New forum rules

[Forum admin]

The new forum rules, completely revised. 6th September 2020

Political Forum Rules
pol-tics.com, formerly politicalforums.uk– Forum Rules

Above all, we ask that you participate in the discussions in a thoughtful and meaningful manner.

Section 1. Legal Terms
1.1. Certain areas of the Website are only open to you if you register, including participation by posting.

1.2. By accessing any part of this Website, you do so at your own risk, accepting the rules.

1.3. pol-tics.com may revise this notice at any time by updating this post. You should check back from time to time to review the current rules, because they are binding on you.

1.4. We do not tolerate racism, harassment, obscene language or generally abusive behaviour. Any instances of this will result in posts being deleted and infractions given. You may be banned from the forum for serious infractions.

1.5. Other than personally identifiable information, which is covered under the Privacy Policy, any material you transmit or post to pol-tics.com shall be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. pol-tics.com shall have no obligations with respect to such material. pol-tics.com and its associates shall be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate and otherwise use such material and all data, images, sounds, text and other things embodied therein for any purposes.
1.5.1 Please be aware that IP addresses of website visitors are tracked and recorded.

1.6. You are prohibited from posting or transmitting to or from this Website any material:
1.6.1. that is threatening, defamatory, obscene, indecent, seditious, offensive, pornographic, abusive, liable to incite racial hatred, discriminatory, menacing, scandalous, inflammatory, blasphemous, in breach of confidence, in breach of privacy or which may cause annoyance or inconvenience; or

1.6.2. for which you have not obtained any necessary licences and/or approvals; or

1.6.3. which constitutes or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise be contrary to the law of or infringe the rights of any third party, in the United Kingdom or any other country in the world; or

1.6.4. Which is technically harmful (including, without limitation, computer viruses, worms, harmful components or other malicious software or harmful data); and

1.6.5. You may not misuse the Website (including, without limitation, by hacking).

1.6.6. Which may in full or in part personally identify any forum member regardless of whether such information has been previously published or not, with the single exception of the use of personal names where such are either part of the member's login details or deemed consent has been given by the forum member themselves by way of repeated previous use.

1.7. You agree that you will not:
(i) take any action that imposes, or may impose in our sole discretion an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our servers;

(ii) copy, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute or publicly display any content (except for your own information) from the Website without the prior expressed written permission of pol-tics.com and the appropriate third party, where applicable;

(iii) interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Forum Website or any activities conducted on it; or

(iv) pol-tics.com do not authorise you to extract or re-utilise substantial parts of our Website, or to make systematic and repeated extractions or re-utilisations of insubstantial parts of our Website.

1.8. Liability
1.8.1. pol-tics.com, any other party (whether or not involved in creating, producing, maintaining or delivering this Website), exclude all liability and responsibility for any amount or kind of loss or damage that may result to you or a third party by the use of this website, this includes any post content by other users. Measures are taken to protect the website, but pol-tics.com cannot be responsible for malicious hacking.

1.8.2. If your use of material on this Website results in the need for servicing, repair or correction of equipment, software or data, you assume all costs thereof.

1.9. Governing law and jurisdiction This legal notice shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. Disputes arising in connection with this legal notice shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Section 2. Rules
2.1. Please be respectful to your fellow members. This is a friendly environment; we wish to keep it that way so please treat others as you would like to be treated. Please do not post any messages that harass, insult, threaten or flame another member or guest. The moderators will ultimately decide if something is appropriate or not. We reserve the right to remove offensive posts without notice. Abusive behaviour will not be tolerated and your account may be suspended.

2.2. Do not make posts that could be considered libellous, defamatory, or posting merely to cause harm to another person or business. Opinions are expected, but do not attack others with accusations of criminal activity unless this has been proven in a court of law.

2.3. Evading the auto-censor by using punctuation marks or purposefully misspelling words is considered an offence. pol-tics.com prefer the use of non-offensive language at all times.

