Calgarypuck Forum Guidelines

[Moderator]

General Guidelines

These are the guidelines for all forums on Calgarypuck. The guidelines are listed in this post, and more details about each can be found further in the thread. There may be additional guidelines for each sub-forum.

1. Obey the Moderators.

2. Respect the other posters. Don't be a jerk, be civil. Don't harass or bully others.

3. Address the topic, not the poster. Having your opinion, claim or argument challenged, doubted or dismissed is not attacking you.

4. Make a positive contribution. Stay on the thread's topic, don't intentionally derail or otherwise assassinate a thread. If you don't like a thread, don't post in it. This isn't a forum for trash talking and flame wars.

5. Race, Gender, Sexual Preference, Religion, Political Views

6. Keep your posts at a PG level. Posts that are/contain nudity, porn, obscenity, gore, death, or extreme violence are not allowed. This also includes profanity; there is a profanity filter that should not be intentionally circumvented.

7. Don't post anything that could be considered illegal or considered to incite or further criminal activity. This include posting copyrighted material (quote an article and post a link rather than copy/pasting the whole article for example) or linking to pirate sites.

8. Don't post anything harmful or dangerous to another poster's welfare. This includes posting personal information, viruses or malicious links, and posts designed to abuse or threaten the mental or physical welfare of the other poster.

9. Do not post just to self-promote. No advertising, no posting of affiliate links, and no posting personal links to games where generating traffic is involved in winning. If you want to pay to advertise a business or site, contact Bingo. Putting a link to your site in your sig is ok. If in doubt, ask first.

10. Duplicate accounts are not allowed. If you are temporarily suspended, do not register a new account to circumvent the suspension.

11. Be considerate of others when posting, both with text and images. Keep images of a reasonable size, and posts readable and not disruptive.

12. Requests for poll hijacking are generally not allowed.


Sub-Forum Specific Guidelines

Additional guidelines are posted for the subforums that have them:

Fire On Ice Sub-Forum Guidelines

Buy/Sell Sub-Forum Guidelines

Ticket Buy/Sell Sub-Forum Guidelines

Power Ring Sub-Forum Guidelines

[Moderator]

All communication with moderators is expected to be civil and polite. Moderators volunteer their time; insults or other abuse will not be tolerated.

If the Moderator PMs you or posts in a thread looking asking for something, it's a good idea to pay attention. They're trying to keep the peace, not pursue a personal vendetta against you.

Don't make threads or off topic posts about Moderation issues. If you have a problem or question about a moderator's actions, contact the Moderator account to discuss things.

If you get a temporary suspension and create an account to get around it, you WILL be perma-banned. If you wish to argue/defend your case, email boardadmin@calgarypuck.com. At least one moderator will read it, and if there's a compelling case, it will be brought to the attention the rest of the moderators.

[Moderator]

Treat others as you would want them to treat you. Your post should be designed to communicate, not to incite a response in others. Discussions may get heated, but repeated poor behaviour won't be tolerated.

Harassment and bullying is defined as when one poster or a group of posters specifically and regularly target another poster with defamatory, insulting or posts irrelevant to the discussion of the given thread. The moderation team will take against a poster who shows a pattern of drawing another poster into an argument.

Threads that degrade into personal attacks or constant bickering will be locked. Don't bait people into arguments. Respect that other teams' fans feel as passionate about their team and hate your team as much as you love yours and hate theirs.

In disputes, a long time poster with a known good history will probably get the benefit of the doubt. A new poster coming in with both guns blazing, not so much.

Use of the word "troll" is becoming far too pervasive, it is an insult just like any other. Only in the most obvious of circumstances would calling someone a troll be acceptable, and even in those cases please just report the post rather than contributing to the mess.

This can be subjective and at the moderator's discretion.

[Moderator]

Address the topic, not the poster. Having your opinion, claim or argument challenged, doubted or dismissed is not attacking you.

Choose language that focuses on the topic, not the other person. This helps avoid personal attacks and otherwise inflammatory behaviour.

