The is the Dec 2005 version of the Ex Isle Board Guidelines. It is not longer valid.

Ex Isle Mission: Ex Isle exists to provide a place for science fiction and fantasy fans to engage in civil discussion in their areas of interest, including science fiction and fantasy in all media, and also science, current events, creativity, and general socializing and fun.

General Posting Rules

Ex Isle should be a warm, welcoming and thriving community where all members are treated fairly and kindly by other members, moderators and administrators.

  1. All members will treat all others with respect. Even the most confrontational poster is a person behind the screen name. Please try to assume the best possible intention in all situations and allow for the possibility of misunderstanding on your part or temporary stresses on the other party's part. In any case, where there is a potential misunderstanding, we ask that all posters request clarification instead of assuming the worst.
  2. Posters are free to criticize shows, actors, producers, writers, executives, and any other public figure. However, please try to keep it about the person's work. For instance, it's perfectly acceptable to say "X can't write dialogue." It is completely unacceptable to say "X should be shot for the good of humanity." Obviously, most situations are grayer; please use your best judgment.
  3. We all have different points of view and outlooks. Please do not attack other posters because they differ from you. Hatefulness is not allowed.
  4. Please be considerate and put "Spoiler" labels in your topics and/or spoiler spaces in your posts if you are starting a thread that will contain specific plot related details for any book, film or episode of a show. If you are posting in a thread that does not already contain a spoiler label and you wish to discuss spoilers, please use spoiler space and/or the spoiler bb code in your post.
  5. No sexual or obscene material may be posted. This includes pictures, cartoons, illustrations, ASCII art, and the inappropriate use of characters to suggest an obscene gesture. This also includes graphic descriptions (through creative euphemism or otherwise) of sexual and/or obscene acts. This rule is void in any of the Creative forums, so long as the thread is clearly labeled for content and has a legitimate purpose. However, NC-17 material is prohibited throughout the site. Art is okay; porn isn't. If you have questions about your material, please contact the moderator of the forum in question before posting.
  6. Certain words are not allowed here at EI, in a game attempt to avoid blacklisting by the net nannies. You may access the list: here. These words will be filtered out by the board software. There are many other words that can take their place and are acceptable. A staff member may edit those words that appear on the list, should they succeed in slipping through the filter for any reason, without first requesting an edit from the poster; however, in general, a mod or admin should simply replace vowels with asterisks. Note that exclusion of a particular vulgar term from the list is not a blanket license to use that term.
  7. Ex Isle is an independent discussion board. Members of Ex Isle who have disputes on, or with members of, other boards are asked not to conduct their disputes here. This includes discussing such disputes or copying posts regarding such disputes from other boards. (Example: Ex Isle Member A and B are both also members at board Omega and have a dispute at board Omega. Ex Isle Members A and B are prohibited from bringing that dispute to Ex Isle, including referring to the dispute and reposting the content of that dispute.) Posts containing such disputes will be removed by staff, and members who post such information will be reminded by staff of the board policy. Staff will take corrective actions consistent with board policy toward any member who repeatedly (more than twice) violates this guideline.
  8. Multiple threads and/or posts questioning staff decisions, particularly in more than one forum, will also be treated as spam and will be warnable. The staff is reading this forum carefully; if a member has a question about a moderator action he or she may post it once, as is EI tradition and per the nature of this forum, but repeated harping on a decision with which a member disagrees will be a warnable offense.
  9. 9. When quoting outside sources (i.e. news articles), please provide links back to the original material whenever possible. Due to copyright laws, entire articles cannot be quoted--even if the original article is unavailable online, in an inconvenient format (i.e. PDF) or behind a mandatory registration page.
Guidelines for Staff Actions
The key to a happy, calm, long-living community is that the Ex Isle staff should have as little work as possible. When attempting to evaluate a post, moderators and administrators will use the written word and context as their guide.

The staff will function primarily as mediators, working to resolve all possible situations as swiftly and tactfully as possible. In cases where applications of the guidelines are not clear, staff will refer to the mission statement to ensure that the site is governed in line with Ex Isle's purpose.

Each forum on Exisle is governed by these guidlelines. The guidelines may be supplemented by a set of forum-specific rules, within the framework of the guidelines. Posters are advised to check the forum rules stickied at the top of each forum, as moderators will take action according to the guidelines and the rules that they have created for each forum. New posters are encouraged to become familiar with the moderators and their rules in each forum before posting.

If a thread is getting out of control, a mod may post a reminder to keep things civil. The staff will always consider the context in which a violation occurs in determining whether or not to sanction it, unless the violation involves porn/obscenity, hatefulness, or illegality. When a post violates the guidelines, staff will issue in the thread a formal warning to the author. Although friendly reminders are taken into consideration when handing out a warning they have no bearing on any staff action outside of that thread. All formal warnings are public, but staff will also try to repeat the warning to the poster via PM which includes notification of the number of formal warnings the poster has received to date.

Moderators and administrators are available to help any poster resolve problems with any other poster, mod or administrator. Members may PM the mod or admin of their choice.

