Forum Rules (1st July 2014)

[Michael Brookes]

FORUM SUMMARY

The aim of the Frontier discussion boards is to encourage the debate and discussion for games developed by Frontier Developments Plc., commonly known as Frontier. This forum is monitored regularly by representatives of Frontier in accordance with the forum rules as detailed below. Failure to adhere to these rules will result in the moderation against topics, posts, polls, and forum accounts.

The forum rules listed below are enforced by the Frontier moderation team. However, please do not regard these forum rules as dismissal of good debate, discussion and banter. Frontier advocates good discussion and encourages material to be posted, which might raise strong opinions; please remain careful of how you express your views, and avoid an abusive or aggressive tone towards other people or a group of people. Off-topic discussion is encouraged in the proper Off-topic forum, which is also bound by these forum rules.

If, at any point the moderation team feels that a user has violated the rules set within this page, or the global Frontier Terms of Service, the moderation team will perform any of the following actions:

1. Moderate/edit/revoke the material deemed in violation of the forum rules and/or Frontier Terms of Service.
2. Send a warning (or infraction) via private message and/or email depicting how a rule was violated.
3. Termination or temporary suspension of a forum account.
4. Manual validation of users posts by moderation team.

Infractions

Warnings function on a 'three strikes' system. If you have three warnings, the fourth warning becomes an infraction. The account will be suspended temporarily from the discussion boards once the fourth severity-level has been met. In extreme cases, new user accounts with topics or posts that are abusive, spamming, and/or trolling, immediate account termination may be applied.

When issued, warnings and infractions will remain active on an account for three months. All previously expired infractions and warnings will still remain visible to moderators and administrators, and the receiving user. Any suspensions and bans issued to a forum user stay on permanent record. Moderator's and Administrator's reserve the right to terminate an account from the forums immediately if a user is found to be ban evading, using clone or duplicate accounts, using sock accounts or continuously provoking/threatening/harassing other members, moderators or employees of Frontier. If an infraction or warning was applied, and was deemed to be an incorrect action, only a Frontier forum administrator can reverse it.

Currently, the following is the process the moderation team takes upon users found to be in violation of the rules or terms of service. The following process can be skipped by a moderator, administrator, or Frontier employee if they deem necessary.

1. First, Second, and Third warnings denote a rule has been violated. These do not incur infraction points, they serve as a reminder of the frontier forum rules listed below.
2. Fourth warning becomes an infraction. Severity level of the infraction may cause temporary post-moderation of newly created topics, polls, and posts.
   
   • This infraction will result in a seven day suspension.
3. Fifth rule violation will result in a one month ban to the forum account.
4. Sixth rule violation will result in a permanent ban to the forum account and any additional associated accounts linked to the original account.

FORUM RULES AND GUIDELINES

The following are rules of conduct apply to you, the user, when using the forum and apply to each part of the forum including sub-forums on the Frontier Discussion Boards.

1. No Abuse or Disrespectful Behaviour
   The following forum rules are in place to promote the Frontier forums as a safe, friendly, and welcoming place for the community. Discussions and debates are greatly welcomed. However, not at the expense of common sense and decency, as exemplified by the rules below.
   
   You agree to not:
   
   • Be insulting to any person via obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory comments via the means of private messages, public messages and visitor messages in order to bait, harass, and lure other users into responding. This is also known as trolling or flame-baiting.
   • Derail an ongoing discussion topic, forcing it to another type of discussion.
   • Use sexually explicit or harmful language including the use of misspelled or punctuated words to insinuate, represent any of the above - also known as "masked swearing". This includes words that are blocked by the automatic filter, swearing is not allowed in posts.
   • Utilize symbols or other non-normal ASCII English letters to mask out a swear word. If a word is filtered or stripped, then it's filtered, don't evade it. Evading the swear filter will result in moderation against your forums account.
   • Partake in personal arguments with other members of the community on the forums. If you have problems with other members either resolve your issues in private via PM or email, or use the "Ignore" feature of the bulletin board system in order to ignore that person.
   • Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, age or other criteria that offends other users.
   • Use the discussion board features to call out individuals or groups in thread titles, polls and/or posts to simply demean or insult them. Commonly known as bandwagoning.
   
   
2. Keep Private Communications Private
   
   You agree to not post private messages or emails between forum users, moderators or Frontier staff on the forums without the consent of the sender(s).
3. Do Not Divulge Personal Details
   
   You agree to not disclose names, addresses, telephones, mobile or fax numbers, email addresses or any other personally identifiable data of any individual. We request for your safety that you do not post sensitive information about yourself or others on these forums.
4. Do Not Impersonate Another User
   
   You are expressly forbidden from impersonating another forum user, moderator, administrator, Frontier employee or any of Frontier's partners. You will not give the impression that a thread or comment emanates from any of the listed. Means of impersonation could include the usage of avatars, profile pictures, signatures, posts/polls, and/or thread prefixes that mimic or appear to be 'officially posted'.
5. Do not create TOPICS OR REPLIES IN ALL CAPS.
   
