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Raptors Forum Rules (Please Read Before Posting)

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Raptors Forum Rules (Please Read Before Posting) 

Post#1 » by LittleOzzy » Wed Feb 4, 2009 2:37 pm

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.

1. Forum Rules

1. 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. 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.
4. Members who participate in discussions should attempt to make a meaningful contribution. Users who spam or post with the sole intention of increasing their post count and ranking may be warned.
5. Members are asked to not act as "back seat moderators". If members note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of a Moderator. Only do this if a moderator has not replied within 6 hours. Members who consistently "act" as moderators may be warned.
6. If your thread has been locked 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 Personal Message a moderator.
7. Members should remember this forum is aimed at a general 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 on warez, crackz, online streams etc. or re-printing copyrighted material without permission will receive a warning and their post will be removed.
9. Members should 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. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. 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.
14. The Personal Message (PM) function is meant to assist in posters' ability to communicate with page moderators. Any PMs that are deemed to be inappropriate (in content or frequency) or threatening may result in account suspension and/or banning.

The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above).


2) 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:

1. Quotes can be no longer than 3 paragraphs from any source.
2. The author of the material should be given credit.
3. 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 and possibly banned.

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, 550px wide and 50KB 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 two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may have up to four lines of normal size text.

1. Text sizes should be between 9 and 12 (small and normal).
2. Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, warez, emoticons, and so forth.
3. 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.
4. 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).

1. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect to decency, and so forth.
2. 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. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a suspension will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.

1. 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.
2. Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact the relevant Global Moderator or Administrator, e.g. if warned by a moderator you should contact a Global Moderator. If they feel you were treated badly they may remove a warning. If you feel their decision is also unfair you may contact an Administrator, primarily Winterpeg or Howard Mass. Their 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.
3. 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.
4. An 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.
5. 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.
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Service Announcement Regarding posting links (Re: TSN2) 

Post#2 » by Cyrus » Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:55 am

Online Streams

Alright people, enough with posting of the links, you can e-mail it to each other, but can not, I REPEAT, CANNOT post LINKS to NBA broadcasted games on realgm. It is strictly forebidden, and not something REAL GM Inc. wants on their boards, so please follow the rules, this has been said many times, and seeing the game thread, it seems it needs repeating.

Anyone caught doing so, will have their account suspended or banned from REAL GM, no questions asked.

People who quote said links, will also face similar suspensions/bans.

Thank You

This is a public warning to all...Don't say I didn't warn ya.
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Please check to see if topics are already posted 

Post#3 » by Shaazzam » Tue Feb 17, 2009 6:11 pm

Check Page 2 Before Posting

Hey cool cats.

We all appreciate everyone's efforts to keep everyone else up to date with all the goings on in the L.

We must remember that things get posted here almost as fast as they go live.

Can we please check the first two pages of the forum before posting new articles to make sure we are not reposting them?

Thanks for your efforts,

Your friendly neighbourhood Raptors mod team.
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Re: Raptors Forum Rules (Please Read Before Posting) 

Post#4 » by The Duke » Fri Mar 6, 2009 3:49 pm

Posting News/Blogs Articles

Dont Post Full Articles... Please provide a link... and quote 2 paragraphs max of text

please and thanks
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Re: Raptors Forum Rules (Please Read Before Posting) 

Post#5 » by LittleOzzy » Wed May 20, 2009 10:08 pm

Twitter/Facebook/Myspace Updates

Because of the increase of such updates the Raptors RealGM Mod team has decided that from now on only Raptor related update threads should be created.

If you come across an update that is not Raptor related feel free to post it in the multimedia thread.

We are making this change simply to cut back on useless threads. Some updates are just not worthy of their own thread.
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Illegal Streaming Links To Games 

Post#6 » by Howard Mass » Tue Oct 6, 2009 2:42 am

Online Streams

RealGM Users,

With the NBA preseason getting started, it has come to our attention that users are posting illegal links or posting their E-Mails to get illegal links of streaming NBA games.

These practices are prohibited and action will be taken against violators.

Here is the official rule on this subject matter.

"The posting of links or providing access of any kind to unlawful video or other display of intellectual property of any kind, including providing e-mail addresses for the purpose of delivering such links or access, is an impermissible violation of RealGM’s Terms of Use. All such links and access will be removed by moderators."
R.I.P. Dharam Raghubir (A.K.A. Magnumt)

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New blog rules thread (please read) 

Post#7 » by Alfred » Wed Oct 7, 2009 10:42 pm

Blogs

Recently there has been some confusion over how blogs are handled by the moderation staff here on the RealGM Toronto Raptors board. In an effort to fix this problem we have created a set of rules and guidelines that will make things more clear as to how blogs are moderated on this forum.

