Rules: version 2

Your agreement with us
You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, racist, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by this forum. In addition, if you post at this site, what you post is considered to be in the public domain. Should you choose to leave the forum (or behave in a manner that results in your account being banned), any deletion of your account, or the posts you have made (including attachments) is at the sole discretion of the administrators.

Your rights to Freedom of Speech don't apply here.
You are welcome to have opinions. You are welcome to question certain subject matter posted on these forums. You are welcome to dislike a certain post or disagree with it. Though we typically encourage people to express their opinions and ideas, we have the right to delete yours if necessary, should we consider it abusive, inappropriate or not in the best interests of the community. Remember: This is a public forum, and your posts are indexed and can be found by search engines. This means that they can be found by friends, family, employers or the like. Take care with what you post, as CFC cannot guarantee your anonymity on this forum.

Your account is for YOU only
You may use your account to post your opinions, your thoughts, and your views within the guidelines stated on this page. You may NOT use your account to post for people who are not members or have had their posting permissions removed. You also may not grant others access to your account.

Piracy
We have zero tolerance for piracy. This includes posting pirated material, linking to pirated material, telling people how to avoid copy-protection etc, or even advocating piracy. We also consider "abandonware" to be piracy, as it has no official legal recognition. Please do not link to abandonware sites.

Failure to follow these guidelines may result in removal of your posting privileges
Depending on the severity of your violation and the number of times you have previously violated the Forum Guidelines, the Administration may choose to suspend your posting privileges or terminate your account. If you are suspended you will not be able to post on our forums for an amount of time to be determined by the Administration.

Multiple accounts are not permitted
Create one account, make sure you're satisfied with the name, and keep it. Be sure to choose your user name carefully. If you wish to change your user name for whatever reason, please contact the admins, but realize that name changes are not granted quickly nor in every case.

Moderation
Moderators are identified by the various tags under their user names. It is their job to keep order within the forums and respond to inappropriate posting and advertising. The fastest way to get moderation attention is to report a post. All reported posts go to a specific subforum where any moderator can see and respond to them. Please do not respond to inappropriate posts or post in obvious spam advertising threads. Just report them.

We reserve the right to change these rules and policies at any time
It is YOUR responsibility to read announcements regarding rules and policy changes. Ignorance is no excuse. Announcements are located above the threads list table inside each forum.

New member Restrictions
Newly registered members may not use signatures, e-mail forum members, post visitor messages, use the private messaging system or join or create social groups, until they have been members for 5 days AND have at least 5 posts (a postcount of 5).

Postcount titles & avatars
Each poster has a title and an optional avatar image shown below his/her username. The default titles are Chieftain, Warlord, Prince, King, Emperor, and Deity. The minimum postcounts required are listed below:

Chieftain (Minimum Posts: 0)
Warlord (Minimum Posts: 100)
Prince (Minimum Posts: 300)
King (Minimum Posts: 600)
Emperor (Minimum Posts: 1000)
Deity (Minimum Posts: 2000)

You can also put a picture, or avatar, under your name. There are hundreds of Civish avatars for you to choose from.

If you have 30 posts AND have been registered for 30 days, you can give yourself a custom title and a custom non-animated avatar. The dimension limit of custom avatars is 70x70 pixels and size limit is 4 KB.

If you have 100 posts AND have been registered for 100 days, you can give yourself a custom non-animated avatar up to 100x100 pixels and 10 KB in size.

You can change your title or avatar in your My Account page.

Keep your signature brief
This forum has a signature feature that allows you to "sign" your posts with a customized block of text. The text may include links to other sites (as long as they are within the forum rules) and emoticons. No derogatory references to other members, spoiler tags, quote tags, or youtube tags are allowed in signatures.

Signatures are limited to 5 lines of regular (size 2) text. Using smaller text (size 1) allows 7 lines of text. Larger text (size 3) allows 3 lines of text. No text size larger than size 3 should be used. The number of lines for any text size includes blank lines and room used by emoticons and is evaluated at 1024x768 resolution.

Zero tolerance on piracy
Posting links to warez sites and program cracks (including no-CD crack) are not allowed on the forum. Anyone found guilty of participating in piracy activity on the forum will be punished.

