Forum Behavior

[Richard]

Please be civil and courteous to other members at all times.

    * 1. Racism or hatred: We have zero tolerance for racism or hatred towards any specific race, religion, country, gender, individual or group.

    * 2. Harassment: Do not harass, defame, threaten, bully or victimize other members.

    * 3. Profanity: Do not use profanity, crude, vulgar language or attempt to intentionally bypass the profanity filter.

    * 4. Trolling: Do not troll the forums. We define 'trolling' as the act of causing deliberate disruption or offense. Such behavior usually involves the posting of intentionally false, controversial or offensive comments designed to provoke, bait and annoy other members.

    * 5. Flame-baiting: Do not taunt or bait another member in to an argument.

    * 6. Abusive behavior: Do not be rude, insulting, offensive, snide, obnoxious or abusive towards other members.

    * 7. Suggestive conduct: Do not post sexually suggestive comments, innuendo or engage in inappropriate sexually oriented personal exchanges or harassment.

    * 8. Sock puppetry: Do not post under more than one alias at the same time or pretend to be more than one person via multiple accounts.

    * 9. Thread derailment: Do not derail or 'hijack' threads with posts that are either off-topic or designed to draw attention away from what is being discussed.

    * 10. Forum warfare: Do not initiate or participate in "wars" with other members. Collective or individual attempts to attack, accuse, discredit or force a certain viewpoint on other members are disallowed. A "war" can constitute a prolonged series of disruptive confrontations between specific members or groups of members with similar beliefs or views, usually with either side accusing the other of being the aggressor and attacking, criticizing and baiting each other on a regular basis. Action will be taken against members who instigate or participate in this type of activity.

    * 11. Defamation: Do not use this site or its services to attack, promote hatred towards or otherwise defame individuals.


Etiquette

In the interests of maintaining constructive and friendly discussions:

    * 1. Personal attacks: Attack the point being presented, not the person who is making it.

    * 2. Spelling and grammar: Do not point out mistakes or criticize other members on their spelling, grammar or punctuation.

    * 3. Personal scrutiny: Do not attack or scrutinize another member's intelligence, mental status or personal/educational background.

    * 4. Topic bashing: Do not enter a thread just to shout "fake!" or to state point blank that "x does not exist". Elaborate on your response.

    * 5. Disrespectful conduct: Do not be rude, unpleasant or disrespectful towards other members - always be polite and courteous.

    * 6. Balanced debate: Do not make posts forbidding opposing viewpoints, both sides of a debate should be represented.

    * 7. Shouting: Do not write in all uppercase letters, writing in this manner is considered "shouting".

    * 8. Redundant quoting: Avoid quoting large amounts of material just to provide a short reply, only quote what you need to in order to avoid ambiguity.

[William]

I know its listed, but we should Make it a Stern policy that ANY Attacking of ANY member should NOT be tolerated at all. We should have a one time reminder then it could lead to Ban. We should all be here for Truth and not member bashing....

This is a Warning.

[iqhunk]

"We should all be here for Truth and not member bashing"
10 thumbs up.

[Rod]

To be honest, and not pointing at anyone, but forum behaviour has gone to sh*t. I've been involved in this forum for some time, even before this current handle, but I must say that i've been disgusted at the behaviour of many a member on this forum, it has gone from educational, to stewart bashing to member bashing.

Time the mods take a step up and do something about this before SHTF.

[Richard]

Things are being worked out behind the scenes and you should start seeing a improvement. :)

[Octahedron]

I think there is an official statement needed like "members (and HCF) are not responsible for postings not made by them, altough they are participating in discussions with members who do violate the forum rules, the rules of cyberlaws and the international laws of privacy and commerce".

And

HCF is promoting free speech by facilitating an infrastructure for it as far as it can be and allowed legally, and HCF (and it's members) do never have any responsibility for postings or topic headers made at HCF by individual members.

And then something non-legal in the forum rules as:

Promoting truth and sharing knowledge, with respect to privacy or with respect to private experiences of it's own members.

[Richard]

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at but I think I have a idea and we do have general liability notice posted in the rules thread.

[color="#000000"]General Liability Notice:[/color][color="#000000"] The open and real-time nature of the discussion forums makes it impossible for The Owners to vouch for the validity or honesty of posts from individual members. We are not responsible for any messages posted, nor the consequences of reading them. The views expressed in the messages within the forums are those of the authors, who accept total responsibility for the content of their posts. If you find any posts in these forums to be offensive or objectionable, please contact administration or the moderators with the address of the post. If we determine that removal of a post or posts is necessary, we will make reasonable efforts to do so in a timely manner.[/color]

http://www.hyperspacecafe.com/forum10/3.html

[Octahedron]

Yes, something like that is also needed. You can check with iqhunk, because I think he knows a lot about Cyber laws.

That general statement is quite to general.  It also depends on jurisdiction of the countries where the posts are to be written or read.

i.e. many of those posts of yukesam are subject in most of European laws to put him in jail immediately, not because of bashing Stewart, but because of spreading hate on the internet and not respecting people's privacy (I don't mean Stewart's here) and because of violating rights of commerce, company reputations and the intrusion of a personal's reputation and life sphere.

In Europe, the victims do not even need to go to the police or court. The governments can take action on their own without any formal accusation or civil formal request.

So Richard, take care with that guy yukesam and don't put HCF and yourself to much in a vulnerable position with things where you are not responsible for.

[Richard]

I think the general liability notice covers that because any post someone finds objectionable would have to contact this forum about the post and we would look at it and delete it if we find it has broken any rules before they could take any legal action.

[Octahedron]

Basically I think it is a good statement, however I am not a lawyer.

it's your forum,  but I would ask iqhunk for additional advise,  if I was in your position.