Forum Rules & Guidelines

Posting Issues, Announcements and Membership Matters.

Locked
User avatar
cyberdemon
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 966
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2015 9:48 am

Forum Rules & Guidelines

Post by cyberdemon »

Welcome to the Forum Rules & Guidelines thread!

Post 1: List of Contents
Post 2: The general Guidelines
Post 3: An Overview of how the Forums are moderated
Post 4: Forum Terms & Conditions
Post 5: List of Staff Members & how to contact them
Post 6: About Reporting
on hiatus. contact via elsewhere.

User avatar
cyberdemon
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 966
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2015 9:48 am

Re: Forum Rules & Guidelines

Post by cyberdemon »

The general Guidelines

The following is a basic list of things you should NOT be doing.
  • Disruption of Discussion: Joining in a topic thread and with off-topic posts that to not provide any serious dialog or furtherance of discussion, example incoherent rambling, arguing over material not relevant to general thread topic
  • Degenerative language: Use of language to describe or imply other members, even if not directly named, are inferior or below the speaker, including language that elevates the self-importance of the speaker; example being in a disagreement with someone then not directly responding to the individual but to proceed to discuss plebs, sheep, etc or self-aggrandizing their power, ability, position, or authority in the world
  • Out of Context: Taking another members words out of context to convey the opposite meaning of what is intended
  • Frivolous Content: Posts that provide no benefit or betterment to the community and existence serves as a distraction or disruption to the flow and cohesiveness of the community; example posts that may or may not be purposeful flame bait or trolling, but acts within the same manner
  • Out of Bounds: Continual postings in threads where the original poster has set guidelines for the topic being discussed, and the user continues to post contradictions to those guidelines; example when someone asks for help, but not to talk about a certain something only to have users come into the thread and start talking about it, or users coming into other threads to spread generally accept false information every time a topic is barely mentioned
  • Derisiveness: General scorn aimed not at topics but at the community and its members; does not include disagreements, frustration, disappointment, or legitimate issues, but general angst and hate for community
  • Discouragement/Discrimination of Practice: This includes but isn't limited to paradigm-bashing, any form of supremacy, irrelevant discouragement of another member's ideas and/or beliefs, and other related bad behavior not already listed in the above points (see post 7 for addendum regarding Preaching and Prosleytising)
Doing any of these things is a ban-worthy offense, because we adhere to very high standards of quality. However, we don't quite work that harshly. The next post details how the forums are moderated.

Occult Forum is a place where people of many different paradigms (a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular subject) and people of many different opinions (a judgment, viewpoint, or statement about matters commonly considered to be subjective) come together. We see a lot of taboo subjects ranging from drug use to animal (or even human) sacrifice at times. As such, it is common courtesy to allow and tolerate one another in conversation when two or more people with different ideas come together. One paradigm or train of thought is not in any way "more" than another on these forums. Anyone speaking down on any paradigm without context and/or with aggressive intents will be warned and repeated warnings will lead to banishment from Occult Forum. It may be important for you to share your own train of thought but you can do so without ever being condescending and aggressive. Do not get in the way of people doing their own thing if what they are doing does not sit well with your beliefs.

If there is any discussion that is deemed "extreme", be sure that the forum staff will take appropriate actions without delay.
on hiatus. contact via elsewhere.

User avatar
cyberdemon
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 966
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2015 9:48 am

Re: Forum Rules & Guidelines

Post by cyberdemon »

An Overview of how the Forums are moderated

To enforce the rules we will provide infractions (Warnings & Bans) to offenders, with a detailed explanation why the infraction has occurred, and what you could have said to differently to not have received an infraction. We will possibly edit the user's posts as we have in the past to remove inflammatory portions (clarifying we don't edit users posts except in cases of illegal/rule breaking material like links to copyright material, spam, hate speech, death threats, child pornography, etc).

However, editing of users posts who have received and infraction for violating community guidelines will be responsible of the user themselves. This gives them an opportunity to practice finding a more acceptable way to convey their ideas. Should members take the time to work on this, with consideration to the number of offenses, the severity of the offense, and showing an interest in wanting to improve themselves and the community, we will remove infractions. The time period in which the infraction is removed, if it all, is a judgement reserved for site staff. You can always ask and secure dialog as to the nature and length of a infraction.

