This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at BOINCstats. Please read it and become familiar with it, it's terms are retroactive and agreed by team and group members.

Board-wide Policies


1: Forum rules

a. Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below).

b. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.

c. Members are asked to not act as "back seat moderators". If members note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of a member of the Moderators Team. Only do this if a moderator team member has not replied within 6 hours. Members who consistenly "act" as moderators may be warned.

d. Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.

e. Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc. Users linking to or asking for information on warez, crackz, etc. or re-printing material without permision will receive a warning and their post will be removed.

f. Members should respect the bandwidth of other users and sites. The use of inline ([img][/img]) image tags pointing to data stored on third party systems for which the user has not received permission to link to may be removed.

e. Members should post in a way which is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large, small or coloured text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Users consistently abusing this will be warned.

f. Members should use an appropriate, descriptive title when posting a new topic. Examples of bad titles include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "I've got an error!", etc. Examples of good titles include; "Getting an Project is Down error upon connecting", "Cannot attach to a project", etc.

g. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, etc. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. When a user posts spam for a second time, his IP will be blocked for the whole site!

h. The moderating team reserve the right to edit or remove any post at any time. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, etc. as noted in these points is up to Team Members and not users.

i. English is the preferred forum language. Threads opened in English should remain in English. Posts in other languages, not requested by thread owner, may be removed.

j. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revokation of private messaging.

2. Shoutbox

a: The above forum rules where applicable also apply to to the shoutbox.

b: The shoutbox is intended for short messages, sort of like instant messaging.

c: There is a limit of two smileys per shout.

d: Leave room for others, do not shout more than two messages in a row.

e: It is not allowed to post links in the shoutbox. Shouts with links may be deleted.

f: The shoutbox is the wrong place to ask for support or new features! There are dedicated forum sections for this. Shouts with support or feature questions and the answers to them may be deleted.

g: It is under no circumstances allowed to promote teams in the shoutbox. This includes asking people to join, posting links to team pages, milestones and all other team related posts. The shoutbox is a team neutral place. There is a dedicated forum section to promote your team or to discuss items with team members. Shouts violating this will be deleted.

h: It is allowed to post personal milestones. It is also encouraged to congratulate other users on their achieved milestones.

i: English is the mandatory language. Posts in other languages may be removed.

3. Signatures

a. Signatures may contain up to five lines (one line being that displayed on a browser opened to 800px width) of text (of small or normal size) and/or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 60px high, 468px wide and 6KB in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 30px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to three lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text.

b. Text sizes should be between 9 and 12 (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, warez, emoticons, etc.

c. Links are permitted in signatures. Links may be made to non-BOINCstats material. Links are included within the text and image limits above. Links to offensive or commercial sites may be subject to removal. It is also not allowed to ask for money or donations or link to such pages.

d. Users abusing these rules will be warned.

4. Avatars

a. Users are permitted to utilise a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 90 pixels square, contain no animation, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimiking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 6KB in filesize and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed).

b. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, etc.

c. Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges.

5. BOINC Project(s)

a. Although we offer the possibility to discuss BOINC and its projects, BOINCstats is not related to BOINC or any other project.

6. Policing

a. BOINCstats operates a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.

b. Arguing with team members after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a temporary ban will be put in place as above.

c. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned username, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account to evade an email ban. Circumvention includes posting as an anonymous user.

d. An exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact team members personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.

e. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While BOINCstats may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurence.

Made changes to 1.g:
Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, etc. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. When a user posts spam for a second time, his IP will be blocked for the whole site!

Added section 2 about the shoutbox.