Rules and Guidelines

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Rules and Guidelines

Unread post by forum_admin » Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:22 am

Welcome to the Thunderbolts Forum, which is owned and operated by Thunderbolts.info, as part of the Thunderbolts Project.

Please familiarize yourself with the information below before you post, and from time to time to keep up with any changes.

Whilst we hope and trust that users will treat each other and the hosts of the forum with appropriate respect, we include here a list of rules and guidelines to enhance the experience of all users. As a matter of necessity, any breach of any rule or guideline may result in administrative action (including warning or banning the offending user). These are the legally binding Terms and Conditions which users accepted upon registration, which are followed by some additional guidelines which form part of the conditions of continued membership.

By accessing “Thunderbolts Forum” (hereinafter “we”, “us”, “our”, “Thunderbolts Forum”, “http://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpBB3”), you agree to be legally bound by the following terms. If you do not agree to be legally bound by all of the following terms then please do not access and/or use “Thunderbolts Forum”. We may change these terms at any time and we’ll do our utmost in informing you. Notice of changes to the terms of service posted to the forum, sent via private message(s) or sent via e-mail(s) shall constitute sufficient notice under the terms of this agreement. Users agree to periodically check their e-mail, private messages and any relevant Announcement forums or threads for updated terms of service. Continued usage of "Thunderbolts Forum" after any change(s) to the terms of service shall constitute a legally binding acceptance of all updated terms and conditions.

Our forums are powered by phpBB (hereinafter “they”, “them”, “their”, “phpBB software”, “www.phpbb.com”, “phpBB Group”, “phpBB Teams”) which is a bulletin board solution released under the “General Public License” (hereinafter “GPL”) and can be downloaded from www.phpbb.com. The phpBB software only facilitates internet based discussions, the phpBB Group are not responsible for what we allow and/or disallow as permissible content and/or conduct. For further information about phpBB, please see: http://www.phpbb.com/.

You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any laws be it of your country, the country where “Thunderbolts Forum” is hosted or International Law. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned, with notification of your Internet Service Provider if deemed required by us. The IP address of all posts are recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. You agree that “Thunderbolts Forum” have the right to edit, move, close or remove any topic or post at any time should we see fit. As a user, you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. While this information will not be disclosed to any third party without your consent, neither “Thunderbolts Forum” nor phpBB shall be held responsible for any hacking attempt that may lead to the data being compromised.


Additional guidelines to 'best practice' posting:


Personal or ad hominem attacks will not be tolerated, under any circumstances. If you disagree with something which has been posted, address the post, not the poster.

For the most part, discussion is to be restricted to published materials with some relevance to Electric Universe and Plasma Cosmology themes, and related scientific information. Having said that, this forum affords more latitude than most, assuming most users will allow common sense to guide them. For those who wish to discuss topics closer to the fringes, please restrict your discussions to the 'New Insights and Mad Ideas' or 'The Human Question' boards. Please note, that even on these boards discussion still must bear some relevance to EU/PC themes. This is not the place for wild speculation or conspiracy theories, and there are many other forums suitable for that purpose.

The discussion of political and religious matters is to be discouraged, except when clearly relevant to the discussion in progress.

The Thunderbolts Forum is not a personal publishing house for your own theories or opinions. Please do not post large excerpts of information that is available on your own or another website. It is far more acceptable to post a link to such information. Likewise, posting the same information repeatedly in one thread or the same text across multiple threads on the forum is also to be discouraged.


Spam/Links/Signatures

Users whose only goal appears to be to spam our boards will be deleted along with their posts.

Do not link to purely commercial sites. Whilst many sites with good information do have a commercial aspect, sites whose primary goal is to solicit sales of goods or services are to be avoided. Links to material unrelated to the forum discussion at hand will be viewed as spam.

We do allow links in signatures, and these may be exempted from the need to relate to a specific forum discussion but these should be treated with caution. Any signature links of a purely commercial nature will be removed and may lead to posts/membership being deleted.


