Astro Info

[Webmaster]

Board-wide Policies
This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at Astro Info. Please read it and become familiar with it, its terms are retroactive and agreed by team and group members.

Forum rules
Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below).

Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.

Members are asked to not act as "back seat moderators". If members note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of a member of the Moderator Team. Only do this if a moderator team member has not replied within 6 hours. Do not respond to such topics yourself. Members who consistenly "act" as moderators may be warned.

Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.

Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc. Users linking to or asking for information on warez, crackz, etc. or re-printing material without permision will receive a warning and their post will be removed.

Members should respect the bandwidth of other users and sites. The use of inline ([IMG][/IMG]) image tags pointing to data stored on third party systems for which the user has not received permission to link to may be removed.

Members should post in a way which is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large, small or coloured text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Users consistently abusing this will be warned.

Members should use an appropriate, descriptive title when posting a new topic. Examples of bad titles include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "I've got an error!", etc.

Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, solicitation etc. Recruiting of any sort (moderators, designers, professional work etc.), be it for paid or unpaid jobs, is not permitted either. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information.

Members are asked to not disclose to any 3rd party, board, or list any vulnerabilities in this board before first notifying the Forum management Team.

The moderating, support and other teams reserve the right to edit or remove any post at any time. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, etc. as noted in these points is up to Team Members and not users.

The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revokation of private messaging.

Signatures
Signatures may contain up to five lines (one line being that displayed on a browser opened to 800px width) of text (of small or normal size) and/or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 60px high, 468px wide and 6kB (6000 Bytes) in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 30px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to three lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text. Animated images are not allowed.

Text sizes should be between 9 and 12 (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, warez, emoticons, and so forth.

Links in signatures are permitted to a maximum of four unique pages or sites. Astro Info Team members are allowed additional links to aid in rendering support for Astro Info. Such links may only be to *.manastro.co.uk or approved material. Linked sites may be commercial in nature. You may not include links in a way which suggests you offer official support, software, etc. You may not link to warez, porn or political, racist or other similar hate sites. Links are included in signature size limits.

Users abusing these rules will be warned.

Avatars
Users are permitted to utilise a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 90 pixels square, contain no animation, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimiking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 6kB (6000 Bytes) in filesize and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed).

Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, and so forth.

Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges

Members should note this software and board are maintained on a voluntary basis. No team member receives payment of any kind for time spent here. Users should therefore not post demanding support, bug fixes, etc. Users who disrespect the work of team members will be warned.

Show Off
Astro Info does not provide a general fora or other solution for users to promote their sites. Consistent with Rules 1j, 5b and 5d users may not promote their sites through their own posts. Such posting constitutes spam and may lead to a warning.

Policing
Astro Info operates a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.

Arguing with team members after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a temporary ban will be put in place as above.

Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact the relevant team leader, e.g. if warned by a moderator you should contact the Moderator team leader. If they feel you were treated badly they will remove a warning. If you feel their decision is also unfair you may contact a Group member, primarily Webmaster or Astro. Their decision is final. Contacting group members over warning matters should be done so as a very last resort ... group members do not want to be bothered unless vital.

Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned username, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account to evade an email ban.

An exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact team members personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.

Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While Astro Info may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurence.

The Forum Management Team