This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of this Forum.

Please read it and become familiar with it, it's terms are retroactive and agreed by Wholesaler Outlet.


Board-wide Policies

1. Forum rules

A. Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below).

B. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.

C. Members are asked to not act as "back seat moderators". If members note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of a member of the Moderators Team. Only do this if a moderator team member has not replied within 6 hours. Members who consistently "act" as moderators may be warned.

D. Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.

E. Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc. Users linking to or asking for information on warez, crackz, etc. or re-printing material without permission will receive a warning and their post will be removed.

F. Members should respect the bandwidth of other users and sites. The use of inline () image tags pointing to data stored on third party systems for which the user has not received permission to link to may be removed.

G. Members should post in a way which is consistent with \"normal writing\". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emotions, large, small or colored text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Users consistently abusing this will be warned.

H. Members should use an appropriate, descriptive title when posting a new topic. Examples of bad titles include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "I've got an error!", etc. Examples of good titles include; "Getting an TABLE FULL error upon login", "Cannot restore a backup", etc.

I. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, etc. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information.

J. The moderating, support and other teams reserve the right to edit or remove any post at any time. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, etc. as noted in these points is up to Team Members and not users.

K. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revocation of private messaging.


2. Avatars

A. Users are permitted to utilize a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 90 pixels square, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimicking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 8KB in file size and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed).

B. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, etc.

C. Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges.


4. Policing

A. Wholesaler Outlet Forums operates a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offenses in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a permanent ban will be put in place.

B. Arguing with team members after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a permanent ban will be put in place as above.

C. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned user name, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account of evade an email ban. Circumvention includes posting as an anonymous user.

D. An exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact team members personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.

E. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While our forums may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.