be "race baiting" will be deleted and the OP may be infracted. Titles such as, "How come blacks..." and "White Trash rednecks..." and "Did you notice That Asians..." etc. are just a sampling of those types of threads. Please report any such threads.

*If you do not like the topic, skip the thread. It will die if no one keeps bumping it to the top of the forum with posts about how dumb the topic is.

OR

Keep posting in threads you don't like and keep them active.

*Personal attacks and trolling are getting out of hand, folks. Please report instead of answering. Infractions WILL be given to BOTH the attacker and the posters that answers with an attack of their own.

*No matter how worthy the cause, petitions of any kind are not allowed anywhere on any City-Data forum.

*Folks, I'm letting you know this is in the TOS

Do not quote or talk to trolls or your posts will also be deleted. Use the report feature instead.

Once you reply to trolling posts you then often become a troll also. Answering and antagonizing is every bit as bad what the troll did. Infractions may ensue if you partake in this.

*I appreciate the reports but, you need to know, we mods do not live here. We do get to reported posts when we see them. We don't allow them, condone them or sympathize with trolls.

*And again this needs to be highlighted.

Ignore and report. Ignore and report. Ignore and re................................................ ..........

*Please remember that hotlinking a photo, picture, graph, chart, or any image that comes from a website that has a copyright notice displayed is definitely not acceptable.

Hotlinking is directly transferring that image from another website to your post here. That has inherent ethical issues in itself. With that said, many websites do not consider the images displayed on their site in the public domain. Please make sure the image you are using is not from a copyrighted site.

Even if you upload a copyrighted photo (or any image) taken from another website to your own hosting site (photobucket, flickr, etc.) doesn't mean that it is acceptable to display in a post ...you're still using a "stolen" photo to use in your post here.

A simple rule we like to stress is if the photo is one you took, please feel free to transfer the image to your post here at C-D forums. If it is not an image you own or a photo you took yourself, post a LINK to the image instead of hotlinking or transferring the image to your post.

This is very important and can never be repeated too often.

*Changing others' posts that you have quoted, is not permitted. Do not change others' posts...EVER. It is trolling and violaters will be infracted. If you see it being done please report.

*We are not here to decide what's true and what is not, period. If we wanted to do that, we'd hire a bunch of experts from lawyers to doctors to engineers and programmers for the technical forums, instead of a random group of volunteer mods. Please, remember that.

*Evidently, many need to be reminded again.

Do not quote or talk to trolls or your posts will also be deleted and YOU may be infracted. Use the report feature instead.

Once you reply to trolling posts you then often become a troll also. Answering and antagonizing is every bit as bad what the troll did. Infractions may ensue if you partake in this.

*I appreciate the reports but, you need to know, we mods do not live here. We do get to reported posts when we see them. We don't allow them, condone them or sympathize with trolls.

*And again this needs to be highlighted.

Ignore and report. Ignore and report. Ignore and re................................................ ..........

*Please, people, understand this

You do not have the right to put down others' beliefs, religious or otherwise.

It IS that simple.

[Ibginnie]

Another good handy tip:

• Go to My Settings
• On the left menu go to Settings & Options
• Then click on Edit Options
• Scroll down to find Thread Display Options
• The third box is Number of Posts to Show Per Page
• There click on the drop down menu and click on Number of Posts to Show Per Page
• Set that to Show 40 Posts Per Page
• Click Save Changes

This is useful because many say See page 5 for that ...
Your page 5 could be another poster's page 2.

[Ibginnie]

There is a forum for illegal immigration. There is one for legal immigration too. Imagine that.

Please use them.

[Ibginnie]

We would greatly appreciate it if you would report what you believe are duplicate accounts. When you do so please include the name(s) of who you think it is.

Members that are not moderators spend much more time reading the forum. We do not read every post and mostly depend on YOU to help us out with reports.

[Ibginnie]

If you suspect someone is trolling, report them and DO NOT POST ON THE THREAD. Posting only perpetuates the trolling. Refrain from personal attacks and off-topic comments as well.

If you suspect someone is a banned person returned under a new username, report them and DO NOT REPLY TO THEIR POSTS. It is against the Terms of Service to call another user a troll in the open forum. Infractions will be given for such accusations, regardless of whether or not they are true.

.

[Ibginnie]

It's very important to remember that trolling/flaming is against the TOS. When you refer to an entire group in a derogatory manner you are doing both. Calling others DIMS, DemocRATS, Nazis or CULT members, etc. is derogatory.

If you can't be mature enough to engage in a conversation without disparaging others, the TOS will be strictly enforced and your entire post will be deleted and infractions may be issued, no matter how good it is nor how long it took you to craft it.

[Ibginnie]

Would you all PLEASE quit responding to trolls?

You know they are trolls, we know they are trolls so just report them and let us take care of it.

[Ibginnie]

Quite often I run across posts discussing moderation. People like to comment on threads being removed from the open forum, deleted, closed or even edited. A reminder that discussing moderation is against the Terms of Service. READ THEM.

I can explain a few of these points and hopefully stem the tide with these TOS violations.

Threads may be removed from the open and put into another forum that regular members can not see. I suspect moderators use this feature in different ways. I can only speak to MY reasoning to do so. Quite often a very long thread goes unnoticed and has many violations. In order to work on the thread, it gets moved. Now I don't know about the rest of you but I don't live on CD and often time does not allow for moderating these threads. So the thread may sit for a day or so waiting to be addressed. Once cleaned it is then moved back to it's original forum. However, when the thread is just not salvageable it goes in the trash. Yes, we have a forum for that too.

Another often mentioned is "There was nothing wrong with that thread! Why did it get closed?" Well, unless you have no life chances are that you did not see that the thread was getting trolled, not only by the trolls that sign up several times a day but also regular members that are "just having fun." A thread that has 200 posts and more than 50 need to be deleted as well as ALL the replies to those troll posts may get closed or even removed.

Threads are not removed, closed or deleted because we don't agree with it. Nor is this done to "shut certain posters up." That's just foolish.

We have often received DMs accusing us of being raging liberals or coo coo conservatives. Oh geez, guys, that says two things to me. One, we are doing our jobs correctly because no one really knows what we think OR two, many can not take responsibility for their own actions and have to have someone to blame it on.

If you are having many, many posts deleted you may want to reevaluate your posting style.

You are more than welcome to DM if you don't understand. If you just want to argue, don't bother.