Part I. Expected Behavior of Members and Staff

A. Member responsibilities

Members should . . .

1. Treat each other with civility and respect.
2. Think before they post and accept the responsibility for the results of their posts.
3. Err on the side of kindness when reading others' posts, and refrain from accusing them of flaming, etc., just because they don't like them or their opinions. If members can't tell the intent of a post, they also have a responsibility to civilly ask the poster what their intent was, and then, if still unsure, ask mods/admins for their opinion.
4. Express themselves without violating others' rights, including refraining from intimidating, insulting, baiting or trolling other posters. Members have a right to their opinions, but that doesn't mean that others are prohibited from disagreeing politely, even persistently, as long as criticisms are focused on the ideas being expressed rather than on the people expressing them.
5. Once the right has been exercised to ask for explanations of actions and/or an appeal, people are to refrain from continuing to badger the staff for further explanations.

Respectful requests for further clarification are welcome.

B. Staff Responsibilities

Moderators have wide discretion over their assigned forums, but shall moderate within the scope of the Guidelines. The goal of successful moderation is to maintain and encourage respectful and civil discourse on the board. If a problem post's effect is remedied by self-moderation or continued dialog with other posters before a staff member intervenes, it is not necessary for the staff member to go back and sanction the post, unless it falls under the severe violations listed in section II. A below.

1. The Staff will refer to all members with civility and courtesy on Ex Isle, The Board Owner recognizes that the staff hold positions of trust at EI, and he encourages the staff to act professionally in all matters regarding EI, both on and off the board. However, the Board Owner recognizes that due to the anonymous nature of the Internet, enforcing this as a rule is problematic, and so in cases where the evidence in a situation involving staff behavior is inconclusive, the Board Owner will side with staff. As staff are members, too, any concerns about staff behavior must be sent via PM to the board owner or an admin. Publicly calling for staff sanctions is not allowed.

   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.

2. A moderator's primary duties consist of the following:
   • Request that a discussion cool down should it get personal.
   • Issue formal warnings should they become necessary.
   • Answer direct communications (such as PM or a direct question in AQG) promptly, ideally within 1-2 days.
   • Bring threads and/or posts of concern to the attention of other staff in the Staff Lounge.

3. The Administrators choose Moderators after a discussion period with staff. From the date of these guidelines, moderators will be chosen from those Members who do not have warnings that are still on the books.

   Administrators are chosen as needed by the current Administrators with final approval from the Board Owner. Administrators are usually chosen from the current staff, but can be chosen from non-staff members if the current Administrators and/or Board Owner so desire. All Administrator candidates will have the same requirements as Moderators regarding warnings and suspensions. The Board Owner will have the right to make final decisions on all Administrator and Moderator nominations.

4. The Staff will make announcements regarding Suspensions and Board Changes in the Announcements, Questions, and Gripes Forum (AQG) within 24 hours of the indicated action.

5. The Staff has the option of warning for violations up to 5 days after a post is made.
   Members must bring potential violations to staff attention within this same time period. Any post involving a violation of the Board Terms of Service will be exempt from this restriction.

Part II. Unacceptable Behavior by Members and Staff

A. The following list contains violations deemed so severe that they may lead to immediate suspension and will almost certainly receive a warning

1. Posting pornography or other obscene materials, stories or situations.
2. Posting anything libelous or threatening real and specific harm to anyone. Any post, PM, or other entry, which makes a credible threat against a member's or public figure's life or welfare is forbidden. We will consider all such threats to be real and actual, not satire or hyperbole, and act accordingly. Threats to the security of Ex Isle will be treated in the same manner.
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 that attempt to attack or circumvent 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.
   Multiple threads and/or posts questioning staff decisions, particularly in more than one forum, may be treated as spam.
   Posting multiple replies to long dormant threads for the purpose of "bumping" the threads may also be considered spam.
8. Addressing another poster by use of a racial, religious, or ethnic slur or impugning their sexual orientation. Also making inflammatory posts based on negative stereotypes of races, religions, ethnicities, and sexual orientations.
9. Repeated refusal to cooperate with the moderators on matters of possible illegal content, inflammatory remarks, or other board guidelines.
10. Duals and proxies: The use of dual identities or proxies for registration/primary use without admin approval is forbidden on Ex Isle. Using, registering, or attempting to register duals may be grounds for suspension of all user names.

