RAWK Posting Guidelines

[Armin]

RAWK Posting Guidelines

We feel these guidelines will be useful for the Mods in terms of managing the forums, but just as importantly, we hope they provide users a point of reference with which to understand the basic nature of RAWK and also to gauge why a post may have been moderated. The ultimate aim of it all though is to enable you to ENJOY contributing to RAWK and for others to ENJOY your contributions.

Its also worth pointing out that:

1. Mods may at times disagree on certain things. In these instance (which are rare anyway), its best to to let them work it out between themselves.
2. What is set out below is a framework, not an absolute set of rules and regulations. It will be necessary at times to moderate posts for reasons that are not outlined below.
 
BIG RULES: Things deemed to be totally unacceptable:

• Pornographic material
• Racism
• Spam/Commercial advertising
• Overt personal abuse of other posters (unless its in jest of course!)
• Use or attempted use of the Ticket Exchange forum if you are not 18 years of age or older.
• Ticket Touting
• Registering and using duplicate accounts whilst banned.
• All other breaches of the basic Forum T&C's in place at your time of registration or at any time during your membership of RAWK.

 
Guidelines: Things we'd rather you did not do:

• Creating duplicate threads. Before starting a new thread use the search feature to check that the subject of your intended post is not already covered by an existing thread. Post to existing threads wherever possible. This particularly applies to post match comments.
• Starting threads in the wrong forum. We believe the board descriptions on the index page are fairly self explanatory, but feel to ask a mod if you are not sure.
• Starting 'one liner' theads in the LFC forum. Again, if starting a new thread in the main LFC forum, refrain from short one liners. If you link to an article on another forum/website give a few short sentences of explanation about what the link is, why we should click it and what your impressions of the article are. This goes a long way to provoking discussion.
• Using 'Text Speak' in your posts. Please take the time to write replies in English and feel free to use the spell checker thats provided (NB: Don't worry if English is not your first language!).
• Slagging off other LFC sites. Its seems to have become a bit of a hobby for some. We'd prefer it if you didn't do this.

• Thread domination (ooer). Do not try to bully someone into submission or disparage every comment they make, simply because their views may differ from your own. Write a coherent reply setting out your views and then let others have their say.
• "Spinning" news reports/interviews. Use thread titles that are appropriate to the article, rather than putting your own spin on it. This is not a tabloid newspaper, people are intelligent enough to draw their own conclusions on articles.
  
• Excessive/unnecessary swearing. We take a liberal attitude to this (after all, its something pretty much all of us do at the match!), but please do not go over the top. Keep it in context and do not use swear words on new thread titles on the main LFC forum.
• Anonymous Sourcing. If you copy and paste an article, piece of news or rumour about LFC to the forum please include a link to the original website source or explain where and the context of how you heard the story. We discourage unsourced rumour and gossip. Also, do not copy and paste news items from subscription sites such as the Koptalk Insider.
• URL links, special SMF formatting tags or smileys in the first 1 or 2 lines of the first post in an LFC Forum thread. We've found this causes formatting issues on the RAWK front page for those using Internet Explorer browsers. There's two solutions to this:
          1. Don't use URL links, special SMF formatting tags or smileys.
          2. Everyone uses Firefox (www.getfirefox.com).
• At end July 2006, due to the current geopolitical situation and forthcoming fixtures please note the following additional guidelines:
  
  It's not reasonable to expect us to be able to moderate, on a Liverpool website, postings in the Hebrew or Arabic languages and orthography. Avatars must not include Arabic or Hebrew, and please do not use Arabic or Hebrew in your postings in any orthography.
  
  It would be so much more helpful if avatars were connected with Liverpool Football Club, but that is your choice. If we have any reason to suspect that iconography you choose to use may cause offence, it will be removed and posting rights will be suspended. It is for users to explain, in all circumstances, their choice of iconogrpahy.
  
  In the context of the geopolitical situation users posting abuse of other users, incitement of hatred, or celebration of hatred or of death of civilians due to acts of war and/or terrorism is not permissable.

What to expect in terms of moderation:

If you ignore any of the BIG RULES, you'll will find youself being moderated in one of the following ways (depending on each instance):

• Temporary or Full access ban.
• Temporary posting ban.
• 'No New LFC Topics' assigned to your profile.

If you ignore any of the Guidelines, in the first instance you'll be notified by a moderator, who will let you know what it is they deemed to be inappropriate. Your post(s) are also likely to be edited/deleted or merged with others.

If you continue to ignore the Guidelines, you'll will find youself being moderated in one of the following ways (depending on each instance):

• Temporary or Full access ban.
• Temporary posting ban.
• 'No New LFC Topics' assigned to your profile.

The above may also apply to posts reported to us via the 'Report To Moderator' feature.

What Users can expect from the Mods:

• Where possible/applicable, new users will be given a polite pointer to these guidelines if we deem it necessary.
• An explanation as to why you have been temporally/permanently banned/had posting rights removed.
• We wont notify people of every little modification/deletion/merging activity. We're hoping that people will be able to find an answer in these guidelines. If however you cant, please feel free to ask why you have been moderated. Our preference would be for this to be done privately, but there is also the Feedback forum if you wish it to be a public discussion. Please note though, we're all volunteers, so if you do not receive an immediate response bear with us and wait for us to get back to you.
• An explanation should always be given for why a thread is locked or moved to another forum.
• Whilst we feel its only fair for us to communicate why we have moderated something, we also reserve the right to call you an arse, apply relevant custom titles, call into question the legitimacy of your parentage or generally just rip the piss out of you ( well, there has to be SOME benefits to this mod lark )
• A complete reversal of a moderation decision upon receipt of a suitable and sizeable bribe. Please feel free to discuss this with individual mods, though its far to say that booze usually works wonders with most of us, with some having a special penchant for Pigs Heads.

There are also a few other areas we would like to clarify at a later date (such as copyright laws and posting of articles from another source) but please bear with us as these are not so straight forward and we're still working through these bits ourselves (especially those naked pics of J-Lo ).

Other Terms and Conditions
By submitting content, which shall include your member name, to the Red and White Kop Message website and forums, you grant the Red and White Kop website and forums a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right (including any moral rights) and license to use, license, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, communicate to the public, perform and display the content (in whole or in part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, for the full term of any Rights that may exist in such content. You also warrant that the holder of any Rights, including moral rights in such content, has completely and effectively waived all such rights and validly and irrevocably granted to you the right to grant the license stated above.

Right, well that's it we think, all thats left to say right now is:

Please note: This is a vibrant and active online community. As such, it may be necessary for us to amend the posting guidelines from time to time to reflect the changes to the overall heartbeat of the site. If this is the case, then we'll ensure any changes are communicated to you all, but please also try to check back here once in a while to see if anything has been updated.

Regards,
RAWK Admin.

Dogme 04 has futher thoughts on how to debate.  Find it here:

http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php/topic,27031.0.html