2.4. Please do not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, racist, discriminatory, or otherwise violate any local or international laws. This includes links in your signature, profile, bookmarks as well as posted images, photos and avatars. The moderators will ultimately decide if something is appropriate or not.

2.5. Any attempt to 'hijack' threads by posting off-topic may result in your post being removed. If you need to start a new thread then please do so, continuously breaking this important rule will result in infractions being given.

2.6. Do not share, trade, or distribute in any manner here, any copyright material, without the express written consent of the owner.

2.7. Please make titles that you give to posts as descriptive as possible, this will ultimately mean that more people will read your posts. Do not duplicate threads in different forums. Duplicate posts will be deleted or merged.

2.8. Do not dig up old threads more than 6 months old, unless it is a "Sticky" thread or you have something really profound to add to the discussion.

2.9 Each member is allowed only one login account. Registering with multiple accounts is not allowed.

2.10. No posts are allowed that are of a commercial nature. pol-tics.com should be for debate and discussion not promotion.

Section 3. Moderation.
Please remember that moderators are volunteer helpers that are here to ensure that the forum runs smoothly. Please respect this if they have to contact you, edit, remove or add additional comments to your posts.

3.1. Abuse towards moderators will not be tolerated and may result in you being banned.

3.2. Moderators will post in their capacity as members, their views should in no way be taken as indicative of the site as a whole or of the owners. Moderators will make it clear when they are posting in their moderating role.

3.3. Should you have any issues with a moderator you must contact the forum administrator. email: forumadmin(at)pol-tics.com

3.4. Please do not question or ignore Moderator instructions on the open Forum. Any queries about Moderators decisions must be conducted by PM to the Moderator involved, if the issue you have is not resolved to your satisfaction you can contact Forum Admin. The same procedure is to be used in relation to Infractions.

3.5. What Moderators cannot do is offer board technical support. This is provided solely by the Forum Administrators. If you have any technical issues with the forum or website then post your query in the Announcements and Guidelines section of the Forum or contact Admin.

3.6. Postings that are designed with the intention to drive traffic to a member's site will be removed or edited, as the moderators feels appropriate.

3.7. Signatures:
Please keep signatures to a reasonable length. No images or commercial affiliate links allowed.

3.8. Please do not use unusual fonts or text sizes. You may post in different colours, but to accentuate a quoted passage or to assist in understanding in some other way.

3.9.
Forum members who break the rules may be dealt with in a variety of ways:
by a private message warning,
an official warning,
a temporary ban,
or lifetime ban,
all of which will be at the moderator's discretion.
All decisions taken by the moderating team are taken as a group as far as is possible, and their decision will be final, whether relating to edits, deletions, infractions or length of bans.

3.10. No "Spamming". Also, please do not PM or multiple members of this site the same message.

3.11. Posts or signatures designed to direct traffic to a competing site are not allowed and will be edited/ deleted as appropriate and may result in punitive action being taken.

3.12. Please remember to respect other's privacy at all times. Revealing the real identity of members against their wishes is considered a serious offence. In the public forum, do not post real names, email addresses, or other personal identifiers that may be considered privileged information. If these items are already publicly available, this shouldn't be a problem.

3.13. The moderating team reserve the right to edit, remove or put on moderation queue any post at any time.

3.14. We reserve the right to change the rules at any time without notice as the needs of the community develop. This thread will be edited and your attention brought to any changes.

3.15 Chatbox/Shoutbox facility,whilst it will be monitored by moderators and action taken if required it is an area designated where it is a little more relaxed.
If you do not like what you see  collapse it down and do not report stuff posted there it will be ignored.

3.16 Anyone posting in a thread will be expected, wherever possible, to provide a link from a reputable site. This applies to topics that have been discussed previously: a quote to the previous post will be accepted. 

4. Posting of copyrighted material:

Please ensure that the source is quoted and if featured on-line a link back to the article is referenced in your post.
Please do not post copies of posts from other forums unless you have permission to do so.
Links to other similar forums are not allowed.