B. The following behaviors should also not occur on the board; the community as well as the staff may intervene to stop them. If members persist in such behaviors even after being asked to stop them, warnings may be issued:

1. Importing disputes begun on other cyber places to Ex Isle or pursuing disagreements begun on ExIsle by referencing, quoting or linking to disputatious remarks made by EI members in other cyber places.
2. Publicly calling for sanctioning of a member If you have a dispute, take it to a Moderator or Admin.
3. Vulgarity: Certain words are not allowed here at Ex Isle- if you must use them they must be masked. The ones on this list here will automatically be filtered to add asterisks. Staff may edit others to insert asterisks.
4. Lack of Proper Attribution:When quoting outside sources (e.g. news articles, web sites, Wiki entries etc.) members must provide links back to the original material. Due to copyright laws, entire articles must not be quoted -- even if the original article is unavailable online, in an inconvenient format (e.g. PDF) or behind a mandatory registration page. In addition, hot linking images or stealing bandwidth from other sites is strictly forbidden. The staff has the right to edit and insert the required link without waiting for the member to do so.
5. Thread Hijacking: While natural thread drift is allowed, forcefully appropriating a thread for a discussion totally unrelated to the original purpose of said thread may be considered spam depending on the guidelines for that forum and the specific situation.
6. Baiting: These are posts that are made with the aim of angering/provoking a heated response from a single person, or several, indirectly. The staff will attempt to head off these types of posts with friendly cool its and reminders to be civil whenever possible.
   Please contact a Mod or Admin if you think you are being baited and please do not respond in kind.
7. Inappropriate Spoilers: Spoiler policies vary across forums. Check specific forum guidelines for the forum in which you are posting. Err on the side of caution if you are not sure whether something is too spoilerish. Members may edit posts up to 48 hours after the original post is made. After that, a request must be made to a Moderator or an Admin via PM. Members should always check the posted forum guidelines for further clarification on how these guidelines are applied in a forum and for additional forum specific guidelines.
   Moderators and Admins are, first and foremost, members of the board, and, as such, are subject to and protected by the above standards.

In addition, Staff should not normally:

• Edit posts without the poster's consent (except for matters such as adding spoiler space or editing of words not on the profanity list) unless they must because pornography or other such malice is present, or made to keep quoted articles within the fair use guideline.
• Lock or delete threads, except in the case of duplicate threads, threads that violate the Board Guidelines or Forum Policy, or other special circumstances.

Departures from these practices must be explained clearly in AQG.

Part III. Enforcement of Guidelines

Warnings and Suspensions
For violations covered in section II.A the staff will impose sanction ranging from a warning to a suspension of a length to be determined by discussion in the Staff Lounge.

Violations covered in section II.B. may incur a warning if posters commit them persistently and ignore staff requests to stop the behavior. The staff will issue warnings based on both the letter and spirit of the Guidelines, striving to be as lenient as possible and as strict as necessary, so please cooperate with the Staff when requested to do so.

Warnings are applied board wide. Multiple warnings, within either a six-month period or a twelve-month period, will lead to suspension as described below.

The overwhelming majority of members never get a warning, much less a suspension. They heed the rules with at most an occasional caution.

We do, however, recognize that people sometimes make mistakes or get carried away, so warnings are dropped from our books (no longer be considered) after six months, unless the behavior reaches the level of a suspension. Warnings issued *after* a suspension will remain on the books for a year, as long as a suspension itself drops from the books first.

Suspensions remain on the books for 1 year after the member returns from a suspension, when they are dropped "without prejudice" along with any warnings older than six months. Any member, no matter how many suspensions they have earned, can have a clean record within a year, if they post with the normal respect for Ex Isle members and rules.

When assessing sanctions, we first look at any suspensions on the books, and then we count the warnings given since the most recent suspension. Members without any suspensions on the books will receive a Level 1 (1 week) suspension after three warnings (in six months). This is a substantial departure from the usual behavior of EIers that indicates that warnings alone are not sufficient. Members who already have a suspension on the books will receive a longer suspension after two additional warnings, according to the following schedule:

• Level 1: 1 week suspension issued
• Level 2: 2 week suspension issued
• Level 3: 1 month suspension issued
• Level 4: 3 month suspension issued
• Level 5: 6 month suspension issued

Warnings will be issued in the specific forum in which they are earned and a notification PM’d to that member. Members will always be informed of suspensions in the AQG forum and the suspended member will be emailed.

