India-Forums.com- Participation Guidelines & Rules

Hello Everybody

Hope you are all enjoying the warm summer weather. If you are not outdoors then my bet is that you are on IF trying to watch your shows and converse with your friends. That's great and we really want you to be discussing these shows and providing your insights to the different aspects of these shows. That's what makes these shows a lot more interesting. That being said I would like you all to make sure that your posts and comments are in line with the rules of the forum. We respect your freedom of speech and expression however we need to ensure that everyone respects the others and are able to post maturely. We have rules so that the different sections can run efficiently and fights are circumvented.

Herein lies the rules for India-Forums . Please make yourself familiar with them if you are not already.

Attacks against Fellow Member(s): Any thread/ post that targets fellow members/ groups of members will be trashed without further question and the respective members who are involved in such activity will be subjected to immediate raise in warning level. Everyone is entitled to their opinion as long as it is done in a constructive manner but that by no means grants anyone the permission to attack others for sharing a different view. Any member who is seen to hurl curses / ridicules / threatens / wishing unfortunate events for other members or their family members will be dealt with severity! Any offensive personal remarks concerning a fellow member will lead to an immediate raise in their warning level. If members continue to break rules despite repeated warnings then they will face a temporary or permanent ban, which will be dependent on the severity of the incident.

Explicit Content: India Forums is a family friendly forum and we do not allow any explicit content and abusive / offensive slang. Discussions can be had in a civil manner without stooping down to cheap levels and cuss words. Any post found to be abusive / vulgur will simply be deleted. Members using crass and vulgarity in their topics will be warned or banned as per the situation.

Celebrity Slander : We understand that you are not going to be a fan of all celebrities but that does not allow anyone to resort to name calling .We do not want anyone riling up fans of particular celebrities and hence making the section a warzone. Don't mock fans as it's not a crime to love a celebrity and do not be sarcastic and pass it off as humor.

Moral Policing: Moral policing by members in any forum will NOT be tolerated. It only leads to unnecessary instigation/arguments. The section Dev Team Members will do the needful when a situation arises. Members are to simply abide by the rules and not preach others. If you should come across an abusive topic please contact the development team, rather than taking matters in your own hands. You can contact the Development team by either reporting the post in question and filling out what the issue is, or by sending a PM with a link to the thread containing a few sentences of what the issue. When reporting the issues make sure you use the hierarchy. Viewbies are to be contacted first and then then up the ladder Moderators to Channel Moderators to Global Moderator and the Admin.

Criticism : We repeat this time and again that we allow Criticism . You are free to show displeasure, contradict, disagree and criticize the show and its characters. However there is a fine line between these actions and bashing. Direct hurls or targeting people/show with the intention to humiliate and disgrace is what is not allowed.

Spamming to Increase Posts: Lately, we have come across way too many game threads that simply promote spamming with an intention of raising member's number of posts. All such threads will be trashed without notice. There is a specific forum dedicated to games: Forum Games. Similarly posting one liner comments in multiple posts to spam & increase the posts or posting just TFS or just emoticons are not allowed.

Multiple IDs: MIDs are strictly prohibited and anyone who engages in making MIDs will receive a raise in warning level, even if no posts were made ever with the MID.

Personal and Morphed Pictures: Posting morphed pictures of any actor or member is not allowed on India-forums.com and will NOT BE TOLERATED. If members are seen to leak private/ personal details/ photos of fellow members they may face an immediate ban, as everyone's privacy is to be respected!

Plagiarism: Lately there have been a lot of concerns regarding plagiarism whereby members are seen to plagiarize copyrighted stories and/ or fellow members' existing stories. This activity is strictly prohibited and stringent actions will be taken against members. The rules posted in the Fanfiction section will be applicable to the entire forum.

Reporting an Issue: Please do not report the same post more than once. Member reporting the same post multiple times will receive PM warning and if it continues there will be raise in Warning Level too. This rule certainly does not intend to discourage the members from reporting but often same post is reported multiple times from the same member. Please do understand that DT needs at least 24 hrs to work on the reported post and simply pressing the report button multiple times will only delay the process. Some situations demand the time and consultation of people and hence take time to get back.

Social Media Fights : Please do not bring in fights that happen outside India-forums into INDIA-FORUMS. There is nothing we can do with those issues and its best to report those issues through the external website's reporting mechanism.

