This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members and guidelines for the forums here at Fix My Stupid PC!. Please read it and become familiar with it, it's terms are retroactive and agreed by all registered members.

Forum Rules

1. 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 or posting off-topic messages may have their forum priviledges permanently revoked.
2. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming, taunting, or abusing other members in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to being banned.
3. 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 Moderator or Admin Team. There is a "Report Post" button provided on every message for your convenience. Only do this if a moderator team member has not acted within 24 hours. Do not respond to such topics yourself. Members who consistently "act" as moderators may be suspended.
4. 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 being banned.
5. 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 be suspended and their post will be removed.
6. If you are re-posting information from another site, please give proper credit and provide a link to the information as if you were writing a research paper. If you are a copyright owner and wish to register a DMCA complaint, please contact the site administrators.
7. Members should respect the bandwidth of other users and sites. The use of inline ([IMG][/IMG]) image tags pointing to data stored on third party systems for which the user has not received permission to link to may be removed. Site administrators may contact the webmaster with requests for removal.
8. Members should post in a way which is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, 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.
9. 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.
10. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes advertising, offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, solicitation etc. There is zero-tolerance for violation of this rule. Users posting spam will deleted, their post removed, and their data forwarded to the authorities.. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information.
11. The moderating and admin 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 at our sole discretion and is not appealable..
12. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to suspension (as above) and/or the revocation of private messaging.

Signatures

1. Signatures may contain up to five lines (one line being that displayed on a browser opened to 800px width) of text (of small or normal size) and/or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 60px high, 468px wide and 6kB (6000 Bytes) in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 30px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to three lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text. Animated images are not allowed.
2. Text sizes should be between 75% and 100% (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, warez, emoticons, and so forth.
3. Links in signatures are permitted to a maximum of four unique pages or sites. Team members are allowed additional links to aid in rendering support for . Such links may only be to *..com or approved material. Linked sites may be commercial in nature. You may not include links in a way which suggests you offer official support, software, etc. for . You may not link to warez, porn, or inflammatory sites. Links are included in signature size limits.
4. Users abusing these rules will be warned and their signatures deleted or modified.

Avatars

1. Users are permitted to utilise a gallery avatar or to upload or link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 120 pixels square, contain no animation, 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 250kB in filesize and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed).
2. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, and so forth.
3. Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may have their avatar permanently locked on a default image.

Moderation

1. With the exception of the items noted above, the forums operate on a three strikes 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 temporary suspension will be put in place of between 1 to 4 weeks.
2. This is not a democracy. Arguing with the site administration or moderation team members after having received a warning from them is like teaching a pig to sing. It will only frustrate you and annoy the pig. Further, it will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a suspension will be put in place as above. Any further argument after this will result in your account being permanently deleted.
3. Users who feel they have been unfairly warned by anyone other than the site administrator are welcome to contact the site admin for a single appeal, e.g. if warned by a moderator or a member of the admin team other than the administrator (Felix Rotundus) you should contact the webmaster.. If they feel you were treated badly they remove a warning or suspension.
4. Any attempt to circumvent a suspension will lead to it being made a permanent ban. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned username, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account of evade an email ban.
5. 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.
6. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While the site administrator may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.