Forum Rules
Registration to this forum is free! We do insist that you abide by the rules and policies detailed below. If you agree to the terms, please check the 'I agree' checkbox and press the 'Register' button below. If you would like to cancel the registration, click here to return to the forums index.
The RPS forums are moderated in an effort to keep the discussions appropriate to the topics at hand, in the relevant section, and also to maintain a site that can be viewed by a general audience.
Member's Agreement
You agree that you are fully responsible and legally liable for the content that you post or made through the use of your name and password, and also that your participation indicates your agreement with the following Rules of Conduct.
Rules of Conduct [Updated 09-03-2005]
Members will conduct themselves in a respectful manner at all times. In general posts / images that are obscene, pornographic, sexually suggestive, abusive, harassing, threatening, off-topic, unintelligible, inappropriate, in violation of local, state, United States or international law, submitted repetitively without any bearing on the discussion topic, or otherwise deliberately disrupting the forums are not allowed. We reserve the right to remove anything from the forum which we, at our sole discretion, feel is not appropriate. Any member that cannot conduct themselves in a respectful manner will be subject to the punishment schedule below.
Punishment Schedule [Added 09-03-2005]
In stages:
- Informal warning post.
- Formal warning via Private Message, deletion of offending material.
- Temporary ban from the forum lasting 7 days.
- Temporary ban from the forum lasting 14 days.
- Permanent ban from the forum.
- Permanent ban from all of RPS, along with a request to your Internet Service Provider to take action against you under whichever law applies.
At any time this can be accelerated, based on the severity of the infraction and with the full consent of the Administrators.
Stored inside your account, will be a record of the last stage you have reached. Any future infractions will result in an advance to the next stage, regardless of how much time has passed.
If you try to evade punishment by attempting to defeat security measures in place, or by registering a new account, we will accelerate this schedule to the last stage automatically.
Enforcement of Punishment
Administrators / Moderators act with the full authority of the owner, and their decisions on all matters are final and not open to debate.
Special Note on Religion, Politics, etc.
Do not debate religion, politics, and other such 'heavy' topics of that nature on RPS. These subjects have a history of been disruptive and we ask that people respect our wishes and take it elsewhere.
Special Note on Advertising & Group Buys
Any posts that are deemed as advertising for a commercial interest or a "group buy" that have not been agreed upon before hand by the owner of RPS, will be deleted or closed without warning.
Personal, non-commercial sales are allowed via the RPS Marketplace.
For more details about the RPS Preferred Vendor/Sponsor program or if you'd like to post about a "group buy", please contact an administrator.
Chain letters, pyramid schemes, referral links and other such things will also be deleted or closed.
Special Note on Submitted Material
We reserve the right to reuse, in any manner we see fit, all data, information, pictures, images, posts, and articles submitted to this site.
Special Note on Copyrighted Materials
Selling or distribution of copyrighted materials without the owner's permission is prohibited. Discussions regarding where to find copyrighted materials is also prohibited. If you feel your copyrighted material has been submitted here, please contact the administrators.
Special Note On Avatars, User Text, User Profile, and Signatures
Each member has a title, avatar image, signature, and profile. Each can be changed via your control panel, but please note the above Rules of Conduct when you customize them.
More on Avatars and Pictures/Videos [Added 08-11-2005]
RPS is viewed by a variety of people with different backgrounds and standards. Our goal is to keep it accessible to the general public at all times, at work, school, or at home. In other words, we want people to be able to view this at all times and not worry about questionable material popping up on screen when they visit.
When selecting an avatar image or before posting a picture (or video), we ask that you refer to the above Rules of Conduct for guidelines. The relevant part is quoted below:
"In general posts / images that are obscene, pornographic, sexually suggestive, abusive, harassing, threatening, off-topic, unintelligible, inappropriate, in violation of local, state, United States or international law, submitted repetitively without any bearing on the discussion topic, or otherwise deliberately disrupting the forums are not allowed."
If we find anything you have posted violates this, regardless if you are aware of the rules, we will remove it without warning. In the past we sent out warnings, asked for people to take care of it on a voluntary basis, now we don't have the luxury of time.
We had a "no chick" rule, but that left some gray areas to deal with, like what about people posting pictures of themselves, family members, girlfriends or wives, car shows, or famous personalities etc. It became clear that rule needed to be looked at.
To make it easy on everyone, as long as it doesn't violate the Rules of Conduct, it is ok. It's that simple.
We still have the final say on subject. If you are unsure, ask one of us to take a look.