This rule may be enforced much more strictly in some threads like threads on religion or politics where posters can have greater difficulty being civil.

[Moderator]

Make a positive contribution. Stay on the thread's topic, don't intentionally derail or otherwise assassinate a thread. If you don't like a thread, don't post in it. This isn't a forum for trash talking and flame wars.

Stay on topic. This is not to stifle thread drift, short asides, jokes, or similar things, but to prevent intentional derailing of a topic.

Don't register just to trash talk. We want discussion and interaction, not brainless trash talk. If two regulars get into a heated battle that's one thing, but if you register just to tell us how much we suck you'll be banned.

Thread Assassination. A good thread can be destroyed by flame wars, personal attacks, and posting of clever images. We don't want to stifle anyone's acid wit or neuter those who love to make fun of dumb threads, but this should be done constructively. Unfortunately, identifying this problem is highly subjective, which makes it hard to say exactly not what to do. Here are some guidelines:

• Don't be a jerk for no good reason. An obvious failure thread that deserves mocking should receive it, but before the mocking begins someone should explain why.
• Don't willfully derail a thread that has a purpose, or has already generated several on-topic posts.
• Don't willingly inspire a flame war.
• Everyone here is entitled to make threads. If a topic has a reason to exist, then either contribute or don't. People less savvy than you are not here for your amusement and derision.
• In other words, don't be a troll

[Moderator]

Calgarypuck strives to be an inclusive community that welcomes members and input from all hockey fans.

We will not tolerate posts that express or advocate derogatory or harmful attitudes/actions, discrimination, objectification, prejudice, violence, or stereotyping based on race, ethnic or national origin, gender, sexual preference, age, or mental or physical disability.

We recognize that at times members post things in the heat of a discussion, or to be humorous. Excluding instances where posts are clearly hate-filled, moderators will give community members warnings and opportunities to adjust their behavior before resorting to more severe actions, which include infractions, suspensions and banning. The moderation team reserves the right to immediately ban any members who post severely offensive comments.

Religion and politics regularly lead to some of the more passionate arguments on our site. It is important that the opinions of others are respected in the course of such debates. Members should strive to not be inflammatory when discussing these topics. Having your idea questions does not count as inflammatory. Inflammatory posts will be removed and discussed with the community member who made the post. In threads where religion and politics are not the subject being discussed, religion and/or political leanings of posters will be considered irrelevant and subject to site moderation.

Posters should are encouraged to "discuss the topic, not the poster" and avoid personalizing any discussion. In addition, posters should across an entire group (e.g. "all Christians are...", "All Liberals feel...", etc) as this is often more inflammatory and informational.

At times posters will be asked to bow out of certain discussions if they are demonstrating they are being abusive or inflammatory. When necessary moderators will close specific threads temporarily or permanently when discussions get out of hand.

[Moderator]

Keep your posts at a PG level. Posts that are/contain/link to nudity, porn, obscenity, gore, death, or extreme violence are not allowed. This also includes profanity; there is a profanity filter that should not be intentionally circumvented.

If you can't view it at school or work, it's probably not appropriate.

This specifically includes pictures of scantily clad people in post game threads.

Uploaded avatars and sig pictures should also be work/school safe as people browse the forum and can choose what thread to view but cannot choose what avatar or sig image to view (they can only be turned all off or all on).

[Moderator]

Don't post anything that could be considered illegal or considered to incite or further criminal activity. This include posting copyrighted material (quote an article and post a link rather than copy/pasting the whole article for example) or linking to pirate sites.

Copyrighted material that you do not own the copyright to may not be traded or sold on the forum. Copyrighted material may not be reproduced in part or in full on the forum, post links to photos or articles that you do not own the copyrights to. You may include a two or three paragraph excerpt to give the general idea you want to discuss (unless the article is only that long, then just post a link).