Infarction can be of 2 types:
A formal Warning is a message we will send via the system (as opposed to informal advice via private messages), and a Ban will restrict your account from posting for a specific period of time. According to the nature of the breach of rules and/or guidelines, you may or may not have time to battle your punishment.

Furthermore, the site staff aren't able to monitor every post in real time, there are times posts can sit and cause issues before we have an opportunity to react. Often there is a snowball effect of a downturn of a thread, where by the time staff have gotten there the only way for them to fairly punish anyone is to punish everyone. In the past we have avoided giving out infractions when a group of people are being disrespectful to each other but in the future these types of things will receive infractions for violating community guidelines at the discretion and judgment of the staff overseeing the issue.

However, should community members not involved wish to provide advice to a member on how to change their post or if the allowed editing time has expired, updated a new post rephrasing and apologizing to one another, we will consider the issue resolved and no infractions will be given.

Staff rulings are final. If required of an issue, we discuss that issue as a team. The resulting decision is arrived at through that discussion, it isn't simply the views of one person. If you wish to discuss something in regards to the way the forum is moderated, please privately message a staff member. Do not post comments on the forum itself. We are always eager to hear your input, but trying to start a discussion with the staff on the forum boards is not the correct way to do this. If you believe that a certain member of the staff is treating you unfairly, please get in touch with any of the other members of staff. Making public any infarction, warning or ban related discussions between yourself, the user, and any member of staff is considered a ban-worthy offense.
on hiatus. contact via elsewhere.

User avatar
cyberdemon
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 966
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2015 9:48 am

Re: Forum Rules & Guidelines

Post by cyberdemon »

Forum Terms & Conditions

These are the formal rules in accordance to laws set by the United Kingdom. They are applicable to everyone using these forums, registered or not. By accessing Occult Forum, you are agreeing to the Terms & Conditions on an unconditional basis. A copy of the Terms & Conditions can always be found linked at the bottom of any page on this website for reference, the link being repeated at the bottom of this post as well.

1. Money
A. Occult Forum.org is a non-profit organisation, we will never ask you for payment or donations. Anyone who claims to be a member of the administration, and asks you for money is violating the first condition, please report this to us, as this is a bannable offence, which may entail police involvement.

B. It is forbidden to ask for money in exchange for goods, services, training etc. This server is based in the UK, where charging money for occult services can see you charged with fraud, should you fail to deliver consistent results to a court. This law is shared in many places in the world. Any person requesting any form of payment or donation will be banned from the site, and reported to the authorities.

2. Behaviour
A. You may not post anything which is malicious, or designed to offend. Swear words and undue profanity are discouraged, and discrimination on grounds of race, gender, age, sexuality, body weight, religious beliefs, disability, or any other quality protected by UK equality laws, is forbidden and will result in an immediate ban, and deletion of your posts.

B. Your contributions should be within the scope of the discussion at hand, and and of an occult nature in general. Off-topic discussions should be kept to the off-topic areas, and we reserve the right to move or remove anything which is deemed inappropriate.

C. No references to the personality of any person may be made, except where that person has expressly permitted it, or where that person has initiated a discussion on it, of which it is the main topic.

D. You may not post anything which has been emailed to you without the express permission of the sender. You may still forward email to the forum administration, should you feel that this is appropriate.

E. Any attempt to extract or export contact information from this site without the express permission of the individuals or administration, for any unauthorised external use will be deemed breech of terms of service, for which you will be banned from the site, and reported to the proper authorities where appropriate.

F. Advertising of any goods or services is forbidden, except where expressly approved by the administration.

G. Any attempt to circumvent or manipulate your access rights will be met with disciplinary action, this may entail banning and/or contacting the relevant authorities where appropriate.

H. All posts are subject to the terms of the Gnu Free Documentation License, although the original poster may request that their posts be retracted should they choose.