Behave as you would in a public location
This forum is no different than a public place. Behave yourself and act like a decent human being. If you're unable to do so, you're not welcome here and will be made to leave.

Starting a new thread
Creating a thread carries a responsibility and we hold opening posts (OP) to a higher standard than other posts.

CFC is primarily a discussion forum, and topics posted should be such that decent discussion is possible. If you are presenting a news article for discussion, you are required to note what specific aspect you wish to discuss (just posting "discuss" or similar is insufficient). In posting a news or media article, you are strongly encouraged to also post a link to the source of the article. If you do provide a link to an article or story, please quote a relevant section of the link that summarizes the discussion you want to start. Occasional 'light' topics such as "what is your favorite ..." are tolerated, but even these threads should be presented in a way to promote discussion (such as asking posters to explain their answer). A thread that supports 'closed' answers or mostly single-word or single-line responses may be closed as spam or postcount (pc) threads. If your opening post in a thread doesn't meet the requirements of a decent discussion, the thread is likely to get closed and you will be infracted. Please state clearly what you want to discuss, why it might be interesting and your opinion on the matter. Please also check whether there is already a current thread on the same topic before you open a new one. Duplicate threads are usually merged and the one first started will appear in the list of threads.

Post in the correct forum
The forums are well-organised, and we want them to stay that way. Ensure that the thread topic you post is relevant to the forum you are posting it. If you’re unsure, ask a moderator. Please note that in the Creation and Customisation forums, the “main” forums are where questions are to be posted. The various sub-forums are not for questions.

Spelling and grammar
English is not everyone's first language. Not everyone has perfect language skills. As such, don't comment on other peoples' ability to spell words correctly or construct sentences. If you cannot understand their meaning, you may let them know in a nice manner.

The forum is an English language forum
Threads must be posted in English. If you need to post a short phrase in another language, provide an English translation with it. If it is found that you have posted something in a language other than English which breaks the rules (eg. the bad language rule, or flaming), you will be infracted for it.

Other languages are allowed in signatures and user titles etc, however a translation should be provided in this thread.

There are some threads to help people learn other languages. English translations are required in these as well.

1337-sp34K (or variants) is not considered English language. "U" instead of "you" is mildly tolerated, but some grumpy old-fashioned moderators may be annoyed by it.

Images and file attachments
Currently we have the

List of current Moderators, Supermods, Staff and Admins

Thunderfall, the owner of CFC, has an appointed staff of Admins and Moderators to solve problems and keep order. They act as a team and individually to enforce the rules. Moderators are assigned to specific forums and each forum has identified lead moderators who set the standards for how the rules will be enforced within that forum or subforum and if any special rules will be applied because of the nature of the forum. While the rules as stated above apply to all forums and subforums, moderators do have the leeway to be more or less strict about how they are interpreted within their areas. What is considered spam may be different in Humor and Jokes and Forum Games than in a Civ 5 strategy thread. Any special consideration or rules will be noted in the specific forum or thread. While we try to be consistent, we don't read every post. A perceived lack of consistency is not a defense for people who break the rules ('but they did it too!'). If you think a post breaks the rules, then report it, don't consider it a license to break the rules yourself.

There are three important things to keep in mind regarding the mods and moderation: do not discuss mod action publicly; report posts that you feel are out of line; and communicate with mods in a civil manner.

Public discussion of moderator actions (PDMA)
Public discussion of actions taken or not taken by moderators or admins is not permitted. If you have a problem with something a moderator has done, then PM the moderator concerned. If you are not aware of which moderator made the action, then PM one of the moderators of that particular forum. Moderators are required to answer you and justify their actions, but they are not necessarily required to agree with you. Please any mod pmed at least 24 to respond. If you do not get a response to the PM within that time frame or are not happy with the response you did get, then you can request a review, see details below. In your PMs, it is highly recommended that you be polite. There are occasions where moderators get something wrong, but generally this is a perception issue, and they may not have seen something in the same way that you have. Remember this if you want to have a constructive discussion with the moderators.

