Posting Guidelines

General rules and posting guidelines

The Big Rules
If you break these rules, you're eligible for an instant and possibly permanent ban.

• Using racist, sexist, homophobic or hateful language.
• Trolling -  Do not post in order to anger other members or intentionally cause negative reactions. For a given post, this can be a subjective call, but a pattern of such posting or an especially egregious case could get you temporarily or permanently banned.
• Posting pornographic or NSFW (Not Safe For Work) material.
• Using the forum primarily to drive traffic to another website.
• Users may only have ONE account. Opening multiple accounts will result in a ban.
• Posting any member's real life information without permission a.k.a. Doxing
• Impersonating Administrators, Moderators, or other forum users.
• Once you have received a short term ban, this will be taken into consideration when further sanctions are required and considered. Multiple short term bans may make you eligible for a long term ban.
• Attempting to outsmart your way around these rules.

The Other Rules
If you break these rules, you're risking being banned. Think before you post.

• Remaking or complaining about a locked or deleted thread by creating a new thread.
• Complaining or boasting about any ban, including comments in signature text and/or avatars.
• Hijacking topic without a good reason and/or new information.
• Chasing / harassing / flaming other users, regardless of who instigated it.
• Insults - Direct personal insult of another forum member (e.g., "You're an idiot.") and other name-calling. People should be able to discuss or even dispute other people's posts without insulting people. You may dispute somebody's opinion but not attack or flame the person who stated it. There are a lot of other non-direct personal insults that won't necessary get you banned instantly, but depending on the context/nature may lead to post editing, post deletion, board warnings, and forum bans. They include telling people to shut up, describing a member as an ignorant person (rather than ignorant about a particular topic), and being extremely or repeatedly rude or sarcastic. It's not your place to tell other users they are not welcome; if they follow the rules, they are welcome. Bottom line: don't try to tick off others and don't make discussions unnecessarily personal. If somebody else insults you, report their post; but don't respond in kind, their post does not give you a license to break the rules by returning their insults.
• Harassing other users by having a continuous negative or bitter attitude towards them.
• NSFW content - Posting sexual, hateful, racist, homophobic, sexist, provocative or vulgar content, as well as circumventing the censoring options we have put in place.
• Derailing a Thread - Posting in a way that causes a thread to stall, derail, go too far off-topic, or be abandoned by others.
• Profanity – We decided to avoid installing a profanity filter, as we believe our users to be mature and respectful. However, profanity is NOT tolerated here, with curse words resulting in a suspension/ban accordingly.
• Slurs - Slurs and insults against groups of people based on negative-stereotyping and obvious generalizations fall into the category of trolling and will be treated as such.
• Taunting - Mocking or taunting another forum member is not acceptable. Posts that ridicule another member or obviously exaggerate or misstate their views may be edited or removed
• Harassing the moderators or administrators - Cooperation with moderators is expected. If you have a complaint about a moderator, write directly to a different moderator.
• Cruising the boards looking for a fight.

Guidelines for Posting

• Post, not the poster (Play the ball, not the man) - If you don't like what a post says, counter the post. Do not attack the poster. Personal comments, such as "Your mother wears army boots", are considered personal attacks, and thus fall under the "looking for a fight" rule. If you are using the word "you" followed by something negative, you are probably engaging in a personal attack.
• Humor - Humor is difficult to use in writing, and is subject to personal interpretation. If another poster or a moderator finds your "humor" not to be humorous? Then it is up to the mods.
• Language – Forum.scatt.com is an English-language site, so we require that posts in the forums be written in English.
• Stay On Topic - If you disagree with a post and need to say so, be respectful when explaining why and focus on post content and not the member who posted it. Off topic threads and posts may be moved to a more appropriate place or deleted.
• Trolling - trolling is a difficult term, with far-ranging definitions. The bottom line is this question: "is it destructive". If a post, or a poster, is destructive to a thread or the forum, by driving away conversation or other posters, they can be considered for warnings/bans. It can be considered destructive if the intent of the poster is nothing more than to provoke or "make fun of" other posters.
• Our Rules and Guidelines cannot cover everything so we reserve the right at Moderators and Administrators discretion to edit or remove any content and take any action necessary to ensure the smooth running of the site and the protection of members, staff and forum.
• We want an open forum, available to all opinions, with freely ranging topics. Sometimes this means the conversations get contentious. Avoid fights, and respect other posters.
  
  Please read before posting - Terms and conditions