Welcome Friends (and Forum Rules)

We have opened our doors! Feel free to introduce yourself if you wish. We have also included a thread outlining the history of the site, for anyone who might be curious. These here are your administrative staff, go to them with your questions and concerns. Please be respectful. They'll be playful with you most of the time, but when they're serious, they're serious.

***PLEASE SEE HERE BEFORE REGISTERING***

You might notice there is no specific thread outlining the site rules. This is partly because they are a work in progress, but also because we mostly rely on common sense. That said, there are a few guidelines we ask you to stick to:

1. No disco animated avatars or signatures. We welcome animated gifs in comments, but to have someone's avatar dancing around or their signature flashing away in every post is obnoxious. The approved file size for avatars and signatures is kept deliberately low to reduce this, but it's probably just as easy to ask that you kindly refrain. A particularly gentle avatar animation might slide by if it's not irritating, but absolutely none in your signature, thanks.

2. No advertising. We consider it spam and will delete you as such.

3. Play nice. But recognize that this is a snark site, so your version of "nice" and ours may differ. For clarification: Gentle shade is usually harmless. Spats happen. We are not going to moderate minor conflicts between members, or censor what you say. HOWEVER. There is a line, and most people are capable of comprehending where that is without it being explicitly spelled out for them. But know that if you cross the line into harassment or are a gnarly troll, we will step in. For the purposes of clarity, this likely includes (but is not limited to) following someone around the site being bitchy to them, sending nasty private messages, and just generally being mean for the sake of mean. Whether or not your actions will be taken as harassment or trolling will depend mainly on common sense - ours - and will be determined by us on our own criteria on a case-by-case basis. For your own good, please try not to save up your worst behaviour for when one of us is having a bad day - we are people too, and our handling of your nonsense will most certainly be affected by it. For these reasons not all issues may always be dealt with in exactly the same way. Your opinion on how we should handle a particular issue may differ from ours. Too bad. I say this now so there are no complaints later. Ye be warned.

4. We snark. We do not stalk, harass, bully or otherwise make miserable anyone who does not deliberately or ignorantly put their own shit out for public consumption on the internet. If you are hate-friends (or any kind of friends) with someone we laugh at, that is okay. But please do not go through their mail or garbage or private flickr and bring things here that they did not themselves make available. It's tacky.

5. Speaking of tacky, do not come here to brag about trolly stuff you've posted in other places. It is of course completely fine for you to have active accounts anywhere you wish, and you may or may not disclose what they are to anyone at your own discretion, but it is not okay to post something in one place and then come here to parade it around to us for treats. No treats will be given. Unless you consider eye-rolls to be treats. In which case, I have bad news for you.

6. You provide content at your own discretion. This is a public forum, viewable by anyone, so keep that in mind and make smart choices. Our staff are volunteers and will not donate their time to delete for you any content that you have willingly shared. You are solely responsible for what you post and removing it if you choose to do so.

7. Leave the moderating to the moderators. We have a report function, use it.

This list may grow as things come up that we have either forgotten or not anticipated. We reserve the right to change our rules, or even ignore them if we feel like it one day, and you'll just have to deal with that. We do our best to be fair, but shit happens. Welcome to the internet.

Questions about the site can be posted here. I am personally alerted when something is posted in the help forum, so I should be able to get to your issue as soon as I am free, or else another mod who notices it before I do will handle it. We will also accept private messages for any personal issue you are not comfortable sharing publicly (users may PM entire groups, so please copy all admins and mods in your message so the first available person can deal with it). There is also a report function attached to each post, which you should use whenever another user makes you feel uncomfortable or a particularly clever spambot has tricked me into thinking it's a real person and gotten itself approved to post.

Other than that, have at it. Welcome aboard!

 

Going forward, moderation will be more hands on than you are used to. Please note much of this will still happen behind the scenes, as it always has, but the moderators will aim to step in sooner.

1. Part of the atmosphere we all have created here is due to a significant amount of self regulating. Most members like that they can get real, honest feedback here, and we do want to continue fostering that environment. The day to day minor disagreements we will generally stay out of, as we always have. Beyond that, mini-modding (or moderating by someone not on the moderator team) will not be tolerated.
2. We will be talking to any members where moderation intervention is needed via PM or by issuing warnings, sooner than before. These may come from feedback between the moderator team itself, by other members who reach out to a moderator directly, or by using the report function next to a post.
3. We encourage all members to use the report function liberally. Just because you do not find a particular post to be out of line, does not mean someone else feels the same.
4. After warnings, temporary suspensions may be issued. If a member continues to be a problem, a permanent ban will be used.
5. All members who reach out to a moderator about an issue, or use the report function, will be kept confidential within the moderator team. Receipts will not be provided, so don’t ask.

Finally, as you are aware, the moderator team is human. We will do our best to remain as objective as possible. We value this forum and the members here (long time and new), and hope you will continue to grow this space with us, as we move into this new realm of moderation for these boards.

Thank you,

@Honey
@Vespidae
@megatron