Grounds and Processes for Revoking Member Posting Privileges
Members' posting privileges will rarely be suspended. If a poster violates the guidelines spelled out above, the staff will try to resolve the situation amicably, and will treat suspension only as a last resort if all else fails to correct the poster's behavior.

However, certain actions are severe enough to trigger an automatic suspension. They include:

  1. Posting pornography or other obscene materials, stories or situations.
  2. Posting anything libelous about or threatening specific harm to another poster.
  3. Posting anything that violates Ex Isle's terms of service agreement.
  4. Posting anything promoting illegal activities, or linking to sites which promote such activities: this includes but is not limited to cracking ("hacking"), phreaking, warez, and pyramid schemes.
  5. Posting content advertising commercial services unrelated to board matters.
  6. Engaging in or promoting any activities which attempt to attack/compromise Ex Isle's security and/or gain unauthorized access to secured sections.
  7. Spamming by posting the same content repeatedly to multiple threads in a manner that disrupts communication.
  8. Posting something obviously hateful, such as addressing another poster by use of a racial, religious or ethnic slur or impugning their sexual orientation.
  9. 9. Repeated refusal to cooperate with the moderators on matters of possible illegal content, inflammatory remarks, or other board guidelines

Warnings and Suspensions
Members who violate the guidelines may be issued a warning for such violations. After three such warnings, earned in any forums, members' posting privileges will be suspended boardwide for one week.

Members may receive one warning between each suspension after the first. The suspension schedule thereafter is as follows:
2nd time: Two Week Suspension
3rd time: One Month Suspension
4th Time: Three Month Suspension
5th Time: Six Month Suspension

A cumulative warning period exists to allow posters who receive no additional warnings a chance to clear their record. When dealing with posters who have no suspensions on their record, the staff will only look back over the past six months to determine the poster's number of previous warnings when considering suspensions. For posters who have incurred suspensions in the past year, the staff will only look back over a period of one year when determining the number of warnings the poster has when considering additional suspensions.

Please note that although the consequences of receiving warnings have changed, previous individual forum warnings will count into this system. If you received a forum-specific warning or an OT or board-wide suspension before, it WILL be counted as part of this suspension schedule.

Attempts to violate the Board's security or technical policies (such as use of unapproved proxies, duals, hacks/cracks or other unauthorized access), or multiple users of an account where the login and password are being shared, or posted/PM'ed/ emailed threats of such actions, or threats made to the board or board staff, or discussion/inciting of illegal actions on the board are all grounds for immediate official sanction, ranging from warnings to immediate indefinite suspensions. Where relevant, staff will also forward such details to legal authorities.

When a poster's behavior has proven consistently disruptive to the board and the poster has failed to contribute substantively to civil discussion, the administrators of the board shall have the option of sanctioning the member by means of a permanent ban. After three suspensions, a poster may be permanently banned by the staff if, in their judgment, the poster has made no effort to modify the posting behaviors that garnered the suspensions. In addition, any new member who appears simply to spam and harrass and post porn may be permanently banned without intermediate suspensions. The member sanctioned by the permanent ban shall have the right to appeal the ban to the administrators, the appeal to be initiated by contacting an administrator not less than thirty days following the imposition of the ban.

Members will always be informed of suspensions in the AQG forum.

Standards for Moderator/Administrator Behavior

  1. Moderators and admins are, first and foremost, members of the board, and, as such, are subject to and protected by the above standards.
  2. Mods and admins are accountable for their words and will be held to them, more so than the average poster, because of the responsibility their position entails.
    4. Mods/admins will strive to be fair and impartial in every situation.
  4. Mods/admins will assure that posters adhere to the standards of basic civility without in any way excessively infringing on freedom of expression or shutting down spirited debate.
  5. Mods/admins will usually not edit posts without the poster's consent (except for matters such as adding spoiler space or editing of words on the profanity list) unless they must because pornography or other such malice is present.
  6. Mods/admins will not lock or delete threads, except in the case of duplicate threads, threads that violate the Board Guidelines or Forum Policy, or other special circumstances, which will be explained in AQG if they arise.
  7. Failure to abide by these standards will constitute grounds for removal from their position, at the discretion of the admins after consultation with the watchdogs.

Grounds and Processes for Regulating or Removing Mods and Admins
If a member has a situation with a moderator or administrator, he or she should attempt to settle the issue directly with that mod or admin. However, if the user is not comfortable communicating with the mod or admin, or is unable to work things out with him or her, the user should consult an admin (obviously, a different admin if the problem concerns an admin). When a member emails or PMs a problem he or she should try to include links and facts so that a proper investigation can occur. The admins will review the situation, deal privately with the mod about it, and inform the user of the outcome on a timely basis. If admins decide a mod or admin must be removed, a public announcement will be made.

Staff are expected to use their best judgment, and to balance the letter and the spirit of the guidelines in guiding their decisions. However, mods and admins are only human and may make mistakes. The staff reaches its decisions through discussion in the Staff Lounge, and due to a wide assortment of factors this may take time. We, the mods and admins, ask the membership to understand and give us that time.