   The forums will attempt to automatically lower-case or title-case your post or topic if such item is found to be excessively in use of capital letters or text.
6. Zero Tolerance Policy on Offensive, Pornography and/or other Illegal/Malicious Content
   
   You agree to not post offensive material or post links, information or advert that illustrate illegal activity (including without limitation the posting or promoting of illegal software or media, be it television or software piracy) or lead to malicious sites/files. Any posts of content with pornographic, fraudulent, phishing or warez material will skip the three-strike warnings.
7. No Spam
   
   No "spam" on the forums. Spamming is defined as the abuse of systems to post unnecessary or irrelevant messages, or non-contributing postings. This includes, but isn't limited to posting multiple copies of the same thread across various forums or cross-posting the same comments in multiple threads in order to get your comments noticed.
8. No witch-hunts/mob-mentality hunts
   
   We do not permit the Frontier forums to be used for 'witch-hunts' or mob-mentality griefing. This is essentially the inverse of naming and shaming where people will try to bait others into ratting people out.
9. Off-topic
   
   Going off-topic in an ongoing, on-topic discussion is defined as talking about something completely unrelated to the ongoing discussion or debate within the thread. Off-topic also includes replies created to topics for the sole purpose of ganging up on other members or groups of users.
10. Thread hijacking
    
    Hijacking a threads discussion will result in your posts and other posts that participated in the hijacking to be moderated. Continuous thread hijackings will result in moderation of your posting privileges on the Frontier forums. Hijacking threads is not limited to you injecting an off-topic opinion to a discussion, posting about politics, comparing objects/people/things to political objects and/or attempting to harass another member or group of members.
11. Duplicate Posts and Threads
    
    Before making any new threads please take the time to check whether a similar thread has already been made. If it is a question about a game, your query may already have been answered. If it is a post regarding something topical or an issue with the forum, someone else may have previously beaten you to it. By taking the time to search, instead of duplicating a thread we can cut down on the amount of unnecessary posts, which makes it easier for people to find the proper information they may need.
12. Circular Threads
    
    This is defined as a discussion that has been repeated multiple times. This also includes ongoing discussions within a thread that has been debated multiple times previously with an outcome being the same answer. We ask for you to be mindful when posting new debate topics and discussions. It is very possible that there is either a discussion ongoing or a recent discussion that ended.
13. Insubordination
    
    If you disagree with a moderator's course of action over an incident, whether that be the closing of a thread or the issuing of an infraction, you must contact a member of the moderation team privately (through private message) to voice your grievance(s), complaint(s), and/or concern(s). It is not permitted to do this in a public discussion medium. Any attempt to do so will be seen as an attempt to undermine the moderation team and will result in an infraction and removal of the content posted. If you disagree with a moderator's decision it is also not acceptable to verbally abuse or harass them, either through the forum or any other form of communication. Any attempt to do so may result in a complete termination of your account from the forums.
14. Compliant Avatars and Signatures
    
    Avatars and signatures must adhere to the same rules as written posts. Do not use anything that may be construed as offensive, inflammatory, or illegal.
    The current dimensions allowed are 100x100 pixels for avatars and profile pictures, and up to 650x150 pixels for signatures (please see the last section on this post for detailed signature limitations). Please refrain from including links to paid-for-services and advertising within your signature. Links within signatures should be reserved for personal links. Images in signatures that are larger than 650 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall will result in the removal of the image, coupled along with a private message notification and/or warning.
15. Only English Speaking Forums
    
    The majority of the Frontier forums are currently supported in English only. Please refrain from creating threads, or posting in existing threads, in any other language unless pre-approved by a moderator. There is also an international discussion forum located here.
16. No Naming and Shaming.
    
    We do not allow "naming and shaming" discussions, or types of content deemed naming and shaming on the Frontier discussion board. Naming and Shaming is the act of publicly naming someone and ridiculing or accusing them of something. This also includes putting names on a blacklist in your signature or thread.

Important
Frontier reserve the right to change or add to these rules without notice. All rules are interpreted, judged and enforced at the discretion of the moderators.



MAKING A COMPLAINT

Reporting Posts
If you wish to complain about any thread or post, please contact Frontier by clicking on the "Report This Post" icon and text found on each post at the bottom left. We will review the content and decide if it complies with the forum rules. You can also do the same when reporting private messages or visitor messages on your profile.


Now that you know the house rules, come say hello and introduce yourself to the rest of the community!




SIGNATURE RULES AND LIMITATIONS

• Maximum image file size limit limited to 250KB.
• Maximum allowed images per user signature is one.
• Animated images (eg: gif image or banner rotators) are not allowed.
• Maximum width of an image is 650 pixels.
• Maximum height of an image is 150 pixels.
• Maximum allowed lines of normal sized text per signature is five.
• If text lines are added to a sig they cannot be made larger than the default size.
• Lines are not allowed to wrap else they count as additional lines
  
  • If an image is added to a signature, and the image is up to 650x150, maximum lines permitted is zero
  • If an image is added to a signature, and the image is up to 650x120, maximum lines permitted is one
  • If an image is added to a signature, and the image is up to 650x90, maximum lines permitted is two
  • If NO image is added to a signature, maximum lines of text permitted is five.
  • Quote, code, and/or special bbcode that consumes lines of text, count as two lines each.
  • Links do not count as special bbcodes but must adhere to the links rules
  • Empty lines of text count as a line / additional line to a signature.

[Michael Brookes]

Added section for naming and shaming:

16. No Naming and Shaming.
We do not allow "naming and shaming" discussions, or types of content deemed naming and shaming on the Frontier discussion board. Naming and Shaming is the act of publicly naming someone and ridiculing or accusing them of something. This also includes putting names on a blacklist in your signature or thread.

Michael

[Michael Brookes]

Updated rule on offensive posts to make it clear that swearing is not welcome.

Michael

[Brett C]

Added / amended rules on the clarification of signature limitations.

--Brett

[Michael Brookes]

After much discussion the sig rules have been updated.

Michael

[Michael Brookes]

Updated the forum summary be adding "Manual validation of users posts by moderation team.".

Michael

[Michael Brookes]

Updating the insubordination section to make it clear that complaints about moderation should go through private message.

Michael

[Michael Brookes]

Updated sig rules to make it clear that banner rotators are not allowed, although they were already covered by the animated images.

Michael