Privacy

Always respect the privacy of others, including non-members. The posting of personal contact or other details of a third party (which are not already readiliy and legally available on the internet) without their permission will likely lead to administrative action including but not limited to banning from the forum, and could also lead to legal action. Do not post the content of emails or PMs (Personal Messages) without the sender's permission.


Quoting posts:

Please do not quote whole posts unless you need to address the post as a whole. It is preferable to quote only the relevant passages which you are addressing. So if you've used the 'quote' button on someone's post, make sure you delete all of the irrelevant parts before posting. Should you need to quote many passages seperately, learn how to manipulate the BB code quote tags to achieve this. The 'preview' function will help you to experiment and understand just how text / images will look, before posting, if you are unsure.


Posting Limits

In order to better manage both your own posting habits and for readers to be able to follow discussions more easily, and to assist moderators and administrators to manage the boards, it has become necessary for us to introduce posting limits. We ask all contributors to follow these guidelines:

Do not start more than two new threads in any one day.

Do not make more than three to six posts in any one day. Three is preferred, six would be the maximum allowing for answers to members who have posed a question to another particular member.

Members seeking to flood our forums with flippant or nonsensical posts may find both their posts and membership deleted. Other members should find the above guidelines helpful in causing them to "think before you post" and make posts more succinct and relevant to the discussion at hand.

Quite simply, the above equates to "don't bite off more than you can chew" and "make your posts count".


Images and avatars:

We have allowed the uploading of images and avatars to our system, but this will only remain available whilst members maintain good sense in the posting of images, as follows.

BEFORE uploading any image, make sure it does not exceed 600 pixels in either dimension, and is preferably not larger in file size than 50KB. If practical, use of a smaller 'thumbnail' image of around 300x300 pixels and a url link to an off-site larger hi-res version of the same image is preferable. One of the many available open-source or professional image editing programs will allow you to resize your images. Using a moderate 'compression' value which keeps the file size of the image(s) down is also a 'best practice.' This forum is viewed world-wide and not everyone has access to high-speed connections, and with the phpBB3's 'timeout' function, the loading of image-intense pages is particularly difficult for those on dial-up or other low-speed services. Our aim is to reach as many people as possible with our information, so please keep these suggestions in mind.


Finally:

Always treat fellow users, moderators and site administrators with respect. Users come here to discuss matters of common interest in an environment of friendliness and freedom from abuse. Moderators and administrators are volunteers who give their time and attention to ensure a good experience for all.

These rules and guidelines and the terms and conditions are subject to change at any time, without notice. Please view them from time to time to ensure you continue to operate within their parameters.


Most of all, enjoy your experience!

The Thunderbolts Forum Management.


Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by contributors to "Thunderbolts Forum" are those of the authors of the material and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Thunderbolts Project.
Last edited by davesmith_au on Tue Dec 10, 2019 2:44 pm, edited 9 times in total.
Reason: Adjust presentation.

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Re: Rules and Guidelines - Note on edits

Unread post by davesmith_au » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:25 am

Just a note to add in reference to editing times, as the matter has been raised on more than one occasion.

This forum has had the editing time set to expire after one hour. Most forums allow only a few minutes, if any time at all. As the Thunderbolts forum is in essence of a scientific nature, all posters should be accountable for what they post. Giving consideration to the fact that a good number of posts will contain a certain amount of technical information, we have allowed an hour which is both ample and generous. Proof-reading should be done before you hit the submit button.

Should anyone have the absolute need to edit a post after this time, they can submit a request to a moderator or admin who have access to edit if need be, and all reasonable requests in this regard will be actioned.

Cheers, Dave Smith.
"Those who fail to think outside the square will always be confined within it" - Dave Smith 2007
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Re: Rules and Guidelines

Unread post by davesmith_au » Sun Apr 13, 2008 6:51 am

Just a note to update members on our new moderator arrangements.

We have decided, to avoid personal conflict, to allow the moderators to use a "generic" membership for moderation duties, called "Forum Moderator".

