Read this first before posting on the MR2OC Forum - Rules

[MR2]

This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of members here at www.mr2.org.nz Please read it and become familiar with it, it's terms are retroactive and agreed by team and group members.

Board-wide Policies and Forum rules
Site Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this forum are those of the contributor and are not necessarily those of the Editors, Moderators, the MR2 Owners' Club of NZ inc or its committee. The MR2 Owners' Club of NZ inc accepts no responsibility for the information or advice given in www.mr2.org.nz or by club officials or committee. Readers should excercise their own judgement when considering technical matter and modifications to their vehicles. It is recommended that, if in doubt on any technical matter, owners should consult the official workshop manual for their particular model of car.

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).

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.

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 Group or the site administrator ( [email protected] ). Only do this if a moderator team member has not replied within 24 hours. Members who consistently "act" as moderators may be warned.

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 or immediate temporary ban depending on the severity of the content.

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 permission will receive a warning and their post will be removed.

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

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. Also please try to refrain from TXT type abbreviations. (ie. R U CUMNG 4 DNR)

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; "I have a problem with leaking exhaust", "How do I reset the ECU on an SW20 NA", etc.

Members are welcome to use the General forum for general "test purposes". These may include checking signatures, testing a link or image, etc. (subject to previous points on decency, warez, etc.).

SPAM is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, etc. that are not directly related to MR2's or Automotive Services. Users posting SPAM will be immediately banned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information. If you have something to sell, please make sure it is relevant to MR2 owners, and post it in the Classifieds categories as appropriate.

Do not "Bump" threads to the top of the forum lists by just posting useless messages designed to falsely show that there has been a new post to a thread. If these posts are found, the moderators will remove the "bump" posts, and if necessary the whole thread.

The Moderating team reserves 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 the Moderators and not users.

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.



Signatures

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)
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.
Please try to keep any images in your signature to 800x160pixels or less.

Links are permitted in signatures. Such links may be made to non-MR2 material, commercial ventures, etc. Links are included within the text limits above. Links to offensive sites may be subject to removal.

Users abusing these rules will be warned.


Avatars

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 160 pixels square, contain minimal animation (please remember that some people will only be using dial-up access), contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimicking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 6KB in file size and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed) or be uploaded to the image gallery.

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

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

Policing

The MR2OC operates a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place until the MR2OC Committee decides to let the user back on.

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.

Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact the MR2OC Committee ( [email protected] ). The MR2OC Committee decision is final. Contacting general forum members over warning matters should be done so as a very last resort ... members do not want to be bothered unless vital.

Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent and may lead to a complaint to your ISP. 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. This includes posting as an anonymous user if any of the Forums here allow that.

An exception to the three strike rule may apply if users contact moderator team members, general subscribers or the site administrator personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban at the moderators discretion.

Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While the MR2OC may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.