Permanent Bans
When a poster's behavior is consistently disruptive to the board and the poster has failed to contribute substantively to civil discussion, the administrators have the option of enacting a permanent ban. The staff can also choose to enact this option after a member has accrued three suspensions and has made no effort to modify the behaviors that garnered the suspensions. Any new member who appears simply to spam, harass, or post pornography may be permanently banned without intermediate suspensions.

Appeals
Warnings may be appealed to the staff in AQG or using the PM system. Members who are suspended may make an appeal to admin@exisle.net. The staff will make every effort to resolve all such appeals within 48 hours. Except with special prior permission from the Board Owner, and the approval of the person sanctioned, the only person who can start the appeal is the member who was warned.

A member sanctioned by the permanent ban shall have the right to make one appeal of the ban to the administrators. The appeal can be made only after 30 days have passed since the imposition of the Permanent Ban and must be emailed to admin@exisle.net by the person who was banned.

Part IV. Watchdogs
Two Watchdogs with access to the Staff Lounge will monitor staff discussions to ensure there are no improper comments or expressions of bias.

Watchdogs serve a six-month term, with some flexibility according to circumstances.

Watchdog selections will be announced in AQG by the outgoing Watchdog who will accept nominations from members via PM or email, with a copy to a designated Admin. Nominations will last normally 2 weeks. The Admins will select new Watchdogs from the Nomination list after consultation with the Moderators and current Watchdogs.

Failure by the Staff to abide by Board and Moderator Guidelines can constitute grounds for removal from their position, at the discretion of the Admins after consultation with the Watchdogs. Erring Admins may be removed only by the Board Owner, after consultation with the rest of the staff and the Watchdogs

Part V: Guideline Change Process:

1. Parts I and II of the guidelines will be put before the members once a year for a review and ratification by the membership. There will be a minimum five-day discussion of the Guidelines before voting begins. Based on this discussion, an amended document may be put up for ratification. A two-thirds vote is required for passage of the guidelines. If the ratification fails, the Staff will modify the document based on member proposals and present it for another vote. This process will be repeated until a document passes, and while such discussion and voting is going on, the then-current guidelines are deemed to remain in effect. All voting on Guidelines will be open for a period of seven days.
2. At any time, members may request a Poll to change elements of Parts I and II: Expected Member and Staff Behavior and Unacceptable Member and Staff Behavior.
   Potential polls must be discussed in AQG for 24 hours before an official poll request can be made. The question or proposal must be clearly defined and approved by the thread starter before the official request. The number of requests required to institute a Poll for the duration of these Guidelines will be 25 members. The Poll will be left open for ten days. Official poll requests will be announced in each forum once the official wording is decided.
3. The membership may at any time submit proposals for modifying other portions of the Guidelines or for changing features of how the board works, including holding informal votes.
   Implementation of these proposed changes will only be done upon approval by the Staff.
4. All active members with over 50 posts (Islander 2.0) are eligible to vote and make Poll or change requests.

Part VI. Mechanisms for requesting changes to the board structure or features

1. Any member wishing to suggest a new forum or other change outside the scope of a binding poll should start a thread in AQG spelling out the change in detail, including: how would work, what current problem(s) it would solve, and why these interests cannot be addressed within the current arrangement.
2. The suggestion thread must stay open a minimum of 72 hours to allow for a broad spectrum of member comment. After that, when the proposer is satisfied that the issue has been thoroughly discussed, they should PM the admins with the thread’s url and ask that the proposal be considered.
3. The proposal will be discussed, and ultimately voted on, in the SL, within a week of the request being formally submitted to the admins. If the staff feels it needs one or more non-binding polls for a clearer picture of the community’s feelings, the week will begin after the polls end.
4. An admin will post the decision and the reasoning behind it, along with any suggestions, in AQG.
   Knowing that unforeseen circumstances can arise, the Guidelines may need amendments. When the need arises, the staff will write an amendment with the reason to be included for the members to discuss and vote on.
   The Board Owner retains the right to refuse any change which could hinder the smooth operation of the board or which conflicts with Ex Isle's Terms of Service agreement.

The previous set of Guidelines shouldbe found here.