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Whether you are new here, or just wish to recall the rules that govern this forum, we (the staff) ask that you please take the time to read this. Though we accept this is a lot to take in please be aware that not reading through this does not absolve you from abiding to our rules.
1. Moderation of Posts
While there are some here who believe that we should not delete or edit personal insults and the likes, we personally believe they are very deterring, and experience has shown that they always bring on an even worse style of posts. We cannot help but believe that this is the sure way to make a forum decay to the extent that it becomes irrelevant to the majority.
However, you are always welcome to inquire why a post was deleted or edited if you don't understand it yourself. If you do not know who edited or deleted your post, you should e-mail [email protected] or contact any of the other admins/moderators to sound your complaint.
Furthermore, under no circumstances are you to start a discussion about it in the forum or thread itself. Firstly, it serves no purpose as no admin will respond to you publicly. Secondly, it merely instigates pointless arguments over how this forum should be run. And we would like to make it clear: the 'how this forum should be run' is not open for debate.
You can ALWAYS make suggestions but you cannot demand, nor publicly challenge the way this place is run. Remember: this is a private service, we don?t ask you to pay for its upkeep, we are not public officials and sadly or happily you do not get the chance to elect any of us.
2. Warning and Bans
These will ALWAYS be carried out privately and remain the business of the admins/moderators and the poster involved. No other member will receive any information about this, including when he himself was the offended party. We can understand that some here think that justice must also be seen, however those who adhere to that are missing out on a very important point: we are not here to pass judgement nor educate anyone. Absolutely no one here is our 'pupil', 'disciple' or 'subject'.
We carry out the rules that govern this place in order to preserve the orderly functionality of this service for the wider audience. Someone is banned not to punish them but to keep this forum running smoothly.
Therefore, not every 'offence' must or should end in a ban. When someone posts over a year here, with thousands of posts to show for it, and has once posted something 'bad' - as bad as it may be, it must be seen as a one-off 'offence' and therefore banning that person will not serve any other purpose than mere punishment. It won't make the forums better or worse. In such a one-off case, removing the POST and not the POSTER will be seen as the best solution.
However, if someone is repeatedly offensive, then he has no place here. Again, not as a punishment but rather as a measure of removing a cause of constant friction from the forums. In most cases, bans at handed out dependant on the situation, and will be one of the following:
• 1 Day
• 3 Day
• 7 Day
• Permanent (subject to admin decision)
• Account Deletion (subject to admin decision)
If someone accepts in principal to the rules that govern this forum, then there is no reason to ban them. If it seems obvious to us, however, that someone disregards these rules, then, as I said, they simply do not belong here.
3. Racism and Personal Information Disclosure
We believe racism in our modern day society is totally un-acceptable. Our members are a multi-race culture and no one has the right to discriminate or attack someone from a different race. Any comments, suggestions, images, signs (including BNP and KKK resemblences etc) simply will not be tolerated. Members who post such profanity should expect a long term suspension and repeat offences will result in a permanent fixture, including account deletion.
Personal Information, is just that, Personal! Under no circumstances should any member post personal (name, address, telephone numbers, emails, identities) information about a fellow member, or member of the general public on the forum, without strict permission from said person. Anyone who does should expect a severe talking to and possibly suspension.
4. Flame Baits vs 'Freedom of Speech'.
Members and companies. They are there to be adored and scorned, admired and admonished, revered and questioned constantly. But, there is a fine line between scorning/admonishing/questioning and defaming/wrongly accusing/slandering.
It's not always easy to know where that fine line lies, nor is it easy to always make a unanimously agreed judgement call on whether something falls under what we would constitute as allowable and what we would constitute as not.
It's easy to know what to do when something is - in our view - blatantly illegal or a mere flame-bait. We will simply delete it.
It's easy to know what to do when something is - in our view - within the acceptable realm of speaking up. We simply let it exist here, regardless of whether we think it's ridiculous or ludicrous.
But, in a case of doubt, it goes down to your own level of tolerance. Personally, in such cases, we prefer to be lenient and allow these thoughts to be heard.
There is a price for that, though; those who elect to take upon themselves a crusade on a particularly controversial issue should bear in mind that they themselves are bound to be scorned back for their views.
You cannot stand in the city square and tell everyone they are blind fools (and telling all Joe Bloggs fans that he's the worst dealer ever, or telling Fred Smith fans that he's nothing but a cheater, is exactly that - either way, you are telling those fans that they are blind fools) and do not expect it to go unnoticed. If you get a tomato in your face, you should also ask yourself if you didn't ask for it.
Having said that, it should be made clear that counter-attacking a poster is different to personally insulting someone. Telling someone that his post is ridiculous, or even that he's a liar (if you can prove that!) is not the same as telling someone "you are an idiot who should be shot to death". We will tolerate to a large extent the first; We won't tolerate to any extent the second, that is abuse plain and simple.
