I'll keep this simple.

By using this site, you assert that:

• You are 18 years of age or older
• You agree to follow the rules or suffer the consequences

The rules:

You cannot:

• Troll, or feed trolls the attention they crave
• Flame or flamebait
• Advertise a product or service without the admin's personal approval.
• Harass other users, sexually or otherwise
• embed adult images/movies in your posts, except where otherwise marked by the admin
• Embed any flash in your posts that does not have an explicit start/stop button
• Use leetspeak without irony
• Use racial epithets except in the context of a discussion of same, or make personal insults
• Threaten other users
• Hack, crack, or otherwise mess with the server(s) on which this site runs, or threaten to do so

You can:

• Link to adult content, if you clearly mark it with [nsfw]
• Curse, swear, etc. Fuckin' Eh
• Do anything not prohibited by a rule.

You must:

• Use proper grammar, punctuation and spelling at all times. Zeta Channel provides a spellchecker supporting .uk, .ca, and .us English. If in doubt, use it.
• Keep threads at least marginally on-topic. If it goes too far, the mods and admin reserve the right to fork it off into a new thread.
• Start threads in the appropriate boards. Threads that don't fit can and will be moved at mod/admin discretion.

I claim full copyright on all original stylistic element of this site, such as the logo. The contents of your posts, including images (provided you created them) belong to you.

This forum allows you to link your profile to an external avatar image. If you choose to use this option (and we encourage you to do so!) please make it 100x100 pixels in size. Animation is, by default, OK, but the admins reserve the right to change your avatar at their own discretion.

This forum allows you to create a signature, and attach it to your posts. If you choose to use this option (and we encourage you to do so!), your signature should not have more than five lines of text. If you like, you may include one non-animated image in your signature, no larger than 40 pixels high by 100 pixels wide. Smilies do not count toward this limit; you may have smiley of your choice, out of the ones zCh provides, in your signature.

When posting a link that has a long URL, please encapsulate it behind anchor text, like this.

The mods and admins reserve the right to edit your posts and profile information at their own discretion. If you believe your post was edited unnecessarily, PM the admin with your grievance.

On this forum, you will, most likely, eventually come across statements you find offensive. That's fine; you have every right to take offense at anything you like, or don't like. What's not fine is expecting the staff to censor someone's writing just because you don't like it. You do not have a right to be protected from being offended, and I'm not extending any similar privilege.

These rules are subject to change, and it's your job to keep abreast of the changes. Punishments for violations are at the admins' and moderators' sole discretion.

The mods and the admin have lives outside the forums and, based on all available data, are not your mother.  While moderators and admin will do their best to accommodate you, if you have a disagreement with another poster please attempt to resolve your differences on your own before bringing it to a moderator/admin's attention.

Edit to Add Jul 19, 2008:  If you say you're going to leave the mod staff will be sure to help you along.  Threatening to leave the forum as a dramatic technique will not be tolerated.  If you say you're going to leave the forum the mod staff will ban you account to help you follow through on your actions.  We're here to help.

WTFBBQ?

Where did you get that link?

Rules were made to be broken.

 

You used to use my actual first name as part of your screen name? It was creepy enough when I thought it was just some random stranger, now its... more creepy. Like finding you wearing my pants or something. Except I'm pretty sure you had no idea what my name is, which ought to de-creepify it for me, but somehow doesn't.

All right.  So the mods have finally come together and worked out a policy for dealing with those who decide to break the rules.  Offenses are a discretionary term used to describe breaches in the rules and/or behavior unacceptable within the scope of the rules.

1st Offense:  A warning will be issued to the person.  This will be done to the person in private by a mod, but will still count as a strike against the poster.

2nd Offense:  The poster will be muted for 3 days.  At the end of the muting the poster will issue an apology to the community.

3rd Offense:  The poster will be muted for 7 days.  At the end of the 7 days the poster will send an apology to a mod which the mod will then post as a poll.  The community will then decide if they want to accept the apology and give the poster their voice back or leave the muting on for a further 7 days (after which voice will be returned).

4th Offense:  Ban-hammer.  By this point the poster has shown fundamental differences in character which indicate they do not belong as part of the community.

As always we welcome your questions, comments and concerns.

I hope that instaban is still around for those who join only to spam us with keyloggers disguised as russian porn, and other such malarky. (Ha! I managed to use malarky in a sentence!)

Do we have a mod list yet?

Could there be a statute of limitations sort of thing? If someone's first offense was so long ago that the mod team forgot it, say, two or three years, could it sort of fade from the record? What I'm thinking is that if a person simply hangs out anywhere for years or more they're going to tread on a few toes. Making four mistakes over the course of four years and then being banned is a lot different than making four mistakes over the course of four months and then being banned.

I'm mildly uncomfortable with this.  It feeds the assumption that when an apology is given, it's not necessarily a sincere one and that it was only given to get posting privilieges back.  I guess I kind of look at that as worse than someone not apologizing at all.  Perhaps it's just me, but if someone royally pissed me off, attacked me or another poster, and got muted for it, I'd rather any apology to me or the forum in general came out of an understanding that he had crossed a line, not just lip-service to get his posting rights back.  Again, it may just be me, but I'll likely be looking at most of the apologies and thinking, "He's just saying that so he can post again."