These are the new posting / moderating rules for the Druid's Grove board which have been longstanding policy. Please adhere to them at all times.

Thanks for your patience.

1) Posts that are of a "flaming" nature embedded in threads that have something to do with the topic will be kept in only if they are kept to a respectable tone. No matter how important the information is or how useful it may be, a post will be deleted if it is belligerent, uses personal attacks or is written in a manner that may incite bad feelings. This includes racist, anti-gay, anti-religious or any other spiteful rhetoric targeted toward a specific group.

This is not censorship, because any post made within at least semi-cordial manner will stay no matter what. Anyone is free to say anything they want, as long as it is in a respectable manner. If it is not, and a poster wishes to put time in writing material that may be questionably removed because of its mannerisms, they may do so but at their own risk of writing it for nothing and having it removed as soon as it is detected and deemed unsuitable by a moderator.

2) Posts that are of a "flaming" nature embedded in threads that have no further input on the topic are wiped. So if someone says "That answer is retarded" but posts nothing in relation to the topic, the post gets wiped.

3) Posts specifically trolling for flames as the main topic of discussion get the thread wiped because whatever opinion or truth may be, it doesn't have much to do with EQ or druids.

4) Whether they are true or not, posts whose primary purpose is to rant about individual in-game players or guilds as being killstealers, exploiters, or other accusations will be moved to the rants section.

5) The use of Java scripts or other runtime-languages are NOT ALLOWED. If you have any scripted content in your post, and it is found, you will have the entire post removed, regardless of what the topic of your post was.

6) Signatures can consist of multiple images which should be kept to a total size of under 85k and max dimensions of W:500 x H:150 pixels. Signatures which fall outside of these boundaries and cause malformations of the forum structure will be immediately removed. As always, Moderators have full authority to remove any signature.

7) Absolutely no posting of sales, promotional guides, links to auctions or anything in the nature of increasing personal income will be tolerated. The post will be automatically edited or deleted at the discretion of the moderator/admin. If the poster is a "new user" the name will be banned, if known user the post will be moved to the Admin Trash Bin and the author of the post will be e-mail by either the Moderator/Administrator and reminded the first time about the Rules of Conduct for these boards. If no e-mail is available, the author will be banned until he/she e-mails The Druids Grove Staff for proper explanation/action. There is no joking around when it deals with these matters.

The Druid Grove is a "No Solicitation Forum"!


Edit: Formatting change

7a) Addendum - Users who post on subjects which repeatedly cause disruption and "spam" the forums with worthless, zero content, offensive and disgusting items will have their IP address, ISP information, and ISP abuse/complaint emails posted in public.

7ab) The Druid's Grove staff neither advises or condones any type of retaliation toward these posters using the above information. The only suggested course of action is to write the ISPs' in question and voice your disgust or anger at the content of the messages posted on this board.

Added Rule to VBulletin Forums:

8) All Community members who are registered must have a working email. You can change your email in your user cp. If you do not maintain a proper email one day you may find that I set your account to "Awaiting email confirmation" which means you can only read the boards.

If you try to register to the forums with a fake email or one that has a spam blocker that blocks our email you will remain in an inactive state until you change your email and or request a registration email through admin@thedruidsgrove.org after you set your spam filter to accept @thedruidsgrove.org emails.

9.) The Grove is a community. If for any reason I feel a member of the community is creating problems that upset the balance of our community, I will take direct action against this member. This includes and is not limited to "Directly attacking a member of the Druids Grove". This includes but is not limited to reposting of a topic that has been removed. This includes but is not limited to recreating user accounts after you have been suspended or banned.

Note: We all have bad days.. we understand this!

Enforcement of the Rules are on a one on one basis and if out of the norm for that poster it is most likely ignored.

Enforcement of the Rules is a last action by our staff after all other avenues have failed.

These include but are not limited to:
Removing post with comments.
E-Mail/PM/IM the member.
Public Warning.
Administrative Warning.
Changing of Members Title.
Suspension


If you have a problem with someone on the Grove use the report feature.If you do not like someone on the Grove, use the ignore feature; if you agitate a problem you are "at fault" and will be dealt with.<o =""></o>
If you have a problem with the acting staff please communicate this to me by email/PM/ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/M$ (Message Me).
Understand my policy when it deals with Staff Members: They are "Community Members First" - This gives them the Right to Post as if they are a Member. This also gives them the Right to enforce Policies. All Post are not Deleted but "either copied" or Saved to the Admin Trash Bin for review.<o =""></o>

This will never change on the Grove.

If you have been suspended by the staff unless its for advertising we usually suspend you for a limited time, each offence by a single person will compound the suspension.<o =""></o>

3 Strikes and your off the Boards.<o =""></o>

The boards, the code, the moderation, the artwork, the time are all donated by the staff freely

I hate Suspending or Banning people unless it’s for advertising outside the TDG Network. Most problems can be worked out if being part of this community is that important to you!

NDA

NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) is just like that EULA (End User License Agreement) or TOS (Terms of Service) that you sign and acknowledge every time you login to EQ or any other MMO. Basically the NDA for SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) breaks down to:

1) You may not disclose any information about beta content, testing procedures, or code
2) You may not share any of their proprietary software, or screenshots, recordings, etc of their content
3) You may (after checking with SOE Legal) admit to being in beta, but may not give any details about that, to include phase or status
4) What happens in fightclub, stays in fightclub? or something to that extent

Note: The majority of this you are released from when the game goes gold, except testing/beta procedures and how the game is refined. Although this varies from game to game.

Typical NDA violations result in either a warning or immediate ban from said game and in SOE's case, ALL SOE games current and future. So think before you break the NDA.

This means that The Druids Grove will make every attempt to enforce the NDA in our forums and on the site, first violations we will remove the violation and warn you, second warning we will unleash the Wrath of Nature on you.

*ahem*

<b>The Druids Grove and all the TDG Network sites are a non-solicitation forum! Any advertisements found for websites selling gold/plat/items/powerleveling services will be summarily deleted, users banned, and all sorts of other stuff, of which I will go into further detail below.</b>

Now that I've got that out of the way, I would just like to warn all gold/plat/item/powerlevel sellers who decide that they wish to sell items on any TDG forums that the following bad karmic things will happen to you from now on:

1 - Your thread will be deleted, no questions asked.
2 - You will be banned permanently, no questions asked.
3 - Your public signature will be replaced with a more... <a href="http://eq.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/member.php?u=14440">festive</a> version.
4 - When you attempt to log in after being banned, you will be greeted with a similar "festive" message, explaining how much we like you as a person.

Here's where it gets good...

5 - I will create <a href="http://eq.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/showthread.php?t=12111">a thread</a> where other TDG users can view your posting IP as well as any information we could find on how to report abuse to your ISP.

So that there is absolutely <b>zero</b> doubt in your mind, if you are planning on posting a solicitation post or thread on TDG, you are hereby notified that you will be violating TDG's Posting Rules as well as many Terms of Service/Terms of Contract of the MMOs that are the topics of the forums hosted on the TDG Networks. Violating these rules will lead to the consequences listed earlier in this post.