Discussing the Dev Team: Lately there are lots of topics being created on the forum against one member of the DT or the entire DT. We realize that it's because you are not sure how things are handled or upset at the way things are handle. You may disagree with the way the issue was taken care and that's fair. However we want you to not create such topics that question or criticize the DT in the forum. The feeling arises that we want to keep things under cover. However that is not the case. We do want to hear your complaint but we also want to be fair to the people in question. All sides need to be heard objectively and bringing this in the forum just adds more fuel to the fire. By the time the whole story is heard in the forum the atmosphere becomes ugly and negative and we want to avoid that. If you have a complaint PM the DT person and if you are not satisfied follow the hierarchy and PM the next in command. When you are contacting us with your concern be civil and explain your point in detail so we completely understand your standpoint.

Warning Levels (WL) and User Restrictions:

Any member who are found to be in violation of our Forum Rules and Code Of Conduct may be given a Warning Level increase as accessed by the Dev Team. Please note with each Warning Levels increase it will also restrict/limit the access to the forum features as given below:

• 20% - First warning, so members are given a chance, without any other restrictions
• 40% - Only 15 posts (replies in topics) can be made in a day
• 60% - No new topics can be created in addition to restrictions of 40% warning level
• 80% - Restricted PM access whereby PMs can ONLY be sent to Dev Team to resolve issues, in addition to restrictions of 60% warning level
• 100% - Automatically bans the member

Warning levels can only be reduced after 3 months if the member has been active with no new warning increase and has not violated any of our forum rules. Its not an automated feature and requires the member to send a request PM to lower the Warning Level to the Dev Team member who raised their warning level and in the event the PM goes unanswered for more then a week please contact the Channel Moderator or Global Moderator.

BASIC GUIDELINES FOR POSTING

When posting please remember to respect and tolerate different thoughts and do not turn any post against your opinion into a unnecessary flame-wars. Try to be composed and collective when posting as this will stop feeding the instigators.There is going to be a Zero tolerance policy for those who just come to the forum to disrupt the activities and discussions . We don't enjoy raising warning levels or giving out bans but we do want this place to be fun for all

Try to remember this simple mantra to make your time at India-Forums enjoyable

BE THOUGHTFUL-> RESPECT EVERYONE -> DISCUSS CALMLY -> HAVE LOADS OF FUN

We welcome members to provide us with suggestions and comments and we will work towards getting them addressed.

Cheers,

India-Forums.com Dev Team

P.S. Thank you to all the Dev Team members who helped in compiling the rules and especially Priya for putting everything in an easy to understand post.

Any abusive / derogatory post against anyone will simply be deleted and warning level increased. People MUST express their views or criticism in a civil manner.

Much needed Rules 👍🏼... Thanks a lot Vijay for putting up all the rules together in this post .. This will make sure all the members of IF are well aware of all the rules and WL restrictions and follow it accordingly ..

All these rules and regulations will make sure a proper decorrum is maintained among all members on IF and at the same time the freedom of expression given to all our members is not misused anywhere 😊...

I hope all members of IF will co-operate with the DT and follow these rules from here on since its for the betterment of our members only to make sure there is a positive peaceful atmosphere all over IF ...

We are also thankful to all our IF members for being patient and understanding all this while and we hope it remains the same in coming days too once these New rules are implemented in all the Forums ..

Thanks for reiterating the rules so all members get familiar and here on follow them. Also glad to see the clarified restrictive WL system . This will keep the members who violate rules to stop and think before breaking another rule.

Thank you Vijay!! These are the much needed rules for the betterment of the IF.

Hope members too follow these rules and maintain a healthy n peaceful environment.

Much needed post! Thank you for refreshed guidelines Vijay and Priya. Hope IF has better days ahead!

This looks perfect for the current scenario. These improved rules will help members & DT work in more open, understanding & healthy enviornment. Thanks Priya, Vijaybhai.

Thankyou Vijay for putting this up, much needed to make this forum the kind of place it deserves to be ! Also a big thankyou to all those DT's who helped in compiling the rules ...the entire teams effort is much appreciated!

Thank You Vijay and Priya for these set of rules. Much needed as i said, and very much appreciated.

Hope these rules/guidelines will be kept in minds of all forum members!