I'm not too bothered about spelling, although both Internet explorer and Firefox - which are the overwhelming majority of browsers used to view Urmston.net do have spell checkers. There are certain words however that are commonly misspelt so I have created a list of these words. When you preview your post to the forum, if you misspell any of these common words then they will be highlighted automatically. Ideally you would correct these before submitting the post but you can still submit the post without doing so. However, I would expect anyone posting directly to the live site to make the effort but once again, it's not compulsory - you can still submit your post. I reserve the right though not to authorise or remove any posts where clearly the poster doesn't want to make the effort.
The following is a list of rules governing the posting of items to urmston.net; some of which are compulsory and some are only advisory.
R1: A post containing bad language, comments of an explicit sexual nature, or negative comments about race, religion, sexuality or minority groups is not allowed. This rule applies even if the comments are posted as a joke. I will cancel the account of any member that breaks this rule.
R2: A post that contains negative comments about an identifiable individual or company. Unless those comments have already been made public or if you have evidence to support your claims. You'll have to send me the evidence first though. I'll probably look at this at some point in the future as now that it's members only that can post, I think that there should be more freedom. I need to give it some thought though as I haven't decided yet whether the forum will eventually be closed to the public or if I just have a "Member's only" section of the forum.
R3: Text entered into a text box should always start with a capital letter unless it is an e-mail address.
R4: Your post should not be in all uppercase or all lowercase.
R5: A sentence should start with a capital letter and end with a full stop.
R6: I prefer it when information from another source is not copied into a post. Mainly because the text copied in is often so long that I doubt many people bother reading it. And it fills up the database unnecessarily which means I may have to pay for more database space. However, if you've received a reply that you wish to share then fair enough. This rule is mainly for those people who, when someone asks a question they go onto Google and copy and paste a long winded explanation into a post and post it. Just add a link to the web page, it's a lot easier all round.
R7: For topics where someone is seeking the services of a local business, I am happy for people to submit suggestions* to the topic providing there isn't already a business in the Urmston.net Business Directory offering this service. Once a business is listed in the directory, I don't think it is fair for me to authorise other people's recommendations for a business or individual offering similar services. At this point, if you want to recommend a business, the business will need to be added to the directory first.
*For obvious reasons, I will not authorise any business recommendations from members who are using web-based e-mail addresses. I reserve the right to suspend any members if I suspect their account has been created for no other reason than to promote a local business.
R8: The blatant promotion of a business is not allowed. Neither is the promotion of cottage industry (cash in hand) arrangements, where there is no legal remedy if something goes wrong. If you want to promote your legitimate business on Urmston.net then the best way to do this is to add your details to the Business Directory.
R9: I won't authorise any post that refers to vigilante or a similar action for obvious reasons.
R10: Any post where there is an excessive amount of names, town names etc, in lowercase. I don't mind changing some but when I get home from a busy day at work and someone has posted, "pete and john used to live on flixton road and sarah and bev used to live on chassen road" etc, I'll just delete it.
R11: A post that contains shortcuts for words such as "U" instead of "you" or other common text message shortcuts will not be authorised.
R12: Any post that contains lowercase "i" when referring to oneself probably will not be authorised as it's one of my pet peeves. No one in the UK has ever been taught to use lowercase "i" when referring to oneself; it is always an uppercase "I". I'll change the odd one but if the post contains "i" or "i'm" too many times then I probably won't bother authorising it.
R13: Anyone targeting an individual on the forum or an actual person runs the risk of not having their post authorised. Basically I tend to be more tolerant towards regular visitors to urmston.net than I am towards one-off posters, as long as no legal boundaries are crossed. It mainly depends on.
R14: A post that promotes any individual, business or website that clearly conflicts with the interests of Urmston.net.
R15: Please do not add events to the forum, events should be added to the Events page. The exception to this rule are any non-profit events.
R16: I don't want phone numbers adding to the forum as a rule. You should use the member contact form as a means of contacting other members.