5. Personal Feuds
Sometimes, though luckily not often, a forum debate will turn into a personal feud between two posters. We want to make it perfectly clear that,
- We will not allow, under any circumstances, this feud to be carried out publicly.
- We will not intervene nor be a judge to personal feuds.
- We will not offer any of the 125cc Sportsbikes tools (primarily the Private Messaging system) to serve this feud, unless BOTH sides are willing to engage in this dialogue.
If you send an offensive Private Message to another poster, unsolicited, be aware that it is their full right to complain to us about it, and should we find that PM to be indeed offensive, we will not allow you to again use the PM system, and upon repeated complaints (from one or all) treat this as any other public issue - we will ban that user altogether from the forum.
Furthermore, in radical situations, when a couple of posters constantly attack each other or harass each other - in public or via PM - We will bar BOTH sides from exchanging ANY word on the forum (in public or via PM) with each other. If they continue to do so, one or all, they will be thrown outside.
This is NOT a forum for personal feuds, put simply.
Moreover, this is not a "who started it" situation. If someone insulted you, you are not absolved for insulting back. And, if you think someone should be banned and we disagree - then tough; if we're not convinced about it (and you're welcome to try to convince us reasonably by private means i.e email) then it doesn't license you to take the situation into your own hands and launch a campaign of harassments against that poster. Insulting him back won't make us think you're right; it will only make us think you're the trouble we should be dealing with.
6. Reference to the Hosts
We have an underlying rule that you may not like but we insist on: ALL admins and moderators on 125cc Sportsbikes are to be treated with respect. That is pure and simple!!
They are a bunch of GOOD hard working people, with the very best of intentions regardless of what you may think, who really put in hours a day (and in some cases have done so for a very long time) to serve YOU. And by saying SERVE YOU we do not mean they are your servants. Please learn to differentiate between the two.
If, however, an administrator/moderator is in your views out of line, then you are perfectly welcome to complain. But you do it in PRIVATE and reasonably. We will handle it through our channels, not yours. And, although some here seem to want to see blood running through the streets, we can tell you this much: this is not the "let's flog show". If you wanna see that one, it must be playing on another forum - not on here.
7. New Users
If you are a new user, you have restrictions on posting in our For Sale section, please ensure you read the Rules part of that specific forum.
In lieu of the other rules above, member must adhere to, we also want to inform you that while we practice tolerance with regular users, we will practice absolutely none with new users (Newbies).
If a new user joins to immediately be proven a problem, he/she will immediately be banned - no warnings, no discussions. Simple as that. If a new user cannot be bothered to read the terms and conditions he's just agreed to, let alone adhere to them, then we are not about to waste our time and resources on reforming them. Any signs of trouble will be nipped in the bud.
8. Starting New Threads
USING SEARCH[/u] Before you start a new thread, take the time to look at the list of existing threads to check whether your topic has not already been discussed. Moreover, if you are starting a thread to ask a specific question - run a search first to make sure it was not already answered. I want to be clear on this: there are only very few things that annoy us more than users who flippantly start duplicate threads.
9. Posting pictures on 125cc Sportsbikes Forum.
Please respect the copyright of printed material also, do not scan in magazine articles and post them on the forum, without first gaining the permission of both the copyright holder and the forum admin staff.
If its not your image, or from a press office, then you don't own the copyright, so please respect the rules.
When posting images of vehicles, please ensure the registration plates are blanked out using an Art package such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, if you can't speak to one of the admins who maybe able to advise or help.
10. Traders, Companies - Advertising
With the exception of certain businesses who have gained permission of the admins, no traders are allowed to advertise their stock, company or website without prior approval from Craig or James
Advertising is permitted in signatures, however only at standard size font, any large fonts will be removed, and your rights to have a signature will be removed if persistently abused
11. Main Site & Forum Copyright
While you are free to link to articles and any images on 125cc Sports Bikes, we would like to remind you that the main site and forum are © Copyright 125ccSportsBikes.com and relevant author(s)
Use of the 125ccsportsbikes.com name, url, domain, or prefix is strictly prohibited without the consent of the owner for real life content, i.e. Merchandise etc. Memebers are allowed to use the domain/url in signature and images
For some additional less formal rules, please refer to the FAQ/rules section
END NOTICE
Finally, we want to stress that all these rules are not challenges but rather boundaries we have set. We didn't make them up because we were bored, we came up with them after in excess of 3 years, running what is one the busiest 125cc bike forum around.
So don't test us: we really do know by now what we're doing... Having said that, know that you can - ALWAYS - contact by PM or e-mail one of the hosts and offer advice, feedback, criticism or just make a general inquiry.