I. You may not create accounts using throwaway email addresses with domains such as mailinator.com

3. Disputes
A. In the event that your username is in dispute, we will require information to verify your ownership of the username. You must send us the name of the Internet Service Provider you used at the time of membership, and the city from which you posted. If the dispute is settled in your favour, your username will be changed to the disputed username. If your username is disputed, and not settled in your favour, we may change your username to something else. This may be assigned to a temporary username until you are able to pick another for yourself.

B. If your username is changed by an administrator because of condition 3.A, you may request a new username, which we will assign to you at the earliest possible time. This should also be sent to [email protected]

C. No impersonating other users, no duplicate accounts.

4. Liability
A. By participating in any discussion, or contributing content of any form, you release Occult Forum.org and all of its administration from any responsibility for your communications. You accept full responsibility for any breech of any form of intellectual property right, such as copyrights, any breech of confidentiality, any obscenity, defamatory statements, anything libellous or slanderous, anything which incites racial, religious, or sexual hatred or discrimination, and anything else which violates any law of the United Kingdom.

B. You accept all damages, losses, claims and costs (including without limitation fines and expenses arising out of or incurred in conducting or defending any proceedings) arising from your actions.

C. We, the administration of Occult Forum.org reserve the right to change the terms of service at any time.

5. Privacy
A. Occult Forum.org will not share your private data (e.g. real name, email address) with any other organisation, except for purposes outlined below. Some information (Such as your username and posts) are visible to anyone who visits the forum; this is simply an aspect of how forums work, you acknowledge and accept that your posts may be displayed here, along with your username and avatar, and that this is visible publically.

B. OccultForum.org may use automated services to post summaries, or entire bodies of your posts to services such as Facebook and Twitter, by accepting these terms and conditions, you allow OccultForum.org to post links to your posts here onto these services.

C. OccultForum.org may use your email address to invite you to our social networking presences.

terms & conditions document
on hiatus. contact via elsewhere.

User avatar
cyberdemon
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 966
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2015 9:48 am

Re: Forum Rules & Guidelines

Post by cyberdemon »

List of Staff Members & how to contact them (Updated 05/20/2020)

System Administrator
Borealis - [email protected] - private message

Other Admins:
Adishiva - private message
Kiren - private message
Omni - private message

Forum Moderators:
None currently

Other contact emails:
[email protected]

You may also come across benefactors who aren't moderators. They are members who have been identified as great contributors to our community.
on hiatus. contact via elsewhere.

User avatar
cyberdemon
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 966
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2015 9:48 am

Re: Forum Rules & Guidelines

Post by cyberdemon »

About Reporting

To report a post to send it straight to the Moderator's Control Panel, hit the Report button on that post.
It looks like an upside down triangle with an ! in the middle.

Image

You will be sent to the Reporting form, use it to report the selected post to the forum moderators and board administrators. Reporting should generally be used only if the post breaks forum rules. Choose the reason for your report from the drop-down menu, choose whether to be notified of its status or not, and provide any details you feel is necessary.

This is the fastest way to get anyone from the staff to look into a post and its thread! Everyone's encouraged to use this feature whenever they come across something that may be breaking the rules & guidelines.
on hiatus. contact via elsewhere.

User avatar
Nahemah
Forum Member
Forum Member
Posts: 5077
Joined: Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:49 pm
Location: Sunny Glasgow by the Clutha's side

Re: Forum Rules & Guidelines

Post by Nahemah »

Preaching and Prosleytising

We welcome members of all faiths and none.

We are an Occult forum, covering a broad spectrum of practices, some of which may not be religious in nature at all.
While it is fine to expound upon your own belief system: to inform, share and if appropriate pass on knowledge,or answer questions, it is not acceptable to deride the beliefs of others, nor to aggressively assert the righteousness and superiority of your own chosen ideologies, no matter how certain they may seem to you.

Polite warning will be given in thread regarding this behaviour. However, should such informal notice be ignored or the behaviour repeated, infractions will be issued.
"He lived his words, spoke his own actions and his story and the story of the world ran parallel."

Sartre speaking of Che Guevara.

Locked

Return to “Site Discussion”