This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at rottentothecore.co.uk. Please read it and become familiar with it, it's terms are retroactive and agreed by team and group members.

  1. 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 may be given a warning (see policing below).
    2. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.
    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 admin. Please use the “post report” feature to report posts. Do not respond to such topics yourself. Members who constantly “act” as moderators may be warned.
    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 a warning.
    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 receive a warning and their post will be removed.
    6. 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.
    7. 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 coloured 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.
    8. Members should use an appropriate, descriptive subject when posting a new topic. Examples of bad subjects include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "I've got an error!", etc. Examples of good subjects include; "Getting an TABLE FULL error upon login", "Cannot restore a backup", etc.
    9. Members are welcome to use the test forum for general "test purposes". These may include checking signatures, testing a link or image, etc. (subject to previous points on decency, warez, etc.).
    10. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, solicitation etc. Recruiting members for your own projects (moderators, designers, professional MOD work, etc.) is not permitted and is also considered spam. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information.
    11. Members are asked to not disclose to any 3rd party, board, or list any vulnerabilities in this board before first notifying the developers. Time should be allowed for us, at least 3 working days wherever possible, to respond.
    12. The moderating, support and other teams reserve the right to edit, remove or put on moderation queue any post at any time. Please note that currently any very first post is automatically placed in the moderation queue and will be approved/disapproved according to the present Rules. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, etc. as noted in these points is up to Team Members and not users.
    13. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revocation of private messaging.

  2. Signatures

    1. Signatures may contain up to five lines 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 6KiB (6144 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. Such links may only be to rottentothecore.co.uk 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 rottentothecore.co.uk. You may not link to warez, porn or political, racist or other similar hate sites. Links are included in signature size limits.
    4. Users abusing these rules will be warned.

  3. Avatars

    1. Users are permitted to utilise a gallery avatar or to 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 12KiB (12288 Bytes) 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 lose their avatar privileges

  4. Support of phpBB 2.x and phpBB 3.x product

    1. phpBB.com exists to support phpBB 2.x and phpBB 3.x as made available for download on this site. No support will be given for versions of phpBB 2.x or phpBB 3.x released or made available from other sites. This includes but is not limited to; mirrors, modded boards, modularised phpBB 2.x or phpBB 3.x components, etc. Users of these boards should seek support at the site from where they obtained the package.
    2. Similarly no support is given to versions of phpBB 2.x or phpBB 3.x obtained via CVS/SVN or those using the snapshot packages made available at area51.
    3. Members who have others install their forum for them should firstly direct support requests to that person/company. phpBB is designed to be easily installed and members are strongly encouraged to install the software themselves. Support is available for specific questions on installation.
    4. Likewise the support forums are not to be used to ask questions on MySQL, Apache, Linux, etc. Questions regarding the applications phpBB requires should be directed to the support site of the relevant software.
    5. Support is offered only via these forums and #phpbb on irc.freenode.net. Do not contact team members privately (via any method) to ask for support. Users found to be contacting team members asking for support will be warned.
    6. When joining the #phpbb channel users should be aware that additional terms exist, see terms of use for complete details.
    7. Before posting a support question users are asked to try and solve the issue themselves. This includes reading the documentation enclosed with phpBB (INSTALL.html, README.html and FAQ.html, the Userguide, the Knowledge Base and using Search. Users who persistently ask questions without showing any desire to help themselves should expect to receive at best a delayed response and at worst no response at all.
    8. When posting a support question bumping is permitted only after six hours have elapsed since the last post to that topic. Users who abuse this will be warned.
    9. Members should note this software and board are maintained on a voluntary basis. No team member receives payment of any kind for time spent here. Users should therefore not post demanding support, bug fixes, etc. Users who disrespect the work of team members will be warned.
    10. Members are requested to retain the full copyright as shown on the default subSilver, subsilver2 and prosilver templates. If for good reason this message cannot be displayed we request at least the "Powered by phpBB" be retained with phpBB linked to http://www.phpbb.com ... said message should be plainly visible and not hidden in the background colour, and so forth.
    11. Members who remove (or fail to display on their own template) this message will receive no support here. Users found adding copyrights back for a short period and then removing them after obtaining support will find that future aid will not be given.
    12. Notwithstanding rules 1d and 1e, no support is provided for sites suspected of illegal activity.

  5. Support of Mods, styles, etc. and linking offsite

    1. If the author of a Mod, style, etc. maintains their own support board (or uses someone elses board) they may direct users to that board or site for the purpose of offering support and/or updates to their Mod/s. Alternatively authors may maintain a topic here at www.phpbb.com (in the appropriate forum) for each item they produce, directing users to that topic where appropriate. Such topics are intended for support only and not for general promotion of non-phpBB product, sites, and so forth.
    2. Members may include or post links to 3rd party sites in an effort to render support for phpBB in response to a support request (including requests for Mods not available at this site). Members are not permitted to post links to material unrelated to phpBB or where linked material is not relevant to a given support request.
    3. Members who maintain localised (non-English) phpBB2 support forums may be allowed a link within the Support section of this site. Members should contact the website team leader to propose their site.
    4. General linking (within posts) to other sites is generally not permitted. Exceptions may be made where links are being offered in a "support context" for non-phpBB related questions. Acceptable support contexts may include (but are not limited to): problems with non-forum 3rd party software, hardware, and so forth. Unacceptable support contexts include requests for hosting providers, questions and discussion of alternative fora systems, and so forth.

  6. Show Off

    1. rottentothecore.co.uk does not  provide a general forum or other solution for users to promote or show off their sites. Consistent with Rules 1j, 5b and 5d users may not promote or show off their sites through their own posts. Such posting constitutes spam and may lead to a warning. Users or other persons wishing to advertise at rottentothecore.co.uk should contact us directly.

  7. Policing

    1. rottentothecore.co.uk operates a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.
    2. Arguing with team members after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a temporary ban will be put in place as above.
    3. Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact the relevant team leader, e.g. if warned by a moderator you should contact the Moderator team leader. If they feel you were treated badly they remove a warning.
    4. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent. 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. Circumvention includes posting as an anonymous user.
    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 rottentothecore.co.uk may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.

  8. All rights reserved

    1. We remind all members that at the time of applying for membership you were asked to agree to our terms, those terms are binding and we reserve the right to add alter or delete them at any time.