IMPORTANT: India-Forums Code of Conduct

In order to ensure a peaceful and enjoyable experience for all members of India-Forums, Vijay and the moderators have come up with a Forum Code of Conduct which all members should review and adhere to. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Vijay or any of the moderators.

Cheers,

Moderator Group

India-Forums Code of Conduct

Our goal is to ensure that India-Forums's online forums and chat channels are welcoming environments where people can come together and discuss relevant subjects and topics in a friendly and non-aggressive environment. The purpose of this code of conduct is to ensure that users can participate in the forums and chats without being 'flamed', personally attacked, harassed or be exposed to inappropriate materials. India-Forums values freedom of expression on the site, but not at the expense of offending others. We want all members to have an enjoyable and fun experience. With this in mind we have established the Code of Conduct to help us achieve that goal. Please assist us by posting relevant messages that are consistent with the Code of Conduct. In short, we aim to maintain forums and chats with appropriate standards of civil posting behavior and where members respect the rights of others. This Code of Conduct is subject to the Planet India-Forums member rules.

India-Forums appoints moderators to help us ensure that forum post content and chat messages comply with the vision and goals of the India-Forums website forums and chat areas.

You agree, through your use of the forum and chat services, that you will abide by this Code of Conduct.

Please take some time to carefully read and understand the Code of Conduct, and the penalties for violations. Non-compliance will result in forfeiture of your privilege to access the forums and chat channels may result in a permanent ban. The following actions constitute a violation of the Code of Conduct. Please note references to posts in the following includes messages made in chat channels:

1. Non-adherence or violation of the Planet India-Forums membership rules.
2. Using an invalid email address for your user account.
3. Posting messages that display or link to po*nographic or sexually offensive material. Posting sexually suggestive materials or graphic intimate details of sexual nature whether in story form or while discussing an episode will not be allowed.  Debates on subjects which are sensitive and adult will be closely monitored for content. Any topic containing videos, pictures, articles or individual postings by members on Nudity, discussions or postings related to any kind of nudity or po*n, and not deemed fit for an universal audience will be closed and trashed and warnings given. It also applies to published articles. Whether any such topic is appropriate in a section will be decided by the Dev Team and the decision of the Dev Team on any such kind of topic shall be final.
4. Posting messages that in any way breach or violate the terms and conditions of a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
5. Any attempts to breach forum security, or gain unauthorized access into user accounts. This includes the action of guessing passwords, successful or not. Assisting others with such attempts or actions also constitutes a violation.
6. Exploiting, or attempting to exploit, forum bugs, vulnerabilities, or loopholes.
7. Flooding the forum with repeat or similar meaning messages. What constitutes flooding behavior is at the discretion of India-Forums staff and India-Forums appointed moderators.
8. Registering multiple accounts with intent to disrupt the community.
9. Giving, discussing, requesting, or linking to information that is either directly or indirectly related to obtaining pirated or unauthorized copyrighted materials, serial numbers, serial number generators and No-CD patches may result in an immediate ban.
10. Registering accounts with usernames or using screen names that are offensive or created with intent to cause disruption to the forums.
11. Impersonating India-Forums staff on the forums or India-Forums web site areas generally (including chats)
12. Flooding the forums with redundant messages, empty messages, advertisements, clearly irrelevant "+1 Post Count" messages, and/or nonsensical posts.
13. Posting messages that are inflammatory and made simply with the intent to provoke disruption to the forum and encourage, incite or continue 'flame' threads. 'Trolling' posts will not be tolerated. Posts that are disruptive and destructive in character will not be tolerated. Flaming is deemed to include insulting, personally directed criticisms and/or posts that include comments aimed to incite anger. Trolling is deemed to include posts aimed to incite disruption or stir up trouble. For example, posting to a thread or starting a thread without the intent to contribute positive suggestions or comments. Instead, the aim is negative and disruptive comments.
14. Using expressions or language in posts that are considered foul, vulgar, hateful, bigoted, sexually harassing, racially offensive, or are in any way discriminatory. Whether an expression falls within this definition will be determined at the discretion of India-Forums staff and/or India-Forums appointed forum moderators and their decision will be final.
15. Posting messages that are not within the designated forum areas identified subject scope or defined topic. The forum does have an off-topic area for broader general discussion. Please note that posts made to the off-topic forum area must comply in all respects with all other standards and requirements as stipulated in this Code of Conduct.
16. Making posts that personally attack, insult, threaten, harass or are clearly disrespectful of the opinions of other participants. This means, if you are engaging in debates that involve challenging, questioning and disputing the opinions and views of others, you are required to do so in a civil manner and ensure that your posts are relevant and on-topic. This rule does not exclude posts that are critical or questioning. It does, however, require that you carefully consider the tone of language in such posts to ensure that they are civil.
17. Posting messages in all capitals letters is not permitted. This represents "shouting" on the internet and can be viewed as offensive by other members.
18. As a guideline signature files should not exceed a maximum file size of 25 KB. Please try and keep within this limitation in consideration of other users with slow internet connections. Signatures that significantly exceed this guideline may be deemed a Code of Conduct violation.

  19.  A very important NOTE:

        Direct or Indirect attacks - of any form - including aspersions, sarcasm, snide comments etc - on any dev team will NOT BE TOLERATED. The attacking member will be formally warned with the Warning Meter.