Thanks for your time and understanding, please enjoy using 125ccsportsbikes.com as it was intended.
Regards, 125cc Sportsbikes Team
1. Moderation of Posts
While there are some here who believe that we should not delete or edit personal insults and the likes, we personally believe they are very deterring, and experience has shown that they always bring on an even worse style of posts. We cannot help but believe that this is the sure way to make a forum decay to the extent that it becomes irrelevant to the majority.
However, you are always welcome to inquire why a post was deleted or edited if you don't understand it yourself. If you do not know who edited or deleted your post, you should e-mail [email protected] or contact any of the other admins/moderators to sound your complaint.
Furthermore, under no circumstances are you to start a discussion about it in the forum or thread itself. Firstly, it serves no purpose as no admin will respond to you publicly. Secondly, it merely instigates pointless arguments over how this forum should be run. And we would like to make it clear: the 'how this forum should be run' is not open for debate.
You can ALWAYS make suggestions but you cannot demand, nor publicly challenge the way this place is run. Remember: this is a private service, we don?t ask you to pay for its upkeep, we are not public officials and sadly or happily you do not get the chance to elect any of us.
2. Warning and Bans
These will ALWAYS be carried out privately and remain the business of the admins/moderators and the poster involved. No other member will receive any information about this, including when he himself was the offended party. We can understand that some here think that justice must also be seen, however those who adhere to that are missing out on a very important point: we are not here to pass judgement nor educate anyone. Absolutely no one here is our 'pupil', 'disciple' or 'subject'.
We carry out the rules that govern this place in order to preserve the orderly functionality of this service for the wider audience. Someone is banned not to punish them but to keep this forum running smoothly.
Therefore, not every 'offence' must or should end in a ban. When someone posts over a year here, with thousands of posts to show for it, and has once posted something 'bad' - as bad as it may be, it must be seen as a one-off 'offence' and therefore banning that person will not serve any other purpose than mere punishment. It won't make the forums better or worse. In such a one-off case, removing the POST and not the POSTER will be seen as the best solution.
However, if someone is repeatedly offensive, then he has no place here. Again, not as a punishment but rather as a measure of removing a cause of constant friction from the forums. In most cases, bans at handed out dependant on the situation, and will be one of the following:
• 1 Day
• 3 Day
• 7 Day
• Permanent (subject to admin decision)
• Account Deletion (subject to admin decision)
If someone accepts in principal to the rules that govern this forum, then there is no reason to ban them. If it seems obvious to us, however, that someone disregards these rules, then, as I said, they simply do not belong here.
3. Racism and Personal Information Disclosure
We believe racism in our modern day society is totally un-acceptable. Our members are a multi-race culture and no one has the right to discriminate or attack someone from a different race. Any comments, suggestions, images, signs (including BNP and KKK resemblences etc) simply will not be tolerated. Members who post such profanity should expect a long term suspension and repeat offences will result in a permanent fixture, including account deletion.
Personal Information, is just that, Personal! Under no circumstances should any member post personal (name, address, telephone numbers, emails, identities) information about a fellow member, or member of the general public on the forum, without strict permission from said person. Anyone who does should expect a severe talking to and possibly suspension.
4. Flame Baits vs 'Freedom of Speech'.
Members and companies. They are there to be adored and scorned, admired and admonished, revered and questioned constantly. But, there is a fine line between scorning/admonishing/questioning and defaming/wrongly accusing/slandering.
It's not always easy to know where that fine line lies, nor is it easy to always make a unanimously agreed judgement call on whether something falls under what we would constitute as allowable and what we would constitute as not.
It's easy to know what to do when something is - in our view - blatantly illegal or a mere flame-bait. We will simply delete it.
It's easy to know what to do when something is - in our view - within the acceptable realm of speaking up. We simply let it exist here, regardless of whether we think it's ridiculous or ludicrous.
But, in a case of doubt, it goes down to your own level of tolerance. Personally, in such cases, we prefer to be lenient and allow these thoughts to be heard.
There is a price for that, though; those who elect to take upon themselves a crusade on a particularly controversial issue should bear in mind that they themselves are bound to be scorned back for their views.
You cannot stand in the city square and tell everyone they are blind fools (and telling all Joe Bloggs fans that he's the worst dealer ever, or telling Fred Smith fans that he's nothing but a cheater, is exactly that - either way, you are telling those fans that they are blind fools) and do not expect it to go unnoticed. If you get a tomato in your face, you should also ask yourself if you didn't ask for it.
Having said that, it should be made clear that counter-attacking a poster is different to personally insulting someone. Telling someone that his post is ridiculous, or even that he's a liar (if you can prove that!) is not the same as telling someone "you are an idiot who should be shot to death". We will tolerate to a large extent the first; We won't tolerate to any extent the second, that is abuse plain and simple.
