The entire FES staff has agreed that as of late, behavior on this site has become largely unacceptable and it sadly has harmed the perception of the Flat Earth Society as an organization promoting respectful discussion and tolerant accepance of others regardless of their views. As a result, the mods and admins have agreed that a change in rules is what is needed to bring FES back to its peak activity by allowing new members to feel more welcome and unafraid that their threads will turn into flame wars by old time members.
The site administration has final say over the interpretation and enforcement of these rules. These rules are subject to change without notice.
Any queries about the rules or their enforcement should be directed to the Suggestions & Concerns board. Please note that individual boards within the forum often have their own board-specific rules, which must be adhered to in addition to the Forum Rules.
The Forum Rules
*Racism and Hate Speech
-DO NOT post anything ironically, satirically, humorously, or blatantly racist in nature. Hate speech of any kind is forbidden.
*Explicit Content
-DO NOT post, link or make available anything explicit, obscene, indecent, lewd, violent, gory, pornographic, illegal, etc.
*Multiple Accounts
-DO NOT create alternate accounts ('alts').
*Advertisements
-DO NOT create threads/posts, send private messages, or use your profile to advertise items or information.
*Flaming and Harassment
-DO NOT use insulting or denigrating personal attacks against other members. Harassment or bullying of other members is forbidden.
*Profanity
-DO NOT use excessive profanity, or create threads with profane titles.
*Troublemaking
-DO NOT post or behave in a manner obviously intended to start a fight, get a reaction, or cause problems (e.g. making facetious complaints, adjusting/creating a profile so as to impersonate other members, etc.).
*Low-content Posting/Derailment
-DO NOT make spammy, non-contributive or low-quality posts. Also, don't derail threads by deliberately dragging discussion away from the original topic.
*Abuse of Forum Features
-DO NOT abuse the forum features or systems. This includes the quote function (no excessive quote pyramids), the report system (to be used only for genuine problems/concerns), and posting or messaging in general (no giant posts or private messages).
*Disputing Moderation and Memberating
-DO NOT attempt to dispute (or interfere with) moderation anywhere other than Suggestions & Concerns. Any concerns or problems you have with moderation should be taken there. Moderating other members (aka 'memberating') is also forbidden.
Finally, please note that the Flat Earth Society Forum reserves the right to remove any and all illegal content, or prevent any and all illegal activity, even if that content/activity is not explicitly forbidden as per the above rules.
These are the rules before the update.
With the new rules, profanity will now only be allowed in random musings. This also includes sexual innuendo. This will hide the worst of behavior from potential new members and give our site an extra boost of civility and hide the less refined activities of others from the public. Anyone caught swearing outside of RM will be banned accordingly with multiple instances leading to longer bans.
A new enforcement that the admins have personally set forward is prohibiting the use of the r-word on the entire website. This includes RM. This word unfairly attacks a certain group of the population and is quite frankly, disgusting. So please keep in mind that calling someone "retarded" is a lot more damaging than a simple name-calling instance.
Finally, Gayer, Roundy and I all propsed an antidrug rule that has been agreed upon by the entire staff. Discussions on legalization or arguments on the policies currently in place (for drugs) is of course welcome, but any post detailing the illegal use and/or consumption of drugs by a user personally is strictly forbidden. We feel it is important that FES never becomes associated with drugs and shows that we have different philosophies but breaking the law is not a part of anyone's philosophy here.
These changes will not happen right away. Everyone has a week and a half to familiarize themselves with these new rules before we will start enforcing them. I know some will not be happy with these changes but we beileve it is best for tFES is the long run.
~Ichi