1. Some General Rules
- We reserve the right to remove, at any time and without notice, any content from Youthnetsouthampton.
- Refrain from using inappropriate language, including language that may look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate profanity, hate speech (including things such as racial, ethnic, or religious slurs), illegal drugs/controlled substances or illegal activities.
- Exploiting any bug or error in our code or design to gain an unfair advantage or to gain unearned or unauthorised privileges, access or abilities you are not entitled to, is not allowed. Communicating information about such activities to others will also be considered inappropriate.
- Your membership of Youthnetsouthampton is intended for your individual and personal use only.
- We reserve the right to immediately ban anyone who fails to follow these rules.
2. Password Security
Members are solely responsible for protecting their accounts from access by others. You
are strongly encouraged to select a hard-to-guess password and not re-use that password
on any other sites where it may be read by the owners or administrators of that site. Similarly, your
security question and answer should be something that other people cannot guess.
On Youthnetsouthampton your password is encrypted, so nobody can read it, not even youth workers.
Accessing or attempting to access any user account not belonging to you is prohibited.
Accessing another user's account in this manner is grounds for a permanent ban of your own account
from Youthnetsouthampton.
3. Registration Requirements
In order to post messages on our message boards, chatroom, and use some other website
features, you must register using valid personal details. Your membership must be
approved by a youth worker or administrator to gain full access. No posting privileges
will be granted until the account is fully approved.
If registering at one of our youth centre venues, a youth worker can approve you during the
registration process. They can also approve you at a later date.
4. Community Rules
Offensive Material
Members may not post or encourage others to post material or
links to material considered offensive in nature. This includes things like
- using race, religion, sexual orientation, culture, ethnicity, handicap, nationality, or gender as a means of insult
- using threatening, harassing, defamatory, hate-speech, or libelous language
- posting, requesting, or otherwise sharing material considered pornographic, obscene, graphic, or hate speech
Substitutes for Strong Language
Youthnetsouthampton is programmed with a list
of words that some people may find offensive, and while these words may be used, they will
be filtered out of content posted by members. Attempting to bypass the censor by misspelling,
inserting spaces or symbols, using similar letters or numbers, using look-alike symbols, or any other
method is not allowed. The only acceptable method of posting one of these vulgar words is to write it
normally, so the filter will automatically obscure it, making it impossible to determine what the word
is without context.
Members can disable the filter for their own viewing, but by default the filter is active.
Flaming
Communications clearly insulting other members, individually
or as a group, directly or indirectly, are not allowed. This includes things like
- name-calling ("You're an idiot", "You moron")
- direct insults and orders ("Screw you", "Go kill yourself")
- insinuations ("Are you stupid or something?")
- insults towards family ("Your mum...")
Trolling (Inciting flames)
Messages intended solely to annoy and/or
offend other members are not allowed. This includes things like
- provoking other members to respond with flames
- making misleading topic titles
- asking obviously useless questions
- posting false information as fact
Illegal Activity
Communications that break or incite others to
break the law are not allowed.
Advertising
Messages that clearly advertise a service or product are
not allowed. This includes things like
- unsolicited commercial or personal website advertisements
- For-Sale/For-Trade/For-Auction/Wanted notices
- "Make Money Fast" scams, chain letters, and pyramid schemes
- any referrer-ID based sites (including both games and free-item marketing sites)
Disruptive Behaviour
Behaviour that disrupts Youthnetsouthampton for
other members, intentional or not, are prohibited.
This includes things like
- messages or topic titles that force browsers to scroll horizontally
- large blank or content-free messages
- "bumping" multiple older topics (posting in them well after the last post)
- posting multiple identical or near-identical messages or topics, including "fad" posts or topics
- intentionally hard-to-read topic titles or posts (i.e. ALL CAPS, AlTeRnAtE cApS, no spaces, no or excessive punctuation)
- posting multiple hard-to-read or nonsensical messages in a single or multiple topics>/li>
- posting large ASCII art (except in social topics specifically calling for it)
- post counting (i.e. "First", "100th Post")
Flooding, Invading, and Board Wars
- Flooding a board or chatroom with multiple disruptive topics or messages
- invading another board (flooding a board as a group with multiple topics or messages)
- instigating, participating in, or retaliating in an invasion of a message board or any other online service
- announcing or inciting a "war" or any conflict with the regular members of another board
Impersonation
Impersonating other members by creating and/or using a
user account with a name clearly intended to impersonate, mock, or antagonise another
user, or otherwise falsely claiming to be another member is strictly prohibited.
Harassment/Stalking/Privacy
Continual harassing behaviour directed
towards a certain individual or group with the intent of creating an intimidating,
offensive, or hostile environment on Youthnetsouthampton is strictly prohibited.
Posting contact or other private information of any person (member or not) is also prohibited.
5. Multiple Accounts
You are only allowed one account. Should you start to use a second account, information from your previous account will be selectively merged into your new account. You will not be banned for creating more than one account, however you my receive a warning if you continue to re-register.
6. Violations and Penalties
Topics and messages that break this acceptable use policy will be deleted from the
boards and you may lose access to certain features of the site. Re-posting deleted things (yours or
those of others) is also considered to break this policy.
Messages and topics may be removed at any time and for any reason at the sole discretion
of youth work staff. User accounts may be warned, suspended, or revoked at any time and
for any reason at the sole discretion of youth work staff. All determinations of what is,
and what isn't, acceptable content will be determined solely by youth work staff.
Intentional, repeated, or severe violations are cause for the banning of your account.
7. Contacting You
We may contact you via email to provide you with information about updates to Youthnetsouthampton or your account, but only if you have agreed to such contact in your profile. This option can be changed at any time.
© 2002-2012 Southampton Youth Support Service