5. Personal Feuds
Sometimes, though luckily not often, a forum debate will turn into a personal feud between two posters. We want to make it perfectly clear that,
- We will not allow, under any circumstances, this feud to be carried out publicly.
- We will not intervene nor be a judge to personal feuds.
- We will not offer any of the 125cc Sportsbikes tools (primarily the Private Messaging system) to serve this feud, unless BOTH sides are willing to engage in this dialogue.
If you send an offensive Private Message to another poster, unsolicited, be aware that it is their full right to complain to us about it, and should we find that PM to be indeed offensive, we will not allow you to again use the PM system, and upon repeated complaints (from one or all) treat this as any other public issue - we will ban that user altogether from the forum.
Furthermore, in radical situations, when a couple of posters constantly attack each other or harass each other - in public or via PM - We will bar BOTH sides from exchanging ANY word on the forum (in public or via PM) with each other. If they continue to do so, one or all, they will be thrown outside.
This is NOT a forum for personal feuds, put simply.
Moreover, this is not a "who started it" situation. If someone insulted you, you are not absolved for insulting back. And, if you think someone should be banned and we disagree - then tough; if we're not convinced about it (and you're welcome to try to convince us reasonably by private means i.e email) then it doesn't license you to take the situation into your own hands and launch a campaign of harassments against that poster. Insulting him back won't make us think you're right; it will only make us think you're the trouble we should be dealing with.
6. Reference to the Hosts
We have an underlying rule that you may not like but we insist on: ALL admins and moderators on 125cc Sportsbikes are to be treated with respect. That is pure and simple!!
They are a bunch of GOOD hard working people, with the very best of intentions regardless of what you may think, who really put in hours a day (and in some cases have done so for a very long time) to serve YOU. And by saying SERVE YOU we do not mean they are your servants. Please learn to differentiate between the two.
If, however, an administrator/moderator is in your views out of line, then you are perfectly welcome to complain. But you do it in PRIVATE and reasonably. We will handle it through our channels, not yours. And, although some here seem to want to see blood running through the streets, we can tell you this much: this is not the "let's flog show". If you wanna see that one, it must be playing on another forum - not on here.
7. New Users
If you are a new user, you have restrictions on posting in our For Sale section, please ensure you read the Rules part of that specific forum.
In lieu of the other rules above, member must adhere to, we also want to inform you that while we practice tolerance with regular users, we will practice absolutely none with new users (Newbies).
If a new user joins to immediately be proven a problem, he/she will immediately be banned - no warnings, no discussions. Simple as that. If a new user cannot be bothered to read the terms and conditions he's just agreed to, let alone adhere to them, then we are not about to waste our time and resources on reforming them. Any signs of trouble will be nipped in the bud.
8. Starting New Threads
USING SEARCH[/u] Before you start a new thread, take the time to look at the list of existing threads to check whether your topic has not already been discussed. Moreover, if you are starting a thread to ask a specific question - run a search first to make sure it was not already answered. I want to be clear on this: there are only very few things that annoy us more than users who flippantly start duplicate threads.
9. Posting pictures on 125cc Sportsbikes Forum.
Please respect the copyright of printed material also, do not scan in magazine articles and post them on the forum, without first gaining the permission of both the copyright holder and the forum admin staff.
If its not your image, or from a press office, then you don't own the copyright, so please respect the rules.
When posting images of vehicles, please ensure the registration plates are blanked out using an Art package such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, if you can't speak to one of the admins who maybe able to advise or help.
10. Traders, Companies - Advertising
With the exception of certain businesses who have gained permission of the admins, no traders are allowed to advertise their stock, company or website without prior approval from Craig or James
Advertising is permitted in signatures, however only at standard size font, any large fonts will be removed, and your rights to have a signature will be removed if persistently abused
11. Main Site & Forum Copyright
While you are free to link to articles and any images on 125cc Sports Bikes, we would like to remind you that the main site and forum are © Copyright 125ccSportsBikes.com and relevant author(s)
Use of the 125ccsportsbikes.com name, url, domain, or prefix is strictly prohibited without the consent of the owner for real life content, i.e. Merchandise etc. Memebers are allowed to use the domain/url in signature and images
For some additional less formal rules, please refer to the FAQ/rules section
END NOTICE
Finally, we want to stress that all these rules are not challenges but rather boundaries we have set. We didn't make them up because we were bored, we came up with them after in excess of 3 years, running what is one the busiest 125cc bike forum around.
So don't test us: we really do know by now what we're doing... Having said that, know that you can - ALWAYS - contact by PM or e-mail one of the hosts and offer advice, feedback, criticism or just make a general inquiry.
Thanks for your time and understanding, please enjoy using 125ccsportsbikes.com as it was intended.
Regards, 125cc Sportsbikes Team