At present, the moderators all who have "global" moderator status are:

arc-us
MGmirkin

This will allow the moderators to choose how their username is displayed, and also not have their own personal style stifled by the moderator tag, especially where a conflict may arise. That is, it allows the moderators to be moderated, along with everyone else.

Also, the admins if they choose can use the generic moderator ID for moderation duties. Currently the Admins are:

David Talbott
Brian Stewart
davesmith_au
and we also have a generic "forum_admin" for similar reasons.

We are constantly in discussion to make the process as smooth as possible for all users, and this has been our agreement of the best way forward at this point.

Should the system prove unworkable for any reason we can revert to how we have been doing it up until now, or work out another system. But we'll give this one a go for a while and see how it pans out.

Cheers, Dave Smith.
Site Administrator.
"Those who fail to think outside the square will always be confined within it" - Dave Smith 2007
Please visit PlasmaResources
Please visit Thunderblogs
Please visit ColumbiaDisaster

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Re: Rules and Guidelines - Well done all...

Unread post by davesmith_au » Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:16 am

Giday all.

A huge WELL DONE!

Just a quick note to acknowledge the cooperation, restraint and good sense used by the vast majority of posters to our forum.

Whilst we have tried to keep moderation to a minumum, that's not always possible but of late little has needed attention in this regard, for which all are to be commended. We can't keep all of the people happy all of the time, and there are those who would argue that some of the subjects we allow discussion of are not related to EU, and thus don't belong on the forum. And whilst this is correct in the strictest sense of interpretation, the good sense of posters has prevailed of late and whilst people treat each other with the respect deserved I see no reason to bring the hammer down severely on anyone.

This means that there are a few posts and topics which contain opinions which are not held by most EU proponents, nevertheless everyone has a right to think what they like and believe what they will, and whilst good will prevails I see no sense in enforcing strict adherence to particular themes. It is great to see the self-discipline of most users posting only scientific information on the majority of forums and leaving the more speculative and esoteric ideas to the Human Question and New Insights and Mad Ideas forums.

So again, well done, the tasks of moderators and admins is made easy when everyone cooperates, and I'm sure I speak for all of the forum staff in passing on thanks to all concerned.

Cheers, Dave Smith.
"Those who fail to think outside the square will always be confined within it" - Dave Smith 2007
Please visit PlasmaResources
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Re: Rules and Guidelines - NO MORE POLITICS!

Unread post by davesmith_au » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:59 am

Just to keep those informed who put a lot of time into the respective posts on the "NAZI occultism" thread which I just deleted from the NIAMI board, please don't enter into unnecessary and irrelevent discussions of politics on our forum. Your efforts will be wasted.

We have let a fair bit 'go' lately on the moderation front, appealing to good sense both of posters and readers alike to make up their own minds about many of the more speculative posts. But this freedom will quickly be lost if people begin to think politics is fair game on our boards. It isn't.

Dave Smith
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"Those who fail to think outside the square will always be confined within it" - Dave Smith 2007
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Re: Rules and Guidelines

Unread post by nick c » Thu May 01, 2014 4:31 pm

Just a reminder.
Perhaps everyone, but especially new members for we have quite a few, should review the Rules and Guidelines (the first post on this thread.)
I would especially like to make a note about Posting Limits as this seems to be a frequent violation of late. Forum members should be aware of how many posts they make in a day.
Posting Limits

In order to better manage both your own posting habits and for readers to be able to follow discussions more easily, and to assist moderators and administrators to manage the boards, it has become necessary for us to introduce posting limits. We ask all contributors to follow these guidelines:

Do not start more than two new threads in any one day.

Do not make more than three to six posts in any one day. Three is preferred, six would be the maximum allowing for answers to members who have posed a question to another particular member.

Members seeking to flood our forums with flippant or nonsensical posts may find both their posts and membership deleted. Other members should find the above guidelines helpful in causing them to "think before you post" and make posts more succinct and relevant to the discussion at hand.