Posts with links to illegal download/pirating sites and such may be edited and/or deleted. A ban may result. Links to short videos are acceptable as long as the video/site isn't for profit and it isn't a significant amount of unaltered game footage (e.g. an entire period or game). Calgarypuck HAS been sued in the past over this issue, so moderators will be pretty strict about this.

This also includes defamation (slander and libel). Defamation is defined an intentional communication that is false and that harms a person's reputation. More applicable to public figures such as reporters and athletes. Defamatory posts put yourself and Calgarypuck at legal risk and won't be tolerated.

Do not post methods to watch games or any other TV that may not be legal. This includes but is not limited to posting links to sites streaming the games without permission, as well as methods of "hacking" broadcasts. Even if you think it might fall under a grey area, ask before you post it. This also includes requesting PMs to links, and PMing links to others.

[Moderator]

This includes posting personal information, viruses or malicious links, and posts designed to abuse or threaten the mental or physical welfare of the other poster.

We take users' privacy very seriously, do not post private information, or even personal information that is public but not relevant to the discussion.

[Moderator]

Do not post just to self-promote. No advertising, no posting of affiliate links, and no posting personal links to games where generating traffic is involved in winning. If you want to post a link to a funding site of your own or that you are involved with (GoFundMe, Kickstarter, etc) please contact the moderation team first. If you want to pay to advertise a business or site, contact Bingo. Putting a link to your site in your sig is ok. If in doubt, ask first.

The Power Ring sub-forum can be used to promote your business as long as the post complies with the rules there.

Sponsored sub-forums and threads are available for purchase as well as banner advertising.

Sometimes a business owner will pay to advertise via banner ads, and sometimes they'll pay to advertise via sponsored ads or a sponsored subforum. In these cases rules similar to the Buy/Sell subforum apply in that negative posts about the sponsor or their product are not allowed, and a general respect for the fact the sponsor is advertising should be given.

Oct 2015 Update: Added reference to funding sites.

[Moderator]

Duplicate accounts are not allowed. If you are temporarily suspended, do not register a new account to circumvent the suspension.

One account per person. We may use personal information gathered during the registration process and during posting to identify duplicate accounts.

Registrations or posting from VPNs, hosting providers, TOR, or other anonymizing type services is generally seen as circumvention of this rule. If you need to use such a service contact us, but we may not approve it.

Name Changes: In general we do not allow name changes on the forum, so please don't ask. In some cases we will allow it, specifically if there's an issue of safety or privacy we may consider it. PM the Moderator if you must but if you aren't 100% positive you have an exceptional reason you probably aren't getting it.

[Moderator]

Be considerate of others when posting, both with text and images. Keep images of a reasonable size, and posts readable and not disruptive.

Keep your post length reasonable and easy to read. No one wants to read 100 lines of text with no paragraphs or punctuation.

Pay rudimentary attention to grammar and spelling.

Only use alternative fonts and colours judiciously. Adopting a different font and colour for all posts else makes the forum difficult to read.

Avatars should be 150x150 and 300KB. Animated avatars are ok, but nothing seizure inducing.

Signatures must be no larger than 400px wide by 150px tall. Some extra text is ok, but try to keep it about that high. Signature file sizes should be about 500KB. Animated signatures are ok, but keep it subtle.

Posted images should small enough to fit in the window without having to scroll and download is a reasonable time. Use the spoiler tag to hide larger images.

Host your own images where possible, and definitely host your own signature images. See the help forum for help in hosting your own images.

[Moderator]

Hijacking is defined as linking to a poll elsewhere on the Internet and asking the CP community to vote on the poll en masse to get a desired result. We feel that this defeats the purpose of polls in general and can generate (and has resulted in) negative sentiments towards CP.

Posting a poll is fine (for example "Vote Flames Player A in Poll B"), but posting a poll to disrupt it is not.

Requests by community members in Off Topic may be posted ("Vote for my band/mom/banana bread" here), though do so with caution as people may decide to vote against your desired result (i.e. if you post the request with your first post).

Use of the word "jihad" should probably be avoided.