These general rules are intended as guidelines to posting, and moderators will interpret these broadly and according to their intent to preserve a healthy and safe community. However, we have listed below a number of rules which moderators will interpret more strictly. Please read the rules below before posting – we want to make this forum a fun experience for all its members, which means ensuring that everyone is playing fair.

If you see another member breaching any of the rules below, please notify moderation staff by using the “report” button at the top of the post in question, or (in case of a private message or history of bad conduct) through a private message to a moderator.

1. Harassment and trolling
Do not bully, harass, or troll. In particular:

Do not use hate speech. This includes slurs and insults based on a person’s race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender presentation or age.
Do not “flame” other members by using ad hominem or personal attacks. Honest disagreement is welcomed, but you should address the post and not the poster.
Do not “troll” other members by disingenuously posting opinions or remarks designed solely or mainly to provoke a negative response. This also extends to user sigs.
Do not harass particular members, on the forums, in private messages. We take harassment seriously, and it can be a criminal offense.
Do not breach the privacy of a person by making known any personal information (including images and private conversations) that person has chosen to keep private.
Do not impersonate other members or Mods/staff/admin (including by using intentionally similar screen names or avatars or use of GobO), misrepresent their comments or words, or attempt to gain access to their forums account.

2. Do not use, post, distribute or link to obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, graphically or gratuitously violent, derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive, hateful or discriminatory language or content. This includes "masking" language by using alternative characters/spelling /spacing to get around profanity filters or claims of profanity filter “testing."

3. Do not disrupt forums, blog comments or other communication channels. For example:

Spam through repeated posts, or off-topic content by word or intent to forums or comments (scrolling, flooding, polling, )
Make off-topic posts or chat or trades in the wrong forums or chat rooms (casual chat or roleplay in rooms or forums not designated for these types of activities)
Any topics dealing with religion or politics will be heavily watched and moderated as needed
Excessive formatting e. g. using 72 point font for a whole page

4. Advertising. We endeavor to be an ad-free site. As such, commercial advertising is prohibited, with one notable exception. If you have a stake in a creative work - writer, artist, editor, publisher, etc - you are welcome to make a single thread in the appropriate area to discuss your creative work. Bumping your thread is prohibited, but you are of course welcome to engage in discussions that sprout on your thread. If you wish to be granted an exception to this rule, please send a message to one of the moderation staff to make your request. Please be aware, however, that the bar is set extremely high, so the burden is on you to make a case as to why you should be permitted to make your thread.

And finally [url=http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wheatons-law]Don't be a dick[/url].


Dealing with the moderators

1) We appreciate that sometimes you will disagree with a moderator's decision, or feel that a request from a moderator is unfair or unjustified. We're not going to be able to keep everyone happy all of the time, so we settle for trying to keep most people happy most of the time. Whether or not you agree with a moderator's stance, we do expect you to abide by their decisions and requests.

How an appeal works :
If you believe a moderator has acted unjustly or unfairly, we encourage you to send a private message to either GobO_Fire or GobO_Althalus and they will handle it from it. Any moderator action can only be appealed by someone directly affected by the mod action.

Just a quick reminder for folks, in case it wasn't clear. The Code of Conduct applies to PMs as well as posts. If you send somebody a PM that violates the CoC, that poster can choose to report it and we will deal with just as if you had typed the same thing into a post. Consider this your fair warning.