Edicts [UPDATED 26.02.2018] - All Members Please Read

[Paragon]

Name: Consular Edicts Publications Act
Issued by: Daveymort
Date: 23 November 2011

1. With concern for a more efficient adaptation to the ever-changing climate within our community, Moderators will now issue Edicts which have the weight and authority of Law.
2. Edicts cannot target individual members, but they can be applied only to individual sections.
3. Edicts cannot negate The Rules, but they can expand or clarify them.
4. The violation of an Edict can only result in a maximum of a 7 day ban, though the usual Warning system still applies.
5. Edicts will be proposed first in the Moderator Forum to be deliberated by the leadership.
6. Edicts under proposal can be vetoed by any other Moderator within seven (7) days of being proposed, but become official only after they are posted in the appropriate Global thread.
7. Only the Issuer may revoke their own Edict after it is posted. The Issuer is also primarily responsible for enforcement of their Edict.
8. The Administrator, Anonymous Boy, may veto any rule at any stage, including after it has been posted.

[acablue]

Name: Bullying and Harassment Prevention Act
Issued by: acablue
Date: 28 November 2011

Harassment will not be tolerated on these boards, especially in threads created for personal advice or consolation. If you're being persistently belligerent and disrespectful, for whatever reason, then you're being a bully. Of course, context is important, and moderators reserve the right to decide what constitutes bullying as opposed to roughhousing. Warnings will be issued for posts in breach of this rule, and serious breaches may result in immediate temporary bans.

[Paragon]

Name: Username Data Conservation Act
Issued by: Daveymort
Date: 21 December 2011
Concerning requests for account deletion or post removal;
It is a policy of this forum to retain all records possible within the phpBB system, including threads, posts and user accounts. There is no way for you to delete your account, and the admin team will not ever delete an account, by request or otherwise.
If a member wishes to leave the forum, they are advised to scramble their password and email data and simply cease posting.
For security reasons, a member may request by Private Message for a moderator to rename their account.
Asking for account deletion or suspension will not be a punishable offense. It will simply be ignored.

[Paragon]

Name: Anti-Cylon Repression Act
Issued by: Daveymort
Date: 22 December 2011
Concerning the protocol for dealing with threads created by spambots, or obvious human spammers;
In the interest of more efficient moderation, the admin team requests that members do not reply to any threads clearly created by spambots.
Failure to comply will first result in a Private Message from a moderator. Repeat offense will incur warnings, and eventually a temporary ban.

Edict modified 11/10/2014

[Paragon]

Name: Chatroom Conduct Act
Issued by: Daveymort
Date: 24 December 2011
Concerning rules and enforcement in chat;
Please be reminded that GTF’s chatroom is an extension of the forum, and thus the rules of the forum apply.
As the moderators cannot monitor chat on a 24-hour basis, we rely on complaints from members, submitted in a Private Message.
Do note that the moderators will never act without a body of evidence. Also note that the chat software has a log, which can count as evidence against the accused.
Failure to comply with forum rules will result first in a ban from chat (due to the nature of the software, all bans are actually temporary). Serious offenses will result in a ban from the Forum altogether, depending on severity and which of the Rules has been transgressed.

[Paragon]

Name: Contraband Images Search and Destroy Act
Issued by: Daveymort
Date: 28 December 2011
Pornographic and/or sexually suggestive images of minors is strictly prohibited from the site at large. This includes the public forum, the chat and most especially each member's personal uploads folder.
Any person found to post, link or store pornographic images of underaged persons anywhere on the server will be temporarily banned, and the images scrubbed from the directory, immediately and without warning.
Due to logistical issues, there will not be regular searches of all uploads folders. However, if a member is under suspicion, then their folder will be searched.
Private Messages will remain private and exempt from this Edict, as there is no way for a moderator to read them.
This Edict applies only to objectionable images of underaged people. Underaged members will not be banned for storing pornographic images of adults on their uploads folder because of this Edict.

[Iago]

Offensive pictures, animations, and videos are not allowed. These are things that might be posted for the deliberate effect of nauseating or upsetting the average viewer; are graphic, violent or cruel; and are interjections or tangents to the topic of conversation (that is, spam). Ultimately, it is for the moderator to decide whether an image is offensive or merely disgusting.

[Paragon]

Name: Intellectual Discussion Amnesty Act
Issued by: St. Davey
Date: 30 March 2012

• Members who have been banned from the Intellectual Discussion section for more than 7 days may apply for readmission.
• In order to apply, a member must select a discussion in ID and write out a carefully constructed reply in a structured form - statement, illustration and conclusion.
• The reply must be sent to any Moderator by Private Message, with a link to the original thread.
• The Moderation team reserves the right to refuse admission, even if the requirements have been met, based on their judgment of both the reply piece and the overall potential impact that the member will have after readmission.

This Edict was modified 14 May 2012.

[Jacketh]

Abuse of the newly-added +1 system will not be tolerated. Abuse includes purposely +1ing the same member, asking a member to +1 you, creating new accounts, or +1ing to a level that would be deemed spam. Moderators reserve the right to decide what constitutes spam or misuse of the feature and the necessary penalty for doing so.

[Cobalt]

Name: Fraudulent Social Media Act
Issued by: Cobalt
Date: 24 April 2017

• GTF's social media accounts (Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc.) are to be accessed and maintained only by administrators, moderators, and community ambassadors.
• Attempting to access these accounts without explicit permission is strictly prohibited.
• Any social media accounts relating to GTF run by members are not allowed, are fraudulent, and are absolutely not permitted. Our Community Ambassador team runs our official social media (linked to our GTF social media email)
• Infractions under the Fraudulent Social Media Act will be taken very seriously and dealt with swiftly, resulting in a ban at moderator discretion.

[Kaspar]

Name: Discord Chat Features Act
Issued by: Kaspar
Date: 26th February 2018

Due to the recent events of violating certain rules on the Discord chat and new features appearing, a clarification follows:

• All the forum rules apply to the Discord chat strictly in the same form and way. If this hadn't been obvious before - spam and toxic one-sided harassing (respectively rules two and four) are prohibited. The staff has full access to change logs, including deleted posts, so be aware that everything you write on the server stays on the server, receipts will be pulled if needed.
• Repeated tagging ("pinging") of a certain user, group of users (this especially includes the Moderator tag) without their will or made explicitly to annoy them is viewed as spam and qualifies as offence to rule two - "Rule Two: Spamming is prohibited. Spam is a broad category of annoying acts which, while not necessarily malicious, are annoying to the community at large and other members' enjoyment of the forum. Such acts include thread-bumping (posting non-constructively in inactive threads), using multiple animated GIFs which are irrelevant to a thread's subject, creating excessively large quote pyramids, and deliberately making multiple successive posts/threads where one would suffice." An instant response to constant tagging might be a short-term mute or kick from the server.
• All users are free to ping each other, the Moderator tag, other groups, as long as they do it with a reason. Tagging moderators just for fun is like calling the whole firemen department as a joke - please respect our time too.
• Users can expect moderators to keep their Discord nicknames to match the forum ones - simply for clarity.
• All users are free to use the features currently implemented or implemented in the future, such as the coloured usernames, the leveling system, the bot commands, the music bot (in the voice channel aimed for music), the points and leaderboard etc.
• New users are expected to create a forum account in the first week of joining the Discord server. Failing to create one will result in a request and for longer periods of time - a kick off the server.
• The staff team reserves the right to kick highly inactive Discord users (without a forum account) without their notice beforehand.