Title: Community Rules And Guidelines

NOTE: The following rules and guidelines apply to both the community forums as well as to commenting in the blog (The Nillabyte Perspective) section.

The #1 goal of the forums and comments is to provide people with the opportunity to discuss topics. Everyone in the Nillabyte community is deserving of friendly and courteous discussions and responses to their inquiries. The rules exist to help fulfill these goals.

You are responsible for your own posts. If another member or guest violates the rules, you may either ignore them or report them (See Report Posts below). Other users violating rules is not an excuse for you to violate them as well.
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Forum Rules

Violations That Get You Banned
Most of the time, violation of these will result in an instant banning, temporary or permanent.

1. Spam, Ads, and Pyramid Schemes: Posting messages that contain spam, contain advertisements, or promote pyramid schemes will result in banning.
2. Registration Rules. Violation of the rules you agreed to when registering for Nillabyte.com: that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.
3. Hoaxes and Pranks: Do not purposefully mislead people. Do not give advice or information that you know to be incorrect or is harmful to other users.
4. Insults: Do not post messages that directly insults a user or group, like “You are an idiot!” or the like. This is not a playground for 5th graders. Debates, disagreements, and disputes can and will occur in the forums and news section, but they can all be done without insults or name-calling. If you feel the need to dispute messages and content, do so diplomatically. We realize that sometimes messages can be written and posted before the author thinks about it, but if there is a history of insults to others, or obvious intent to enflame or incite, a banning will occur.
5. Intimidating and Harassment: Intimidating and harassing a member will get you banned. This includes harassing the moderators and administrators too.
6. Over Posting: Being a regular user who posts frequently is encouraged, but posting the same message repeatedly in many sections of the forums and news section will get you banned.
7. Copyright infringement. Copying entire articles and texts from other sites and posting the text will result in banning. Copy only portions with a link.

Minor Violations
Most of the time, violation of these will result in warnings. Excessive violations of these will result in banning.

1. Posting links that aren't relevant. Posting URLs to other sites is fine, but only if the linked pages are relevant to the subject. Useless links will be removed and edited. Repeat violations may result in banning. Irrelevant links waste everyone's time.
2. Off Topic Posts: Do not posts threads and replies that are off topic. They waste everyones time and they may be edited or removed.
3. Overly Chatty: Its okay to chat about politics, tech, entertainment, whatever, but don’t turn a thread into an instant messaging substitute.
4. Profanity and Vulgar Language: The profanity filter is enabled for a purpose. Do not attempt to circumvent it. If your words are replaced by **** it's because we feel that word is inappropriate for this community. Circumvention of this filter will result in the message being edited or removed.
5. Relevant Thread Titles: Thread titles should be descriptive enough for user to tell what the thread contains. Thread titles like “I need help” or “Where to find” are rather vague. Thread titles like “I need help understanding XXXXXXXXX” or “Which history book is best for U.S. history?” are more appropriate. Also, do not purposefully mislead people or bait them with thread titles.
6. Spelling and Grammar: Please do not point out misspelled words or poor grammar by other users, unless you feel it is causing confusion. English may not be the native language of some users.
7. One Thread: Only post a thread one time. If the question or topic is relevant to more than one section of the forum, pick the one that is most relevant. If we feel it better fits in a different section, the moderators and administrators can move it.
8. Serial Numbers and Software Keys: Do not post serial numbers and software keys to illegally unlock software programs. Do not point users to sites that provide serial numbers and software keys

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Moderation

The point of moderation is not to limit discussion, dismiss points of view, or fulfill any secret agenda. We encourage discussions and different view points. The point of moderation is to keep the forums enjoyable and useful.

If you find that your thread or post was deleted or edited, there was a rules violation or a clarification needed to be made.

We recognize that sometimes people make mistakes. We are generally forgiving of minor violations.
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Warnings and Bannings

Most of the time, if there is a rules violation, you will receive a private warning. If this happens, read the rules and don’t violate them again. A repeated violation may result in a temporary banning. Excessive violations, even if they are minor, will result in permanent banning.

Forum discipline is handled privately.
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Reporting A Thread Or Post

Posts or threads that violate rules should be reported to the moderators and administrators. Report a post by clicking on the Report Post icon () found at the bottom-left of a users post.