New Draft of the short rules

Suggestions, comments, questions, and developments related to the Super Soaker Central site and forums.
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SSCBen
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New Draft of the short rules

Post by SSCBen » Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:42 am

I wrote these rules a few months ago, and would like to draft them now. My purpose was to make certain rules more clear and also describe certain problems in more detail. Nothing really new here, just what we've been going by. If no one has issues, these rules will be implemented as soon as possible. If issues arise, we'll edit the rules to fit what people want.

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"Why the rules?" some have asked us. Here's the reason: established rules explain what's good and what's bad, and they keep the bad from happening many times. Every rule here has it's purpose - these rules are here to reduce the amount of forum trash we receive.

Purpose: Super Soaker Central is a website with an attached discussion forum to discuss all things related to water fights and water guns. Please do not join or participate in this message board if that is not your main concern or purpose. Our forum is not a place to promote your website or sell all of your water guns without contributing. Don't like these rules? Too bad - don't join then.

COPPA compliance: Due to the nature of our forum, many potential members are younger than 13. We are the only water gun forum at the moment to use COPPA, despite it being legally required for websites hosted in the United States, and we will stand by this decision. All members found to be below the age of 13 will be banned until they turn 13. Do not lie on the registration page or profile fields - we have other ways to find out your age if you lie.

Do not join our forum if you are younger than 13 without mailing in a COPPA form to Ben at this address:

*Removed

Residents of other countries should email Ben to work out the COPPA situation. Remember that you must mail in the COPPA form to join if you are below 13 years of age! Just joining through the COPPA page isn't enough.

Kindness: Be courteous. Respect others. Personal attacks are not allowed. Argue with the post, not the poster (meaning that it is fine to debate a topic, but not to argue with another member.

Posts: Posts made here must comply with our content guidelines:

- Posts must be spell checked or use correct spelling. We provide a hosted spell check here with many water gun related terms included - there is no excuse not to use it if you have poor spelling.
- Posts must use correct grammar.
- Posts may not use AOL-talk, "lingo", l33t speak or any other type of word and letter manipulation.
- Posts must be broken into paragraphs with a single line in between each paragraph.
- Posts must use capitalization correctly.
- Thread titles never have periods at the end - a title is not a sentence.
- Ultimately, your posts must be highly understandable above everything else. Foreign members have trouble reading poor spelling and grammar (and we have more of them than you may think), and not only that, but people will trust others more if they spell and use grammar better! Good spelling also helps ensure that the search works correctly.
- Posts may not be negative in nature, offensive or potentially dangerous in any way.
- Posts must contribute in some way - for example, a question could be posed or answered. A minimum post limit of 75 characters is in effect to reduce the number of "one-line" and short posts.
- Posts must be made in the correct forum or topic to properly organize the discussion.
- Posts may not violate any of our other rules or be illegal in the United States.
- Spamming, trolling, flaming, warez, mp3s and other forms of piracy will result in a banning.
- Posts may not me commercial in nature (meaning for profit).

Posts made in violation of these rules will either be left alone, edited, or deleted.

Absolutely no "sucking-up" or "ass-kicking": Please give equal respect to all members. Yes, that does mean that you should be nice to everyone. It also means that you should be equally as nice to everyone - as nice as you could be! Don't just try to be nice to the administration or always say how much you love this forum.

The Administration: Please respect the moderators and administrators who run Super Soaker Central and their decisions. Remember, that ultimately this is their message board and they can run it whatever way they would like to. If you would like to see a change in policy, please bring it up in an email to our administration or post your concerns in the appropriate forum. There's no reason to just complain and not do something about it.

Your account: You are allowed one and only one membership account at the Super Soaker Central forums under most circumstances (see below the list for details). Your account is your responsibility - keep it secure because we can not always determine whether or not your account was "hijacked" and used in a fashion against our rules.

- If you lose your password, use the password recovery feature.
- If you changed your email address, contact our forums team to verify who you are.
- If you would like to change your account's name, please ask an administrator.

If you can not reset your password, feel free to create a new account to verify who you are. We can do that via IP addresses and several other methods.

How to contact us and report bad posts: You can contact us through email at: forums at sscentral.org

You can report bad posts through the button circled in the image below, labeled "Report a post".

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Your invitation to leave: If you don't like our forum for any reason, you always have the option to leave. Nobody is keeping you here but yourself. There are several other water gun forums the Super Soaker Central staff recommends:

- iSoaker.com forums
- SoakerMedia

If you run a water gun related forum and would like your forum to be listed, please contact our staff.

Remember, we reserve the right to ban, delete, or do anything to your account for any or no reason at all! We don't do that very often, but we will if necessary.

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Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Suggestions? I'm all ears... err... eyes.
Last edited by SSCBen on Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Hunt_and_Annoy
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Post by Hunt_and_Annoy » Tue Sep 13, 2005 2:52 am

Sounds good; do you think you could list the SSN chat as another place to go for talking soakers?

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SSCBen
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Post by SSCBen » Tue Sep 13, 2005 10:05 am

No, that list is exclusively for message boards. I'm sorry, but a chat won't be appearing there. There's plenty of forums as far as I am concerned.

Senital
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Joined: Sat Jun 17, 2006 7:36 am

Post by Senital » Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:22 am

now i will be more aware of the rules of this site
thank's for that ben i will take it to heart.

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joannaardway
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Post by joannaardway » Mon Jun 19, 2006 12:29 pm

Please people - if you've been directed at the rules, don't comment on them here - do it in whichever thread you were directed from.
"Over the hills and far away, she prays he will return one day. As sure as the rivers reach the seas, back in his arms again she'll be." - Over the Hills and far away, Gary Moore

"So many people have come and gone, their faces fade as the years go by. Yet I still recall as I wander on, as clear as the sun in the summer sky" - More than a feeling, Boston

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Silence
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Post by Silence » Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:47 pm

joannaardway wrote:Please people - if you've been directed at the rules, don't comment on them here - do it in whichever thread you were directed from.
Senital could have seen the link to this thread in Ben's recent announcement--in which case there would be no original thread to comment in. In fact, this might be helpful, because this extremely important thread was bumped in the process! I'd rather see acknowledgement of announcements than nothing.

EDIT: I guess somebody stickied this thread, which is also a good idea.

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