A topic which openly challenges the authority or the decision of any dev team member AND/OR which was created with the underlying motive of creating unrest on the forum shall be immediately closed and deleted. The member creating the topic and any other member(s) involved in the altercation will be formally warned with the Warning Meter.

NOTE: This does NOT include genuine queries posed by members about the working of the dev team, where the underlying intention of the poster is to get answers to a valid question. We still would like this to be an open forum where members can question things which do not make sense to them. However, the questions have to be asked in a polite and respectful manner and sufficient time to be given to the dev team to answer the queries. Any disrespect , contempt or discourtesy shown in this regard will immediately fetch a warning raise. Once a dev team member gives an explanation to a member's genuine query, the topic will be closed and no other queries on that topic will be entertained.

If any member has any issue regarding any decision, they are free to PM the Admin or the Global Moderators.

Violations and Penalties

Violation or infringement of any of the rules in this Code of Conduct may result in the immediate revocation, suspension or termination of the privilege to post on India-Forums's forums or participate in the chat channels. India-Forums reserves the right to vary the severity and suddenness of the penalty based on the nature of the violation. India-Forums reserves the right to refuse to post or remove any posts, material or links that we deem unacceptable, offensive or in violation of the rules without further notice. We also reserve the right to suspend, prohibit or terminate the registration of any user who violates the rules from using the site or site related services without warning.

India-Forums staff and India-Forums appointed forum moderators are the sole arbiters as to what constitutes a violation of the Code of Conduct.

Penalties will be applied in India-Forums's discretion as follows:

1. Generally, a first violation will result in a warning. Second violation will result in a temporary two week ban. Further violations will result in a month ban. Repeated and severe violations may attract a permanent ban at India-Forums's discretion.
2. Severe and repeat violation may attract a permanent ban without warning.

Note 1: If possible warning(s) will be sent to the infringing user's email account. If email warnings are bounced, India-Forums will apply a temporary ban on that account until the user contacts us.

Note 2: Account bans may be applied to multiple accounts if the other accounts originate from the same computer and are believed to be aliases of the account being banned.

All administrative actions taken by the moderators and administrators of these forums and chat channels are final. These actions may include but are not limited to: delete/close/move thread/message, banning, kicking, & account reset. The posting of any personal attacks or criticisms directed at the India-Forums appointed forum moderators will not be tolerated. This includes comments or messages posted in the chat channels. Posts commenting on or criticizing forum administrative actions will be deleted. Any complaints or disagreements regarding forum moderation should be made by email to moderators @ india-forums.com

Should you have any questions or comments on India-Forums's Forum Code of Conduct please email moderators @ india-forums.com

Also feel free to contact the administrator or any of our moderators (via private messenger) if you have any conflict, questions, or concerns:

This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of all members of the board at http://www.india-forums.com

Please read it and become familiar with it, as by posting anywhere on this board you agree to it. If a rule is broken you shall be warned and your post / options may be modified.

Board-wide Policies

1. Forum Rules
   

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 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. The definition of cracks also includes, but is not limited to, threads or links pertaining to the subject of cicumventing any security or privacy measures intentionally placed by manufacturers in their hardware and/or software.
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. Finally chatspeak is NOT allowed (e.g. i wan dat, plz fone me). Users consistently abusing this will be warned.
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; "Formatting Windows XP", "Blurry fonts in Flash", etc.
Spam is not tolerated here in most circumstances. This includes providing links to other similar site with the intent to promote it (charged and free), etc. We may let an occassional spam go through in the Forum as long as the poster is quite active at India Forums. If your first post is spam I can gurantee you it will be removed. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information.
The moderating, support and other teams 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.

1. 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 three lines (one line being that displayed on a browser opened to 600px width) of text (of small or normal size) and/or possibly one image (read farther for specifics), valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 100px high, 468px wide and 30KB in size. Signatures containing an image of 60px high or less may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 15px high or less may include two lines of small size text. A maximum of 1 link is allowed to Newbies, Groupie and Senior Members. 2 Links is allowed to Goldie & IF-Dazzler.
Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, warez, emoticons, etc.
Links are permitted in signatures. Such links may be made to non-India Forums material, non-profit ventures, etc. Links are included within the text and image limits above. Links to offensive sites, YahooGroups and competitors site may be subject to removal. Link removal is at the soul discretion of our Moderating & Support Team.

1. Users abusing these rules will be warned and may be banned if they do not adhere to the rule.
   

Avatars


Users are permitted to utilise a gallery avatar or to upload one of their own. User defined avatars are to be no larger than 96 pixels by 96 pixels, 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), and may not exceed 40KB in filesize.
Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, etc.

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

Inline Images


Do not post any inline images larger than 500px wide
Keep file sizes for inline images under 200 KB, otherwise use an external link
Inline images are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, etc.

1. Users abusing these rules will be warned with posts potentially edited or removed
   

Policing


India Forums 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.
Arguing with team members (moderators) 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 current admin: lakshmi_maruthi & vijay. If they feel you were treated badly they may remove a warning. Their decision is final. Contacting Global Moderators over warning matters should be done so as a very last resort ... they do not want to be bothered unless vital.
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 of evade an email ban. Circumvention includes posting as an anonymous user.

1. An exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact team members (moderators) personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.
   
2. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While India Forums may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurence.
   

thanx for the rules!

er thanks for all that i agree that there shud be some code of conduct

thanks it wud help

thnk u Vijay n Anjali!

the rules really made me IF better