XF Charter of Procedures and Guidelines

From Xdw

Revision as of 03:28, 26 January 2008

This page serves to host the draft of the XF Charter of Procedures and Guidelines (commonly abbreviated as the XFCPG) during its rudimentary stages following up to its final completion and enactment. This page is protected, but Hauskaz may be contacted if you wish to suggest changes, fixes or improvements.

Preface

XF is a service provided by ProBoards on behalf of the staff of XF. In addition to the general Terms of Service document laid out and applied to every board hosted by ProBoards, the following additional Charter of Procedures and Guidelines will apply to your use of the services provided by XF. Ownership of an active account constitutes your binding acceptance of both the XF Charter of Procedures and Guidelines as well as the ProBoards.com Terms of Service.

General Rules

I. We reserve the right to remove, at any time and with or without notice, any content from XF.

II. Refrain from using inappropriate language, including but not limited to language that my look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate profanity, hate speech (including but not limited to racial, ethnic, or religious slurs), illegal drugs or illicit activities. Further elaboration is provided under section 5 (Community Rules).

III. You must be at least 13 years of age or older to register an account on XF. Because ProBoards is a US-based organization, they are subject to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which bars the collection of information from persons under the age of 13. Although XF is a Canadian-based organization, any underage user that is found to have fraudulently registered will have any accounts tied to them immediately placed on KoS status.

IV. We reserve the right to contact your ISP or local law enforcement regarding any inappropriate activities by you on XF.

V. Your account on XF is intended for your individual and personal use only. You may not share, licence, sub-licence, sub-lease, parse, pass-on or in any other way attempt to share, extend or monetize your access to XF.

VI. We reserve the right to immediately suspend, terminate, bar off, or otherwise remove anyone who fail to adhere to the XF Charter of Procedures and Guidelines or the ProBoards.com Terms of Service.

Protection of your Password and Unauthorized Access

Users are solely responsible for protecting their accounts from access by others. You are strongly encouraged to choose a password that is hard to guess and to not use that password on any other site where it may be read by the owners or administrators of that site. Accessing or attempting to access any user account not belonging to you without permission is prohibited. Accessing another user's account in this manner is grounds to be placed under KoS status.

Registration Requirements

In order to post messages, access non-public boards, and use other advanced functions of XF, you must register using a valid e-mail address and follow all required registration confirmation procedures. No posting privileges will be granted until the account is fully activated.

Community Rules

The following conduct is prohibited from use on our message boards, in private messages, profiles, or anywhere else on XF:

I. Offensive Material - Users may not transmit or encourage others to transmit material or links to material considered patently offensive in nature. This includes, but is not limited to: using vulgar, profane or sexually explicit language; using race, religion, sexual orientation, culture, ethnicity, handicap, nationality, or gender as a means of insult; using threatening, harassing, defamatory, hate-speech, or libellous language; and posting, requesting, or otherwise sharing material considered pornographic, obscene, graphic, or hate speech.

II. Flaming - Communications clearly insulting other users, individually or as a group, directly or indirectly, are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to: name calling, direct insults and orders, insinuations, or insults towards family.

III. Trolling - Messages intended solely to annoy and/or offend other users by going against the clear nature of a board or thread are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to: provoking other users to respond with flames; provoking fans of a particular person, group, game, device, object or figure, especially on boards or threads dedicated to that object or figure; making misleading thread titles; asking obviously useless questions; intentionally posting spoilers or leaking information; and posting knowingly false information as fact.

IV. Illegal Activity - Communications that violate or incite others to violate the law are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to, asking for or providing: illegal copies of copyrighted software; methods of circumventing copyright protection; illegal copies of copyrighted movies, videos, or any other type of media; reprints of material from other websites; or methods of cheating in online games.

V. Off-Topic Postings - The main purpose of XF is to provide a forum of discussion, both in general and in regards to specific topics. Topicality is expected and will be enforced on all boards not noted as purely social in nature.

VI. Disruptive Behaviour - Behaviour that disrupts the normal operation of XF for other users, intentional or not, is prohibited across all boards except Interior Crocodile Alligator. This includes, but is not limited to: posts or thread titles that force browsers to scroll horizontally; excessively large images, particularly those wider than 800 pixels; large blank or content-free posts; bumping multiple older threads (posting in them well after the last post); posting multiple identical or near-identical messages or threads, including "fad" and "meme" posts or threads; intentionally hard-to-read topic titles or posts (such as ALL CAPS, AlTeRnAtInG cApS, nospaces, and no or excessive punctuation); posting multiple hard-to-read or nonsensical messages in a single thread or in multiple threads; posting large ASCII art (unless the thread specifically asks for it); or post counting ("First", "24th post").

VII. Impersonation - Impersonating other users by creating or using a user account with a name clearly intended to impersonate, mock, or antagonize another user, or otherwise falsely claiming to be another member is very easy to spot and is strictly prohibited.

VIII. Harassment/Stalking/Privacy - Continual harassing behaviour directed towards a certain individual or group with the intent of creating an intimidating, offensive, or hostile environment on XF for them, with or without use of explicit implicit threats, is strictly prohibited. Posting contact or other private information of any person (XF user or not) is also prohibited.

Multiple Accounts

While it is acceptable for users to maintain multiple accounts, doing so is discouraged. If you are placed under KoS status, all accounts to be found under your ownership will be suspended and you will be barred off from creating any new accounts.

Violations and Penalties

Threads or messages that violate the XF Charter of Procedures and Guidelines will be deleted from XF and additional penalties may be applied at our staff's discretion. Re-posting deleted violations (yours or those of others) is also considered a violation.

Posts and topics may be removed at any time and for any reason at the sole discretion of your moderators, officers, and administrators. User accounts may be warned, suspended, deleted, placed on KoS status or otherwise modified or removed at any time and for any reason at the sole discretion of our officers and administrators. All determinations of what is "acceptable" and "unacceptable" content will be determined solely by our moderators, officers, and administrators.

Intentional, repeated, or severe violations are cause for placing your account under KoS status, banning your use of XF from your IP address. The use of a proxy to bypass a ban is not permitted, and any instance of a proxy will be banned from XF. In very severe events, we also reserve the right to contact your ISP or local authorities concerning your activities.