SMF User Help: Introduction

Forum Etiquette

Forum Rules and Etiquette

Forum Rules

The terms, "forum" and "boards", are indicative of the collective areas which together make up the PC Pals Forum. Registration and use of the forum implies acceptance of the following rules:

We reserve the right to remove or edit objectionable messages or images, including those which may have health implications, e.g. images likely to affect those suffering from epilepsy or migraine. We will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, so please realise that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately.

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually offensive, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also explicitly forbidden on this forum.

You agree that you will at no time post in a manner designed or intended to demean, humiliate or mock any other user, or member of staff of this forum. You will at all times observe "Good forum etiquette", be polite and respectful towards all members, administrators, moderators and the forum owners. You agree that you will at no time create posts/threads intended to be deliberately contentious, malicious, critical of and/or harmful to the community, its members, staff and the board owners, or that would create, foment or otherwise cause ill feeling amongst the membership. All queries or comments about the running of the board should, unless otherwise invited by the staff in a thread or poll, be made via PM contact with an administrator.

You agree that you will at no time act in any way which may bring the forum, its members, staff or owners into disrepute.

You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyrighted material is owned by you, or you have the copyright holder’s permission. It is permissible to post a short quote with a link to the original source. Although forum staff do not and cannot guarantee to review all messages posted and are not responsible for the content of any of these messages, we reserve the right to delete any message on receipt of a complaint, or for any other reason at our discretion.

If you are ever unsure of whether a post would breach the rules, then please send a personal message (PM) to a forum staff member, requesting guidance.

You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold us harmless with respect to any claim based upon transmission of your message(s). The owners of this forum also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this forum. Please note that, with each post, your IP address is recorded, and that any posts removed from public display are stored in case of later dispute. Posts may be edited for a limited time after posting. Once this editing period has expired, editing or removal of posts is at the sole discretion of the forum staff. Removal will not occur if it would destroy the structure of a thread.

We ultimately reserve the right to decide what is acceptable or not, and the decisions of moderators and administrators are final. Working around the technicalities of these rules will not be tolerated. If a short ban is imposed for infringement of the rules, rejoining the forum under a new name will be dealt with by a permanent ban. Similarly, joining the forum with multiple accounts is prohibited.

These rules apply to public posts, personal messages, signatures, profiles and any other comments you make on our forum. Please note that the content of any personal message you receive is confidential and may not be revealed to a third-party, or posted in the forums (however, if you consider a message to be offensive or in other ways against the rules of the forum, you may forward it to a member of staff for action to be considered against the sender).

You agree to provide a valid, contactable, email address in your profile at all times. Without such an address, it will be impossible for your password to be reset or a reminder sent. If an email address is changed after registration, to an non-contactable or invalid address, access to the forum may be withdrawn.

These boards are intended to be a friendly environment and to this end we do not accept foul language, or links to sites of an adult nature.

You may not post home addresses, personal phone numbers, mobile phone numbers, email addresses or other personal information about any individual, regardless of whether the information is in the public domain elsewhere, with the exception of formal contact email addresses to assist other members in resolving problems.

Security

We urge all members to use a strong password, i.e. alpha-numeric with a mixture of upper and lower case letters and, ideally, one or more punctuation marks. We reserve the right to 'lock' accounts unused for a period of 90 days or more, or where there is evidence that attempts have been made to access the account illegally by a third-party. In the event of such a lock, an email address will be provided to request that access be re-enabled.

EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive

Please note that the forum software places a cookie, a text file containing bits of information (such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is ONLY used to keep you logged in/out (if you so choose), and to enable the forum to function correctly for you, while you are logged in, by monitoring which posts remain unread by you. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to or from your computer nor does it exchange information with other web sites. If you choose not to allow cookies to be saved, via your browser settings, you will need to log in each time you use the forum. If you choose to reject cookies, via your browser settings, functionality of this forum will be extremely limited. We suggest that you allow the forum cookie to be saved in your browser's cache, but this may be cleared at the end of each browser session.

Complaints Procedure

On occasion, you may disagree with a decision made by a member of staff in the course of their duties on the forums. In the first place, you should contact the individual concerned by Personal Message, and ask for clarification of the reasons for their decision. If you do not accept the reasoning behind their action and you wish to complain or appeal against their decision, you should contact a forum administrator by emailing admin [at] pc-pals [dot] com.

Forum Etiquette

We try to be easy-going on PC-Pals, but there are some basic rules of etiquette to which we ask you to adhere:-

	Remember the Human - The other people on this forum are real people and the staff at PC-Pals are people too. They have feelings. Please respect those people, they are here to help you.
	Adhere to the same standards of behaviour online that you follow in real life - If you wouldn't say it to someone's face then don't say it on the forums.
	Share expert knowledge - If you benefit form the information on the forum then it would be nice if you could pay back the community by assisting others too.
	Help keep flame wars under control - If someone makes a personal comment against you do not reply in kind. Report abuse to a moderator.
	Be forgiving of other people's mistakes - Nobody's perfect.

A few more guidelines.

	CAPITALS are used for shouting and SHOUTING IS RUDE. Please don't shout. Excessive question marks (?) or exclamation points (!) in your title or content is also rude unless to indicate that the post is intended as a joke.
	Post only once. Don't post identical questions on several threads. If you feel your post has gone un-answered then please "bump" it up the listing. Don't re-post repeatedly.
	Use the Topic title effectively. Try to be descriptive. This will not only aid you getting your question answered but will also assist people doing searches in the future.
	Post your question within a current thread if there is one on the same topic as your question.
	If you do need to start a new thread then ensure you post your question or comment in the correct forum.
	Advertising on the forum is spam, and is strictly forbidden. Once registered, you may include a personal web site in your profile and a short message in your Sig. You may point a link to other relevent web sites in answer to a question.
	Please do not message, IM, PM or Email the Admins or Moderators with questions - a forum is for the benefit of all who may have the same or similar questions. Questions and responses should be posted on the forum for all to benefit from.
	Frivolous and pointless jokes are welcome. Healthy, humorous debate and banter is actively encouraged!
	When posting code please indicate whether it is supposed to work or whether you need help. This prevents others accidentally copying buggy code.
	You are encouraged to reply to posts with part of the original post quoted in the text. This helps people follow the topic if several people are posting. However please try to only quote the relevant part of the original not the whole thread.

And always remember: Have a nice day. Please collect your sanity as you leave.