Forum Guidelines

[StuartDH]

Admin - StuartDH
Moderators - Tinkerbell, glsammy
Gallery Editors - fbcpmike, digi, wildone, glsammy, Oy, John
Techies - various IT guys who volunteer to help Wild About Britain when it all goes pear-shaped. They're not members of the forum and wish to remain nameless , but they're usually logged on via the floating accounts of Kinfol or Wizard.


We do not intend to censor posts, as long as they fall inside the rules and guidelines of this forum and the website. We reserve the right to move, modify or delete posts or threads at our discretion and without explanation.

Registration

• You are allowed to have only one account.
• You are responsible for all posts that originate from your user name account.
• You may not post on behalf of any banned member

General Conduct

• Our most simple but most important rule - Be polite, respect other members and their opinions.
• If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all - and, if you're just joking, make sure that it is clear to everyone that you mean no disrespect to the other member.
• We do not tolerate rudeness and any member who is intentionally unpleasant or disruptive may have their membership disabled without warning.
• Any posts that encourage illegal intent will be removed and the account disabled.

The following activities are forbidden. Moderators may use their discretion as to whether or not to take action, depending on the nature of the post. However, the consequence of any of these activities will likely result in the entire post/thread being deleted, with all content removed.

• Signature Spam - making posts to show your signature
• Post Spam – adding short replies of just a few words, with the purpose of increasing one's post count
• Bumping Threads - posting useless information, one-liners or any other action to deliberately keep a thread hot or to bring it to the top of its forum.
• Cross-Posting - posting new duplicate threads or posts, or linking to threads or posts to promote them or keep the subject visible
• Hijacking – taking a thread off topic
• Thread Trashing – posting negative comments about topics, or suggesting that threads or posts be closed, just because they do not interest you.
• Flaming - doing anything to personally insult, degrade, belittle, or demean another member.

Content

The Wild About Britain website is often visited by schools throughout the world. Please help us to maintain a facility that is presentable to school children.

• All content must be in the English language and not abbreviated texting
• If you start a new thread, please ensure that it has a meaningful title - this should help it to stay on topic
• You may not post censored words or URLs by substituting, adding or removing characters.
• You may not post any combination of words, letters or characters that could be interpreted as rude or offensive
• Any posts that encourage illegal intent will be removed and the account disabled.
• You may not link, in any manner, to sites or images containing sexually explicit content, gross violence, or are determined by moderators to be detrimental to the community.
• You must make ten posts before you are allowed to add links to your posts, add a signature to your account or use the Private Messaging facility. Any attempt to circumvent this restriction (at the discretion of the moderators) will result in your account being disabled.
• Spelling & Grammar – please make every effort to spell words and structure your sentences and paragraphs so that they is propper.
• Fonts - Keep your posts clean with only two colors (including Black), two font styles and a maximum font size of 3.
• Emoticons – Please make use of emoticons/smilies to help clarify the intended emotion your posts, but do not use them excessively.
• Repetition – do not post strings of repeated characters or words
• Quotes - please only use the quote facility to reply to posts wherever it is really necessary, and reduce the content in the quote to specific sentences or paragraphs.

Commercial Activity

• You may not solicit any external source to post on this forum regarding any current or future company, services, or products that you are associated with.
• You may not post any posts that are commercial by nature.
• You may not recommend, praise, or belittle any products, services or companies; without first hand experience of those products or services.
• You may not post commission, referral or affiliate links

Also

You may not solicit users for any project or purpose external to Wild About Britain; public, private, or commercial – without the consent of the forum Administrator


Tips

If you feel that you are being disrespected by another member of the forum, do not react, please forward your concern to a moderator or administrator and we will deal with the situation.


Public posts debating these rules and/or moderators' enforcement of such, may be removed without comment. However, we encourage feedback and invite you to use our help desk (coming soon) if you have any questions or concerns.

[FungiJohn]

Hi Stuart

Reading your Forum guidelines I may appear responsible for 'Post Spam – adding short replies of just a few words, with the purpose of increasing one's post count'

I reply out of courtesy to the kind comments made to me by clicking on the photo and making a reply. Is this the correct way?

I have only been a member for about 4 weeks and I may not have not read all the site contents.

With respect to ‘post counts’ I didn’t really join the forum to gain points, but purely to let other people view my images and to allow me to view other peoples.

If I’m guilty of this rule I apologise.

Best Regards - John

[nightshade]

Dont worry about it John,The site is famous for its one-liners some people specialise in them

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by FungiJohn

Hi Stuart

Reading your Forum guidelines I may appear responsible for 'Post Spam – adding short replies of just a few words, with the purpose of increasing one's post count'

I reply out of courtesy to the kind comments made to me by clicking on the photo and making a reply. Is this the correct way?

I have only been a member for about 4 weeks and I may not have not read all the site contents.

With respect to ‘post counts’ I didn’t really join the forum to gain points, but purely to let other people view my images and to allow me to view other peoples.

If I’m guilty of this rule I apologise.

Best Regards - John

If your guilty of this John, then so am I, and I'm a moderator!! Your absolutely fine! It's the continually repeat postings with no meaning that we're concerned about, not polite thanks for a good comment.

[wildone]

If somebody has taken the trouble to comment on your images it is only curtesey to thank them. I think Stuart is more concerned with it happening on the forums.

[John]

The only problem I have with the one liners being outlawed is the very fact that somthing humorous may have been posted and the best reply you could make is a line of

That is sometimes the best answer you can give to a funny posting.

Is this type of reply going to be outlawed, as I have done it a few times (and certainly not to boost my count up).

John

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by John

The only problem I have with the one liners being outlawed is the very fact that somthing humorous may have been posted and the best reply you could make is a line of

That is sometimes the best answer you can give to a funny posting.

