Major Rules and Consequences

[Admin]

1. Don't argue with the Admin when asked/told to do something.

2. Don't insult on the basis of race, nationality, gender, or orientation.

3. Don't slander/libel people or alter their words/quotes.

4. Don't create multiple user accounts.

5. Do not engage in personal vendettas or harassment To wit: people will disagree, sometimes vehemently, however, if you have a personal distaste for a particular poster or theory or topic ignore them/it. Do not follow them/it around the boards, do not engage in never ending commentary after their every post or every time the subject is raised, do not take every opportunity to attack them/it.

6. Do not engage in overt sexual solicitations of other posters on the boards. The boards are not a pick-up place and people might find it deeply disturbing to have someone attempt to pick them up on a board devoted to serial killers. Save it for the conferences.

7. Do not engage in trolling behavior. Trolling is defined as any behavior designed to disrupt a thread or the boards with inanity. If you believe a thread is too silly to be discussed seriously, ignore it. It is better to have such threads die a natural death with only two posts on them than cluttering up Ripper related threads with page after page of inanity and idiocy. Also, just because you don't find a topic worthy of serious discussion, doesn't mean there aren't others who do. Disrupting someone's thread because you personally don't like it is trolling. If you want to argue against it, that is acceptable, but turning it into a joke so that no serious discussion can take place is not.

If you see a post that violates any of these rules, please hit the Report Post icon (located in the upper right corner of each post, a white triangle with a red border and an exclamation mark inside). When you report a post please make sure you state what specific rule the post violates or why you are reporting it. Often people will report a post with no explanation and upon review we see no rule that it violates, leaving us to wonder if they reported the wrong post or didn't mean to report any post at all. If you report a post, we will review it and we may contact you if necessary for clarification. We will then delete the post or not, but we will not contact you with an update as we do not discuss disciplinary actions of one poster with another. We thank you in advance for helping maintain the boards.


If one of your posts is reported, you may receive a PM from one of the Admin with a subject of Request or Warning. A request is simply that, a request, we ask overall, please don't do something. It's generally in the case of something that isn't a major rule violation, but just something that would make the boards more manageable if you didn't do that thing. Ex. Request--please don't overuse the quote feature, you don't need to copy the entire text of a 4 paragraph post to reply with two lines. We still expect you to follow requests but there is generally no penalty attached and we will request something a couple of times before the hammer gets lowered. We'd hope that you would follow a request immediately, but it's not dire.

We rarely issue warnings to posters. Most arguments that occur on the boards are considered to occur between willing participants and not something we need to involve ourselves in. Occasionally we get a report post where Poster A insults Poster B, then Poster B retaliates and poster A reports B because "his insult was worse than mine". Unless it was an insult completely beyond the pale, we consider such arguments to be consensual on both sides and these are the usual types of Report Posts that we get. So in general, we don't issue a lot of warnings.

However, when we do issue a warning, one of two things can occur. Either you reply, "Ok, sorry, my bad" or the equivalent and we say no problem, people are human and we all move on. Or you reply something along the lines of "How come Poster B gets to get away with x, y, or z" or "God, can't you take a joke" or the equivalent in which case you get to enjoy an immediate and non-negotiable 2-6 week (or longer, possibly permanent) suspension from posting, depending on the nature of your response. You are more likely to be banned for giving us attitude when we ask you to quit doing something than you would have been for the offense in the first place. Everyone will probably receive a Request or Warning from us at some point or another, and receiving a warning leaves no lasting grudge or consequence against you. But your making the job more difficult will.

Not every rule can be covered in this short list. This is a guideline. Occasionally you may be asked to cease and desist in a behavior that is not explicitly outlined here or in the Minor Rules Section. Once the Admin has asked you not to do something, consider it a rule. Failure to follow the rules will result in your account being banned. Any post that violates the rules is subject to deletion without notice or warning. If you have a question regarding a post being deleted, PM the Admin.