Forum Rules

[pjb00]

General Site Rules
Common sense and the ToS apply on this site in addition to the General Site Rules.

1. Do Not Flame. Even if you strongly hate the content of a post, and detest the individual to whom you're responding, please exercise restraint and post without flames.

Your behaviour is judged not just here, but elsewhere. If you slander or libel this site or the site staff on another website, forum, or by other public means, your membership at newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com may be terminated without notice.

2. Do Not Spam or Engage in Posting Wars. Post it once, and post it nice, and please don't ever post it twice. Pick a forum, pick a message, and that's that. Don't post in every forum with the same message. If it's a general post, use one of our general forums.

We know that some of you enjoy seeing your post count go up, but do not ever artificially inflate that number with meaningless posts, a post only containing smilies, etc. We will reset your post count if that happens continually

3. Do Not Advertise. We do not intend to serve as a linking service or a search engine to other sites. Links that wouldn't be allowed anywhere on the forums (including signatures, and location) would be to links to sites (commercial OR personal) that have:

a. Pornographic, racist or illegal materials, including game cheats or hacks
b. Profit sites (any get rich quick sites). This is sites that earn the poster a profit/commission or sites that give points for incoming links
c. Pages that offer similar or the same content as newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com. It has taken many 'man' hours from the community to compile the sites' content and as such our commitment to the promotion of that content is total. If the content is not on newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com then it may be linked to as long as it does not violate any other rules. Neither do we allow visitors to use our forum membership as a means to build their own sites from.
d. Sites carrying ad-busting software
e. Adverts for item and or gold farming or links to sites which engage in this or any of their affiliates.

4. Do Not Post Naughty Links or Graven Images. This is beyond advertising. Do this and you get an instant account deletion, without a second glance. We all know there are a ton of kids of varying ages and lots of different types of people who play online games and who visit our site. Even if this wasn't the case, we just don't want porn and other stuff on our boards.

5. Do Not post about hacks and Cheats. Hacks and Cheats are 3rd party programs that allow you to alter the way a player interacts with a game. We do not support the use of these. You may not ask for help in creating a hack/cheat, a link to where you can find one, provide a link to where people can download one. However, the morality of using these programs is sometimes discussed and we allow these [within reason], unless it violates any other rule.

6. Do Not Engage in Unnatural Bumping. Unnatural Bumping is where someone posts, "I'm adding this to put this thread back at the top." Do it, we slap your hand. Do it often and you lose your account.

7. Do Not Spoof. Don't make up an account name designed to resemble another poster. If an account is registered that could be confused (unintentionally) for a moderator or admin we reserve the right to offer the member the ability to change the name to something else. We reserve the right to close the account if that offer isn't accepted.

If you're banned for some reason, don't keep coming back with "Fred," "Fred the Undead" and "Fred Yet Again." If you were banned, take it like a reasonable person, and accept your fate. We ban the person not the account so registering under a new nickname will result in that account being banned too. If you wish, you may appeal the account closure to the staff. Don't make up additional accounts to respond to yourself.

8. Do Not Get Territorial. If you post or submit something to our site or forums -- be it an article, a news item, a strategy guide, or a suggestion -- it becomes the property of the newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com. That means if we leave it in the forum, post it to our Guides section or do something else with it, it is still your work, but we have rights to it as well. If we allow it to be present on the site, or use it in any form, you agree that you have no financial claim against the site. We do not demand that items be exclusively ours, but once something it submitted to us for publication or posted in our forums, its removal is entirely at our discretion.

9. You will Accept the Admin's Decisions. We [newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com and its admins] reserve the right to ban [temporarily or permanently] or place on Probation [limit privileges] any member of newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com without warning. We reserve the right to edit, move or remove any post made on newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com without warning or explanation. We reserve the right to edit any portion of a member profile without warning.

10. Do Not Mention "Freedom of Speech." This is a private forum, and you are our invited guests. The administrators have a tough job, trying to keep the forums clean and presentable while not willingly stifling open discussion. If a thread or post is locked or deleted, that was the necessary step to take in the judgment of the administrator. Please don't bandy irrelevant constitutional law and hope to plea the case for less "censorship." We don't censor, we exercise judgment and quality control on something in which we invest a lot of time and effort. We only accept posts written in English.

11. Do Not Hotlink Images from other sites This is stealing bandwidth, and is not only against our rules but against the rules of most other websites as well. Do not hotlink any images from this site on another site. If you want an image posted on our forums or site you will need to have it hosted on a site such as www.imageshack.us or www.photobucket.com

12. Thou Shalt Not Speak of Religion or Politics Religion and Politics creates flames, and as such is against rule number 1. You are hereby prohibited from posting religious or political topics, posts, or comments anywhere on this site. Also prohibited are religious or political signatures. This rule is ONLY exempt with IN GAME RELIGION or Political affiliation through the various factions IN GAME.

Legal Small Print: You use newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com and its affiliates in the full knowledge that advertising in the form of banner adverts, pop ups, interstitials and embedded adverts appear on all pages. You agree to not interfere with the display of these adverts through banner blocking software or browser features, if and when we choose to employ them.

newscotlandmafia.darkbb.com holds no responsibility for contents of posts made by members or off site websites linked to on these forums. We are not liable for any damage or distress post contents cause to an individual or their property. You read these forums and follow offsite links at your own risk. Recommended age for these forums is 14.

Anything we didn't say above, we hereby say herein and henceforth. Verily. We reserve the right to amend these rules at our discretion without notification. The onus is on the member to periodically check these rules for changes.