Is this type of reply going to be outlawed, as I have done it a few times (and certainly not to boost my count up).

John

A lot will depend on the thread and type of posting. Humourous one line replies I'm sure will be fine, however, If we see a user replying repeatedly with off topic responses, thats when we'll have to step in.
I've never seen a post that you've done that could possibly be called into question.

[FungiJohn]

Thanks all,

I do feel very reassured by your responses, I really do.

Now where’s that next batch of fungi pictures to upload

John

[StuartDH]

Originally Posted by FungiJohn

Reading your Forum guidelines I may appear responsible for 'Post Spam – adding short replies of just a few words, with the purpose of increasing one's post count'

It's OK John. As some of the other members have mentioned it's more just a case of us keeping an eye on the very short forum posts. If you'd been posting lots of gallery or forum posts with just 'nice', 'great', 'that's good' etc, then it may attract the mods attention, but you haven't been doing any of that and we certainly don't want to stop people form being able to say 'thanks'

As with many of the forum guidelines, most spammers know when they're spamming and so we've just added this in to the list to let them know that we'll be watching and every now and then we'll go over the posts with a pair of trimmers Luckily we don't get it much on WAB, but it's worth putting it in just in case we do.

Stu

[StuartDH]

Originally Posted by John

The only problem I have with the one liners being outlawed is the very fact that somthing humorous may have been posted and the best reply you could make is a line of

That is sometimes the best answer you can give to a funny posting.

Is this type of reply going to be outlawed, as I have done it a few times (and certainly not to boost my count up).

John

Hi John,

A few are OK, but we've recently had to sort posts that had masses of emoticons and half a page of repeated words - like no, no, no, no...(multiplied by 150). Everything is OK in moderation, the guideline is just there to ask members to try and keep things at a reasonable level.

Stu

[FungiJohn]

Thanks Stuart

And also many thanks to Digi, Wildone and other members for their reassurance.

Regards - John

[nightshade]

I have seen an article in a sunday supplement where advertisers log on as members and ask wether people have tried such and such brand of makeup or recommend a particular make of mp3 player etc.not necessarily in response to a query!
So I can see the need for vigilance

[Kymba]

As we are on the topic of guidelines etc . I have a question! You can only save up to 10 responces.. is there somewhere I can keep them for future reference? And also How to i keep track of Threads i have posted previously as i tend to spend a lot of time looking for them and the responces

< Sorry but i am Blonde!!! >

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by Kymba

As we are on the topic of guidelines etc . I have a question! You can only save up to 10 responces.. is there somewhere I can keep them for future reference? And also How to i keep track of Threads i have posted previously as i tend to spend a lot of time looking for them and the responces

< Sorry but i am Blonde!!! >

If you click on user CP on the light blue toolbar it will bring up all the threads that you have posted in that have been updated. Also if you click on your own name to see your own public profile you can then click on all threads posted in or started by you.....
Hope this helps?!

[Gytrash]

Hi

I recently posted a thread with information about a weekend of walks and visits to the North Yorkshire Moors. It seems to have disappeared, being replaced by the word 'moved', and then the word 'Links'.
I'm assuming it has been deleted because of links I included to websites showing the places we would be visiting.If this is the case, is it worth me reposting the thread without the links?
Or was it deleted for a different reason?

My apologies if I over-stepped the Forum guidelines, it wasn't intentional.

Cheers
Dave

[eeyore]

I would suspect (tho not being a mod i'm not one hundred percent sure) that you ran afoul of the rule about not having too many links in one post

this came into being fairly recently as a result of a small minority posting purely to plug their own websites and also because we try to avoid having broken links in threads.

as a general rule it is acceptable to put a link for more information on a specific point but posting lists of links isnt generally reccomended, and also you shouldnt put any links that promte comercial activity as this falls under the advertising category.

in your shoes I'd be inclined to repost without the links - then if anyone wants extra info you could either post individual links in response to questions (which is fine if they arent comercial) or you could send the links to interested people by pm.

I hope thats helpful - if you have any other questions feel free to pm me - or for a definitive answer pm one of the moderators (such as fourwings , matt_xyz, Glsammy, etc)

[Gytrash]

Thanks Eeyore!

There were a lot of links to external websites in my post. That seems to be the most likely problem.

I'll repost the thread, without lots of links, as soon as I hear back from one of the walk leaders about the agreed itinerary.

Thanks again for your help!


Cheers
Dave

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Gytrash

Thanks Eeyore!

There were a lot of links to external websites in my post. That seems to be the most likely problem.

I'll repost the thread, without lots of links, as soon as I hear back from one of the walk leaders about the agreed itinerary.

Thanks again for your help!


Cheers
Dave

If you are actually promoting these events in conjunction with the walk leaders it might fall under "advertising" - I didnt see your original post so i cant say for sure - perhaps the best idea would be to PM stuartDH or a mod before you repost - or if you dont want to bother them pm me the copy of your post and i will give you an informed opinion.

[FungiJohn]

Originally Posted by Gytrash

Hi

I recently posted a thread with information about a weekend of walks and visits to the North Yorkshire Moors. It seems to have disappeared, being replaced by the word 'moved', and then the word 'Links'.
I'm assuming it has been deleted because of links I included to websites showing the places we would be visiting.If this is the case, is it worth me reposting the thread without the links?
Or was it deleted for a different reason?

My apologies if I over-stepped the Forum guidelines, it wasn't intentional.

Cheers
Dave

Hi Dave

It's purely down to the many external links you provided.

I would suggest that if you do repost, you just say what the event is, where and when. People can then Google or pm you if they require further information.

Hope this helps.

John

[Gytrash]

Thanks guys!

Will repost shortly, without the links!

Cheers
Dave