Two Staff Lounge Watchdogs will monitor moderators and admins in the moderator lounge forum and emergency mail group. The Watchdogs will be chosen from among those nominated by members via PM or email (with a copy to a designated admin) for a six month term, with some flexibility according to circumstances. Watchdog selections will be announced in AQG.

Process for Changing Guidelines
Questions that may be polled: Polls may be used to change these guidelines, which deal with how members and staff may or may not conduct themselves on the board, and when and how the staff will intervene to sanction violations of these codes of behavior. How the board and its staff are structured, how the technical features of the board software will be deployed, and other fundamental board function issues are not issues for polling. Thus it would be appropriate to poll on whether to retain the position of watchdog, but not to poll on whether sigs are turned off board-wide. Creation or deletion of forums would not be an issue to be polled.

A. Procedures for requesting a poll

  1. The person who desires the poll to take place will start an AQG thread on the issue to be polled. The thread must stay open at least 24 hours before requests for a poll are solicited and recorded. Requests for a poll will also not be solicited until the precise wording of the question to be polled has been worked out to the satisfaction of the proposer after feedback in the thread. When a post containing the final wording is made, the thread is open for poll requests.
  2. The number of requests required to institute a poll will be 25. This is roughly 10% of the posters active on the board in the past month (September, 2005). This number will be subject to regular revision as the board grows.
  3. If more than one alternative is put forward that a large number of people would rather vote on, or vote on in addition to the original proposed change, it should be included in the poll if a minimum of 5 posters express such a desire. In some cases, the admins will poll first an original question, such as “Should our posters with more than 10,000 posts be painted a new color irl?” and then a subsequent question, if that poll passes, of which color they should be painted. This is to ensure that each poll asks a specific, limited question and gets an accurate read of member wishes on that topic.
  4. The administrator is not to express any personal preference to one side of an amendment vote while starting the poll. This is to ensure that there can be no accusations, rightly or wrongly, of the admin trying to influence the outcome of the vote. This includes emoticons beside the link to the polling thread, as well as written endorsements in the original post itself. In the interest of informed voting, a link to the discussion thread should also be provided in the starting post.
  5. Finally, once an official poll has been undertaken, notices must be placed and pinned, in the Beach, and GMD, as well as any forum that may be directly affected by they outcome of the vote. As with the original polling post, these announcements must be free of partisan bias.
  6. Polls shall remain open a minimum of 96 hours, and for no longer than ten days.
  7. There will only be one official poll running at any one time.
  8. No poll will require retroactive application.
  9. Whether passed or defeated, an issue may not be polled again until six months later.
B. Mechanisms for requesting changes to the board structure or features
  1. Any member wishing to suggest a new forum for the board or change other ways the board is administered should start a thread in AQG. The member should spell out in detail how the new forum or procedure would work, which current problems or deficiencies it would solve, and make the case why the current board configuration cannot accommodate the interests represented by the proposal. In the case of a new forum request, the proposer should give as examples current threads that might belong in such a forum. This indicates that there is already interest in the topic at EI.
  2. The thread in which the request is made should stay open a minimum of 72 hours so that a broad spectrum of member opinion on the issue may be posted. When the proposer is satisfied that the issue has been thoroughly discussed, the member should PM the admins with the thread’s url and ask that the staff consider the proposal.
  3. The proposal will receive a thorough discussion in the SL, culminating in a formal vote in favor of the proposal or against it. This vote will occur within a week of the request being formally submitted to the admins. If five or more staff would like to have a non-binding referendum on the issue to get a more detailed picture of the community’s feelings on the proposal, a poll will be taken before the staff votes, and the week will begin after the referendum ends.
  4. If the staff votes against the proposal, an administrator will explain the reasons for the decision in a separate AQG thread and will also make suggestions as to how the goals of the proposal may be achieved in the current board configuration. If the goals are deemed detrimental to the community, that will be stated and an explanation for that determination given.
  5. These guidelines are subject to regular review every six months (after an initial one month trial). And, all of the above is subject to common sense and inevitable incompleteness. Absence of an action or behavior from these guidelines should not be construed as an inability for moderators to act in those situations.
Miscellaneous Other Matters
  1. Duals and proxies: The use of dual identities or proxies for registration/primary use without admin approval is forbidden on ExIsle, as we believe it does not facilitate accountability nor lead to good board dynamics. Using, registering, or attempting to register duals will be grounds for suspension of all user names.
  2. New Member Policy: New members must make 50 posts in good standing before they are allowed access to the PM system or are allowed to vote in polls, unless otherwise arranged by an Admin.
  3. Signature size: In consideration of our dial-up users, signatures should be no bigger than 480 pixels wide and 200 pixels in height.
  4. Avatars: Avatars should be 100 x 100 pixels and no more than 30 kb unless otherwise permitted by an Admin.
  5. Editing: Members have 48 hours to make edits to posts. Thereafter, members must request that a staff member help make edits.
  6. Feedback: The staff is interested in hearing members' opinions on technical aspects of Board operation or improvements, but such issues are not subject to a vote of the membership. In the end, all such operational and technical decisions must fall to the Admins.
Earlier guidelines can be found here