Forum Rules [Updated 07/05/12]

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GrandOldTeam

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GrandOldTeam prides itself on offering Everton fans a place for intelligent and respectful debate about the issues that matter to them, offering a feature-rich, intelligent and moderated forum for our readers to share their own personal views on all things Everton FC related. We're enormously proud of the websites ethos, one which we thinks accurately represents the Evertonian community as the very best in the World.

We do ask that all visitors follow our relatively laid back guidelines to ensure these forums remain user-friendly.

Contributions must not:
a ) Contain any material which is defamatory of any person;
b ) Contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
c ) Promote sexually explicit material;
d ) Promote violence;
e ) Promote discrimination based on race, sex religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, age or any other reason;
f ) Infringe any intellectual property right including but not limited to any copyright, database right, trade mark, patent, or design right (whether registered or not) of any other person;
g ) Be likely to deceive any person;
h ) Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;
i ) Promote any illegal activity;
j ) Be threatening, abuse or invade another's privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;
k ) Be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person;
l ) Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;
m ) Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case; or
n ) Advocate, promote or assist any unlawful at such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.
o) Break any applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted.
p) Poor, profane or obscene language of any type is not welcome - even in jest.
q) Be religious, racial or political. There are other forums on the Internet suited for exactly this type of discussion, and ask that you please conduct such discussions on those forums.

General Posting Guidelines:

Correct forum

Please try to be sure you post any new threads you start in the correct forum. If you're not sure where you're thread should go, check with a moderator.

Stay On Topic
Make a particular effort to ensure that your reply in any discussion is relevant and 'on topic'. If you are perceived to be deliberately diverting a thread away from it's topic, you'll be adjudged to be sabotaging and effectively spamming our forum and will be banned.

Duplicate threads
Before you start a thread, please use the forum's search facility to make sure the content of your post is not already covered in another thread.

Headline spin
Please try and make thread titles as descriptive as possible of the thread's actual content.

Anonymous Sourcing
If you're posting an article or image from another website, please include a link to the source. If you copy and paste from a source, please provide a link.

News Articles
When posting a link to an online news story, please post the text as well. This is convenient for everyone and those that do not, will be accused of advertising;

Advertising
If you would like to plug/advertise a website or service, please ask permission prior doing so. Permission can be obtained from a moderator or admin, failure to do so will result in your post and possibly account being removed.

'Being The Ref'
Attempting to get another user banned by posting things such as "abuse! ban him!" is totally unacceptable, and will not be tolerated on this forum. This is basically the internet equivalent of a footballer waving the imaginary yellow card at a referee, and is completely unhelpful. If you see a post that you believe is in violation of the forum's Rules and Guidelines or Terms of Service, it would be highly appreciated if you could use the "Report to Moderator" function to bring it to our attention.

"Report to Moderator" Function
This forum has a "Report to Moderator" function built into its software (located at the bottom-left corner of all posts). The purpose of this function is to aid moderators in their duties. As you can imagine, it's not easy (nor plausible) for a small team of people to read every last post in every last thread on the forum, so this is where we need your help. If you see a post that you believe is in violation of the forum's Rules and Guidelines or Terms of Service, it would be highly appreciated if you could use the "Report to Moderator" function to bring it to our attention.

Also please be aware that, whilst reportings are not anonymous to administrators, all details will be kept strictly confidential and will not leave the admin forum. You will not, under any circumstances, be name dropped on the open forum for reporting a post in a genuine manner.

High Maintenance Members:
Please note, any member who extracts an "extra ordinary amount of time" from the moderators or administration may lose some of their forum privileges. An "extra ordinary amount of time" is defined as anyone who requires excessive mod or administrative intervention. Excessively causing, creating, or adding to difficulties for other members or moderators, or, excessively complaining of being a "victim" of another member puts you in the category of high maintenance.

Moderators

Our moderators keep control of the various forums. They can edit posts, edit User Accounts, ban members, move / delete / lock or unlock topics - as they see fit or if those topics or users contravene the forum guidelines (above). The moderation team is here to keep the forums safe, sane, and secure. The forum rules are here to help us do that, and to ensure that these forums are of the highest quality. Read them. Know them. Please do not try to circumvent them.

Failure to comply with the above will likely result in either an infraction, suspension or termination of your account.

Warning System
30 Points = Your account is placed in a moderation queue, meaning your posts will require moderator approval while your at or above the 30 points threshold.
60 points = Suspended For 7 Days.
80 points = Suspended For 14 Days.
100 points = Perm Banned.

The most common infractions are;

Inappropriate Language: 10 points
Inappropriate Behaviour: 20 points
Off Topic: 20 points
Inappropriate Content: 60 points
Spammed Advertisements: 100 points
All warnings expire 1 month after issue.

Of course, all warnings and associated points are issued at the discretion of the staff member.

You will be automatically notified via a conversation if you receive an infraction - meaning the points wont mount up without you realising.

Of course, the 99% of members will never need to know this information - the rest will find out we have little time for members who cannot follow our fairly laid back rules to ensure this place always has its unique friendly atmosphere to keep it the best Everton forum to share opinions.
 
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