Forum rules v1.4
The purpose of this forum is to create a bridge of neutral territory for all Hellenic polytheists, Hellenic pagans, and so on. Keeping this in mind, a few rules are in place to preserve the interest of neutral territory.
- Don’t be a dick. What this means: Maintain civil conduct. This is a friendly forum with a wide variety of people from lots of different places. We will not all agree on issues. Feel free to express yourself, but name calling, personal attacks, and baiting will not be tolerated. “Trolling” (saying controversial things for no apparent reason other than just to start an argument) or “baiting” (saying things that skirt around the rules just to get another user to say something inflammatory) are not permitted and, depending on the situation (mainly your previous history on the forum or lack thereof) may result in immediate banning or suspension of your account. Certain attitudes are explicitly not permitted here, and may result in permanent banning; these include (but may not be limited to) attitudes that are: sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ableist, and outright hypocritical. If somebody tells you that what you said fits any of those descriptives, a good rule of thumb is to ask a moderator if it really was –don’t fan the flames of an already-heated situation; if the moderation team agrees that it really was of such an attitude, you can either drop it or feel free to go start your own forum.
- Your subjective opinion is not the same as objective fact. The sooner you can figure this out, the better. Your subjective opinion will not be given the same weight as objective fact. Facts can still be argued on interpretation, but if your opinion is that X-facts are more valid than Y-facts, then that’s pretty much on-par with insisting that your opinion should be given the same weight as fact — which is just stupid. Opining about objective fact is not “distorting the facts” if it’s presented as an opinion. Interpreting the facts differently from you is not “distorting the facts”, either. Stating and sourcing objective facts that you may disagree with or simply dislike is not “distorting the facts”. Claiming facts are being distorted when that is simply not happening is hypocritical, is thus dickery, and you will be referred to Rule 1. If you want a forum where your opinion is given the same weight as fact, believe me, the Pagan & Polytheist communities have no shortage of such places.
- Don’t argue with forum admins when they’re telling you to keep yourself in check. This should be easy to discern as “moderator / admin mode” will be [admin]bolded and tagged[/admin].. On the other hand, if the admins are simply arguing with you as any other forum member, that’s just fine — argue back with them, just don’t be a dick about it. We encourage that shit here. Forum Admins may also issue friendly warnings that are in some variation of “admin tagging”. Please don’t assume that “admin tagging = censure”; it’s just a means of differentiating between when we’re moderating and when we’re just participating like normal forum members. (2011-07-30: “Admin mode” format changed.)
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- When rules are broken, you will be warned in admin mode; when you break a rule after being warned, you will be suspended for up to ten days, depending on severity of infraction. Normal warnings expire after thirty (30) days. After a suspension, you will be on “probation” for ninety (90) days and any infraction of the rules during that ninety days will get you suspended again (for up to two weeks), and your probation will be reset — up to three times, at which point, you will be permanently banned.
- If you prove habitually problematic to the moderators (excessively warned, suspended, etc…), even if you haven’t explicitly broken rules, The Moderation Team may interpret this as intentionally skirting around the rules in order to get away with being a dick as much as possible without actually breaking any rules, and so then we may decide to just suspend or ban you for the good of the forum — please don’t test us, on this, at least one of us hates her job and another one of us has a surly Atheist for his room-mate. The third just hates everybody by default. Serious, don’t test us; we are fair-minded, but easily annoyed.
- Deleted This rule has been deleted until Forum Rules v2.0.
- If you can’t take a joke, please go find another forum — it will save us all a lot of headaches. What I mean is: We appreciate a sort of cock-eyed sense of humour around here. A lot of us (general members included) have been in and out of the Pagan & Polytheist communities for the larger part of a decade or multiple decades, while some of us have flirted with LaVeyan Satanism, The Church of the Subgenius, or Discordianism before we came around to the Gods of the Hellenes, while others have just plain seen it all. If you want to sit there with a thumb up your ass and get offended when somebody types “penis”, we’ll probably laugh at you. This isn’t so much a rule as it is a warning of what kinds of people you could very well encounter on this forum. If that sounds like something that you wouldn’t appreciate, we can point you to other places — the Hellenic sub-forum at The Cauldron is pretty chaste, and Mystic Wicks may be bubble-headed at times, but is otherwise decent. The Hellenic_Recons e-mail list is heavily moderated to the admin’s sensibilities. PM an admin for other suggestions on places to go visit on the ‘net.
- This all said, post regularly and often! If you haven’t logged in for six months, the admin may e-mail you begging to come back and play with us. If the forum isn’t for you, we prefer that you don’t make a big to-do about it, cos we feel that’s kind of akin to peeing in other people’s cornflakes or putting your dick in the mashed potatoes — it’s just making a scene for attention before flouncing, so while we love it when you post often, we’d rather you add to the community than make a scene. (2011-07-30: Removed bit about account retirement. Not a function of this forum at the current state.)
- If you encounter a forum quirk, please post it to the appropriate forum only, and be patient about the reply. While we may get to it in less than a few hours, we have lives away from the computers and may be busy.
- Please feel free to e-mail admin@NOSPAMhellenistai.com (and be sure to remove “NOSPAM”, or your message will bounce and you will cry) with any other questions, comments, or concerns you may not feel appropriate for the forum.
