RealGM Forum Rules

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Howard Mass
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RealGM Forum Rules 

Post#1 » by Howard Mass » Wed Jul 31, 2013 8:30 pm

RealGM Community Rules

This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at http://www.realgm.com. Please read it and become familiar with it, its terms are retroactive and agreed to by Moderators and Administrators.

Forum Rules

1. Make Your Post In The Right Forum (s):

Posts are to be made in the relevant forum and in the relevant thread. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policy below).

2. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users.

This applies to ALL users, regardless of post count, forum rank or perceived status at RealGM. Flaming, trolling or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.

3. Do Not Derail Discussion

Members who disrupt the normal flow of dialogue or otherwise act in a manner that negatively affects other users’ ability to engage in real-time exchanges may be warned, Suspended or Banned.

Sometimes there are controversial trades, signings, decisions, etc. made by teams. It is ok to state your opinion but please do not keeping beating the drum negatively on that team's forum for weeks, months or years after the fact over something you do not like.

We are a forum for constructive but positive discussion.

4. No Trolling, Baiting Users, Personal Attacks or Post Padding

Members who participate in discussions should attempt to make a meaningful contribution. Users who post with the sole intention of starting up trouble, increasing their post count and ranking may be warned, suspended or banned.

5. Do Not Try To Act Like A Moderator (A.K.A. Backseat Moderating)

We appreciate users who are willing to help us by pointing out users who are violating our rules.

The best way to do this is by hitting the ! On the offending post and The Moderators will deal with it.

The only thing we ask is users not act as Moderators and tell a user to stop doing that. While we appreciate the thought, it makes it harder for The Moderators on that forum to enforce policy.

6. If your thread has been locked, merged or removed please do not start up another thread asking for an explanation.

If you have a question about the status of a thread, please contact the moderator of the forum by private message.

Any user who calls out a Moderator for locking their thread will automatically be warned or temporally suspended.

7. This forum is aimed at a Sports Audience

Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning. Members who repeatedly evade the language censor to post offensive language may also be warned.

8. Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc.

Users linking to or asking for information to pay content or re-printing copyrighted material without permission will receive a warning and their post will be removed and/or edited out.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. Members should use an appropriate, descriptive title when posting a new topic.

Examples of bad titles include; "Huge Trade!", "Look Here!", "Check this out!", etc.

12. DO NOT SPAM.

Users posting spam will be banned and their post removed.

13. The administrators 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 Moderators 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).


Posting News Articles

As stated in the above forum rules, users shall not upload, post or otherwise make available on RealGM.com any material protected by copyright, trademark, or other proprietary right. Users shall be solely liable for any damage resulting from any infringement of copyrights, proprietary rights, or any other harm resulting from such a submission. In simpler terms, no Insider or similar articles from subscription services can be posted. Newspapers, magazines and other online news articles are allowed.

If you wish to quote from a news article please follow these guidelines:

- Quotes can be no longer than 3 paragraphs from any source.

- The author of the material should be given credit.

- A link to the articles source MUST be present in your post.

Members who knowingly post fake or fraudulent news articles with the intention of disrupting the flow of dialogue in a forum will be warned.

3) Signatures

Signatures may contain up to five lines of text (of small or normal size) or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 90px high and 550px wide in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 60px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to four lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text.

- Text sizes should be between 9 and 12 (small and normal).

- Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, warez, emoticons, and so forth.

- Links in signatures are permitted. Linked sites may be commercial in nature. You may not link to warez, porn or political, racist or other similar hate sites. Links are included in signature size limits.

- Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their signature privileges.

4) Avatars

Users are permitted to link to a picture for use as an avatar. User defined avatars are to be no larger than 80 pixels square, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimicking ranks or copying avatars of Moderators), may not exceed 35KB in file size 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, and so forth.

- Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges

5) Warnings, Suspensions and Bans

RealGM operates a three strike policy.

Warning #1: PM or Public Warning
Warning #2 PM or Public Warning
Warning #3 Three-Day Suspension
Warning #4 Seven-Day Suspension
Warning #5 Full Ban From RealGM.

There are some exceptions to these rules.

Individual Board Bans: Administrators may choose to ban a user from a particular forum in place of the above action. This will be done only for users who The administrators feel has value to a particular forum. It will be done rarely and on a case by case basis.

General NBA Discussion Forum: Our General NBA Discussion has a different policy than the rest of our forums. For more information, please visit our General NBA Discussion Forum Thread on the rules for that forum.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1201431

The RealGM Nuclear Option: If an Administrator feels that a user has come to our forums to either create havoc or seems to have no intention of being a productive member, they have the right to outright ban the user. Moderators have the ability to request to an Administrator that this action be brought against a user.

Other exceptions

- Arguing with moderators 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 Administrator Howard Mass. If they feel you were treated badly they may remove a warning. His decision is final. Contacting Administrators over warning matters should be done so as a very last resort ... Administrators do not want to be bothered unless vital.

- 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 to evade an email ban. Circumvention also includes posting as an anonymous user.

- Exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact team members 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, but if the situation warrants it an immediate ban may be given without warning. While RealGM may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.

Board Crackdowns

If necessary, The Administrators will put in place special temporary rules to on a specific forum if they feel things need to get back in order.

General NBA Discussion Forum Policy

As mentioned above, Our General NBA Discussion Forum has a different policy than the rest of the forum. For more information, please visit the policy thread our General NBA Discussion Forum.

http://basketball.realgm.com/info/terms_of_use

Terms of Use

All members of the RealGM forums should keep in mind that the forum rules also adopt all of the Terms of Use, which govern any and all usage by visitors to RealGM.com, and you can read these Terms of Use here: http://basketball.realgm.com/info/terms_of_use.

Questions

If anyone has any questions about our Forum Rules, please make a post on our Feedback and Suggestions Forums or send a private message to Administrator Howard Mass
R.I.P. Dharam Raghubir (A.K.A. Magnumt)

:beer:

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