Official Forum Rules

[DakotaHale]

Free Speech: (The Golden Rule)

• Free speech continues to be the most important rule of the forum. This includes speech which may be considered offensive or unpopular. The rules below were created with this golden rule in mind.

Forum Rules: 

• These rules may be added on to or amended with majority vote by the moderators.

Moderator Team Rules:

• All reports will be reviewed by the moderator team and resolved within 24 hours. (If one or more moderators are not available within that 24-hour period, then the decision of whichever moderators happened to be on within those 24 hours will be final.)  Each moderator present will comment in the report to give their thoughts on the case.  If a majority of the moderators agree that this is an infraction, the user will be advised of the majority ruling and receive a warning, in addition to the punishment agreed upon by the majority of moderators (no more than 48 hours suspension).
• Any decision to suspend a user beyond 48-hours (including permabanning) requires unanimous moderator approval.
• Users will be informed on the status of their reports. Whether their report was enforced or overruled.
• The moderator team will consist of four forum users plus the administrator. Site administrator may fill the role of moderator if a moderator is not present OR if report involves moderator.
• Moderators who are absent during a vote will have their vote count neither for nor against a resolution.
• The moderators may put a user under content moderation with a majority vote for repeated bad conduct and behavior deemed abusive by the moderators.

Individual Moderator Policing Rules: 

• All moderators have the authority to lock a post at their own discretion. All moderators have the authority to unlock a post at their own discretion. Deletion of a post requires majority moderator approval OR the consent of the post author to delete.
  • EXCEPTION: Off-topic discussion in RP threads may be deleted by moderator with post author's consent.
• All moderators have the authority to issue temporary bans no more than 6 hours at their own discretion. Such rulings may be overturned by other moderators with a majority vote.
• Moderators are allowed to enforce previous precedents decided by the moderator team (provided the violation is clearly on the precedents list). Such rulings can still be overturned by other moderators with a simple majority vote.

Moderator Ethics Rules:

• Moderators will be unable to vote on reports involving them and will be held to the same standard and punishments as other users.

Precedents: (Will be updated with new precedents and approved with majority vote for individual moderator policing)

• Multi-accounting: Multi-accounting is against forum policy and all accounts clearly belonging to another user may be terminated at individual moderator's discretion; warnings may be applied to the original account with majority moderator vote. 
• Spam: Spam accounts or users posting spam in threads will have their accounts temporarily suspended and topics deleted at individual moderator's discretion.
• Porn/NSFW/NSFL links: Discussion of NSFW/NSFL topics is allowed on the forum, but posting links to sites involving graphic NSFW/NSFL content may be removed at individual moderator's discretion.

Definitions: 
Simple Majority/Majority Vote = 3/4, 3/5 OR 4/5 (may involve all moderators, OR a mix of moderators and the admin)
Unanimous Vote = 4/4 OR 5/5 (may involve all moderators, OR all moderators and admin OR 2 FOR moderators, absent moderator, and FOR admin)
Moderator Team: All moderators in council for a vote. Or in the case of an absent moderator, present moderators and admin temporarily fulfilling moderator role. Ability to set precedents for enforcement by individual moderators.
Individual moderator: Moderator enforcing rules outside of the council setting. More limited than the moderator team but still entitled to some enforcement at their own discretion.