Quite simply, the above equates to "don't bite off more than you can chew" and "make your posts count".
If anyone has any questions, send me a PM.

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Placing A Post On The Appropriate Board

Unread post by nick c » Tue Jan 16, 2018 6:58 pm

Occasionally new forum members are not sure where to put a particular post. Note that on the board index there is a brief description of each board.
This post is designed to clarify that description and help in the decision of which board to locate a post. It also serves to illuminate the reasoning behind why a thread has been moved from one board to another.

Posting on TB Forum Boards:

Electric Universe and Electric Universe - Planetary Science:

-All postings on these two boards should be focused on topics covered in the published material of Electric Universe theorists as recognized by the Thunderbolts Project. The TBP is the host of this forum and we forum members are their guests, as such we should respect the right of our host to reserve an area of the forum for topics of their choosing.

-Criticisms of EU positions are acceptable; open and honest debate is encouraged.

-It is not permissible to divert the topic away from an EU position and onto a personal favorite or pet theory. There is another location on the forum for that purpose. For example: If I post a critique on an "Electric Sun Model" thread, I should discuss what I find wrong or right with that model not my alternate non EU theory/explanation. The reason for this should be obvious. Such a posting would inspire responses (disputing and supporting) derailing the thread onto the non EU alternative. Again, there is a place on the forum for personal favorite or pet theories but it is not on the Electric Universe or Electric Universe - Planetary Science boards.

-If I post my own or favorite non EU theory on either one of these boards I should not be offended when the moderators move posts or threads out of these two boards to another board (typically but not exclusively the NiAMI board) because I am not a recognized EU theorist. That is, as recognized by the Thunderbolts Project, the forum host. Moderators and/or Administrators will make the call.

TPODS - Thunderbolts Picture of the Day:

-While most of the topics covered in the Thunderbolts Picture of the Day (TPOD) are also acceptable for one of the two EU dedicated boards, any discussion referencing a specific TPOD should be made on the TPODs - Thunderbolts Picture of the Day board. Likewise with the Thunderblogs/Multimedia board.

-Also, there are a few TPODs whose subject is a criticism of an alternative or non EU theory. Those alternative theories are not suitable for discussion on the Electric Universe and Electric Universe - Planetary Science boards, but should be posted on the NIAMI board. If a response is made as a rebuttal to criticisms (of a non EU theory) made in a specific TPOD, that response can be posted on the TPODs - Thunderbolts Picture of the Day board.

-When posting on this board one should link to the specific TPOD. A word of caution: if the TPOD is current for that day the link will be temporary and will always lead to the current TPOD which will change every time a new TPOD is posted. So if you are responding to the current TPOD for that day do not post it as a link. I would suggest that you just post the exact title and date of the TPOD and a moderator can link to it after it is archived, which will usually be the next day.

Electric Universe - Net Talk:

-This board is for discussion, critical or supportive, of topics pertaining to the EU or Plasma Cosmology appearing on other internet forums and websites. We do understand that whether to place a topic on this board or the Electric Universe board may not be clear cut, so for practical purposes we have to exercise a bit of flexibility here.

The Future of Science:

-This board is for current trends and possible future issues in Science as they pertain to the Electric Universe. It is not the place to put your pet or favorite non EU theory with the thought that it is the future of science. Favorite or personal theories should be placed on the NIAMI (see below) board.

New Insights and Mad Ideas aka NIAMI:

-This is the place for personal theorizing or discussion of a favorite non-EU theory. There is plenty of freedom and flexibility although we do expect some relationship to EU topics, even if that relationship is tangential.

-Many have taken offense to having their favored theories classified in a board that has "mad ideas" in the title; but instead, I would expect that everyone posting here would consider their posts to be a "new insight." Time will sort out which of these topics are new insights and which are mad ideas.

-Some of the greatest advancements have been initially categorized as mad ideas (certainly on most conventional science forums the Electric Universe would be put in that category.) If you have a favorite theory this board provides you with a venue where you can have a measure of freedom to elaborate on your ideas and put them up for critical discussion.

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