Rules of the Forums.

Before posting on the Forums, please review the Forum Posting Guidlines.

The Fire Society Administrators will attempt to warn any offending user via a Private Message before any action is taken, however if that user has chosen to not recieve private mesages or emails, the administrators will respect that and reserve the right to punish without warning.

For the 1st offense after a warning has been issued. a 3day suspension will be put into effect and a message posted here. The 2nd offense is a 7 day suspension. Any offenses after this is a permanent ban.

If you have been temporarily suspended and wish to know why, you may visit the Suspensions and Bans forums for information. you may not create a new account for any purpose, including but not limited to, degrading the moderators or administrators, continueing to post while on suspension, etc. If you do this, you will be found and permanently banned, no questions asked.

If you feel you have been suspended wrongly, please send an email to editors@firesociety.com and explain your case, we will update the thread here with your petition for the community to see along with our final decision.

Sean Ivy
Fire Society Editor

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Clarifications
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I'm going to post the full list of Forum rules here along with some clarifications for new members and existing members. If you have any further questions that you need clarification on, please ask here and I will try and help you.

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1. No Profanity - Using racial slurs or other language intended to offend others is strictly prohibited. To make everyone's experience enjoyable, we ask that you refrain from using foul language.

I believe this is self explanitory, if you wouldn't say it in front of your pastor, please don't say it here.

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2. No Flaming - Please do not verbally assault, harass, or degrade other community members.

I am considering flaming now as "A statement specifically designed and intended to impune another member's character."

Until now, I believe we've been defining flaming as  "any statement that has the possibility of offending someone else. Fire Society isn't about "freedom from offense" that's the Democrats.

I think it's a matter of common sense, talk to the others here as if you are having a friendly debate with your spouse, sure it can get intense, but I don't think any of us here makes it a habit to start calling our spouse "stupid." It can get really uncomfortable sleeping on the couch.

If you feel that a member has flamed you, please first PM the individual and ask for clarification, it could just be that they didn't intend for the comment to come across as it did.

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3. No Pornographic or Violent Images - This includes the use of sexual avatars, the posting of sexual or pornographic images, and linking to sexual or pornographic websites.

This, again, is self-explanitor, if you wouldn't show it to your pastor, don't show it here.

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4. No Advertising - Do not advertise your business or use the site for financial gain in any discussion or through the site's Private Message System. If you wish to advertise on this site, contact us.

Previously we were defining advertising as any link to a site asking for money, whether goods and services were exchanged or not.

I am now defining advertising as "A link or statement meant to send people to a site specifically asking for money in exchange for services/items for sale that will directly benefit the person linking the site"

This should avoid issues with linking to information on Campaign sites where they also ask for money for the campaign.

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5. No Sock Puppets or Trolling - Users are prohibited from creating and posting with multiple accounts/usernames, as well as posting messages with no purpose other than to upset other members.

Sock Puppets originally came about when people who wanted to 'flame' another member or who wanted to disrupt forum boards would create accounts to use for that in order to not get there primary account banned. This is still against the rules, and will be enforced vigorously.

Trolling, however, has been very vague, members weren't sure if they were trolling or not until they got hit with a warning or 3-day suspension. This above all needed clarification for the community.

Trolling will now be "someone specifically and repeatedly steering a topic off conversation with the intended purpose of disrupting the thread. or making blatent statements designed to upset other members."

This should avoid someone getting hit with trolling who was following the natural progression of a thread. Generalized statements ("people are stupid") could fall into trolling as well, but will not be enforced as strictly as before. We do encourage however that instead of "People are stupid" you use something more specific ("I consider people who vote fora candidate on looks instead of legitimacy as being stupid")

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6. No Cross Posting - Please choose the most relevant forum, topic, or thread to post your question, and post it once. Do not post the same question in multiple forums or threads.

7. No Excessive or Unnecessary Posting - Posting excessively to raise your post count or credibility will not be tolerated.

8. No Bumping - Please do not post a "bump" message to raise your question to the top of the list.

9. No Typing in ALL CAPS - Typing in all caps is considered by most to be yelling, and makes posts difficult to read. Typing in all caps is considered to be irritating and rude in nearly all forums.

These are all common sense rules, please just try and search the site (using search on the left bar) before posting a thread, and when you do post thread spread them out. You could have great information but if you hit us all with it at one time, we don't have time to read it all. Just try and post a few threads at a time and space them throughout the day instead .

ALL CAPS is considered yelling on Internet Forums, if you are just trying to stress a word, please use italics instead or use the *stressed word* format which is more common for text only forums.

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10. No Questioning Moderators in Public - Moderators on the site work hard to make everyone's experience better. If you would like an explanation as to why a post was removed or a warning was given, please use the feedback page or send the moderator a private message.

If a Moderator removes your post, they should do so in the following fashion. Instead of deleting a post outright and making it "disappear" they will instead replace the contents with:

"This message was removed by [Moderator's Name] for breaking rule [#]
If you wish to discuss this action, please send a private message to [Moderator's Name]"

If you choose to instead discuss the removal on the thread in question, you will be in violation of Rule 10. Please send them a Private Message and get clarification from them.

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We have had issues in the past with suspended members making new accounts in order to keep posting. Because of this we were automatically banning the IPs of suspended individuals as well.

It has been brought to our attention that doing this obviously makes viewing these forums here impossible so that they can no longer find out why they were suspsnded (the very reason these threads are here)

We are no longer doing that, so if you find yourself suspended or banned, plase view these forums and then if you feel you were suspended or banned improperly send a request for reinstatement to fs.seaniviy@firesociety.com.

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I've recieved a question from someone who was previously suspended, they asked "Why can you suspend me publicy, but I cannot defend myself publicly?"

The answer is, you can! You just can not make a new account to do so. I have outlined in the rules above that a petition for reinstatement may be forwarded to editors@firesociety.com or fs.seanivy@gmail.com describing your side of events and I will publish it on the suspension notice so that others may see your side as well.

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It has come to my attention that a few people have signed up for Fire Society using innacurate information.

Please provide your real name and address when registering with FireSociety as this information is added to Petitions that you sign. This is your 'digital signature' and validates your participation in these important tools.

Thank You,
Sean Ivy
Fire Society Editor

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Thank you for the clarifications, Sean.

I have read the rules, but some were still unclear to me. Rhonda