Rules for posting a blog thread on the Toronto Raptors forum:
1. The point of a blog is to provide content for the forum to discuss. If a blog falls outside of this category, due to a lack of quality content, or it serves primarily to generate money for the blog creator, and/or is considered spam by the moderation staff, it will be deleted or locked.
2. A thread that is a blog should have [Blog] written in the title of the thread.
3. Blogs should have a selected quote from the article posted before the link, i.e. The daily papers thread.

The reason that these rules have been put into effect is because we as a community do want to see blogs in this forum that create interesting discussion, and there certainly have been a number of excellent blog posts that have encouraged great debates and discussions here. What we do not want to see is countless blog threads adding nothing, cluttering the board and using RealGM to advertize their products.

This is an attempt to clarify what we want from you, the posters, and make how the moderation staff go about our jobs more transparent.

Thank you for reading and understanding these new rules,
Alfred
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Important: Streaming Links 

Post#8 » by Howard Mass » Mon Jul 12, 2010 7:01 pm

Online Streams

Raptors Fans,

I have been asked by your Moderators to post this.

Users may not post sreaming links to Summer League Games.

It is a violation of RealGM's Terms of Use to broadcast or link to broadcasts of unauthorized videos, such as unlicensed videos of summer league games (live or recorded). Such videos violate U.S. copyright law andtherefore are impermissible. All users of RealGM must refrain from posting any broadcasts or links to broadcasts of videos that are not from NBA.com or the NBA. All such material is unlawful and will be removed. Users who post such material will be subject to disciplinary action.

Thank you for your cooperation.
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The Chris Bosh Topic rule - please read 

Post#9 » by YogiStewart » Fri Aug 13, 2010 2:12 pm

Chris Bosh Threads

Its been over a month since Chris Bosh left the Raptors and signed with the Heat.
We're still getting a ridiculous number of new threads posted DAILY regarding any quote, action or minor news story relating to Chris Bosh.

If there's a significant story that is worth discussing, please feel free to post. But the Raptors' board is not the best place to discuss Bosh dumping his girlfriend, getting a Got Milk? ad or updating his Twitter account.

If Raptor board posters can't use their discretion when it comes to creating new topics that no longer belong on the Raptors' board, moderators will be forced to make a decision.

We hope you understand. The dead horse has been beaten repeatedly over the past month and its time to move on.
Thanks
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Re: Raptors Forum Rules (Please Read Before Posting) 

Post#10 » by Howard Mass » Sat Feb 25, 2012 5:27 am

Derailing Discussion With Constant Negativity

One of the biggest problems on The Raptors Forum is users constantly being negative to the point that it is derailing discussion on the forum.

I am a big fan of “Constructive Criticism” but not of “Constant Negativity”

There are many cases on this forum when a user is consistently being negative to the point where it brings down discussion on the forums.

To me, this is “Derailing Discussion”

Now, I am not saying anything negative is “Derailing Discussion” I am talking about someone consistently beating the drum non-constructively.

This has been a controversial policy to even some Moderators. Again, I am not saying a user cannot criticize, they just cannot consistently do it to the point it derails discussion on the forums.

No one likes a negative nellie and if this gets too bad, The Moderators will enforce it.

If anyone has questions or concerns about this policy, please let me know and I'll be happy to answer them.
R.I.P. Dharam Raghubir (A.K.A. Magnumt)

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New board policy regarding contests/vote-begging 

Post#11 » by Alfred » Tue Jun 5, 2012 6:16 pm

Contest/vote-begging

Hello denizens of the RealGM Raptors board,

The moderator team, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to make a change to board policy so that the Toronto Raptors RealGM forum remains the best place to discuss Toronto Raptors basketball. Recently we've had a number of threads asking people to "vote for my cousin Suzanne" or "my best bud Sheldon" in internet popularity contests.

We've allowed things like this in the past, because we just love you guys so much and want to help you out as much as possible. Unfortunately, it's difficult to draw the line. What is a legitimate cry for help, and what is simply vote-begging spam? It's tough to say. And as a result, we're not going to allow any of these threads anymore.

"But Moderation Team!" you say, "my cousin Suzanne is so incredibly talented, and she just needs 24 more votes to win the 'draw the cutest puppy' competition!"

Gosh, you know, we're sorry, and we're sure that your cousin is a cross between Pablo Picasso and an ink-jet printer, but unfortunately you'll have to find another avenue to get that message across.

On the other hand, the ever-benevolent Moderation team does have a heart. If you think that your case is REALLY extra special -- so incredibly important that you simply need to get that message across to as many people as possible -- you can personal message one of the Mods and we will determine if a thread should be created.

In any case, thank you for reading this announcement, and you can return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Thanks!

The Mod Team
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