General discussion of how and why moderators do what they do are permitted in the Site Feedback forum when the discussion is in the spirit of improving the forum. Discussing specific incidents of warnings, infractions, bans, specific posters or moderators is not allowed. A statement of a fact of a warning, infraction or ban you yourself have received without value judgements is allowed. Publicly discussing a specific instance as a "hypothetical" is not allowed.

Moderator Abuse
Moderators do not deserve abuse, public or private, even if they have made a mistake. Abusive PMs sent to moderators will be forwarded to the administrators. If they decide that the PM is abusive, the original sender may be infracted. Such infractions are for the abuse and not related to the correctness or incorrectness of the original mod action.

Closed threads
If a moderator closes a thread for any other reason than it has reached 1000 posts, then before you open another identical or similar one, you should PM the moderator for permission. This is because it has been closed for a good reason, and the moderator wants the discussion (or spam) to cease. Failure to do so can result in an infraction.

Use the "report post" function
If you see a post that has broken the rules, then please use the Report Post function ( /or in Black CFC ), and allow the moderators to deal with it. Please note: Reporting a post does not give you immunity from infractions, and it does not give you the right to break the rules yourself in responding to the post (eg. flaming in return to someone flaming you). Do not post that you have reported someone else, as that is likely to inflame the situation rather than calm it, and is therefore considered trolling.

Moderators do not have time to respond to every person reporting a post to inform them of the outcome. If you do not see action taken in response to your reported post after a suitable amount of time (approx. 24 hours), you may inquire politely of the forum moderator as to why no action was taken. Abusing this opportunity, reporting the post multiple times or arguing uncivilly with moderators over their decisions is not allowed.

Do not take moderating into your own hands. Telling people to "stop trolling" or "stop flaming" or "warning" is unlikely to stop them, and may make the situation worse. As such, this may be considered trolling. This also applies to telling people that you have reported their posts.

Moderator tags
Use of the moderator warning tags by non-moderators will usually result in an immediate ban once it comes to our attention. If a moderator edits a moderator tag into your post, deleting it will usually result in a significant infraction.

Use of the ignore function
You can add people to your ignore list, which will passively hide their posts from you (you can still read them if you wish by clicking on them). However, please do not advertise who you have on your ignore list, or that you have added someone to your ignore list. That is considered trolling.

The Process
If a poster feels that they have been wrongly infracted or banned, they may ask for a review of the infraction or the ban by the SUPERMODS. This new process replaces the previous process of appealing to the ADMINS. All reviews follow the same steps.

1. Member PMs a designated supermod
2. The supermod acknowledges the PM and posts the request in the infraction review subforum (a non public forum)
3. Clearly frivolous requests will be dismissed and the poster notified that their request has been denied
4. Non frivolous requests will be reviewed by at least three supermods, one of whom will be from the area of the forums where the infraction took place.
5. The mod who gave the infraction will be asked to clarify their reasoning on the infraction.
6. Poster is notified of the outcome
7. The decision of this panel is final and no further appeals will be considered by the Supermods or Admins.

The Details

While all supermods will participate in review discussions, only those specified below should be sent a request for review: Knight Dragon, Birdjaguar, Daveshack, Mathilda, Methos, Plotinus, and Turner. They have the responsibility to start the process. If you have not received an acknowledgement within 24 hours, you may resend your request to a different supermod on this list. Warnings are not reviewable; don’t waste our time.

Requests for review are required to be presented in a polite manner. Posters should include the following with a request for review. Failure to include all of this information may result in your request being denied out of hand. This initial PM is your opportunity to tell your side of the story. Once the process starts, you may not be contacted until it is over. Incivility or abusive language will not help your cause.
--Reference to infraction in question.
--All previous PMs with the mod issuing the infraction.
--Why you think that the infraction is wrong.
--What outcome you are seeking.

IMPORTANT! - Please note that the requests of posters who persistently ask for a review for all, almost all, or most of their infractions (you know who you are) will not be granted, and those posters will generally be dealt with in the same manner as those who abuse the report posts function. The drive behind this change is to provide an opportunity for people who genuinely feel they have been wrongly infracted to have that infraction re-examined by a panel of the more experienced supermods; we will not allow frivolous requests to clog up the infraction system with even more unnecessary paperwork.