BoardGameGeek Rules

BoardGameGeek Forum and Geeklist Rules

Hello everybody! My name is Scott Alden, and I'd like to welcome y'all to the BoardGameGeek community.

Everyone is welcome to stay and participate post in our forums, as long as you follow our rules. If you cannot or will not follow our rules, you will be asked to leave. But they are pretty easy rules to follow, and are designed to make sure that all users feel welcome and comfortable posting in our forums, and to encourage interesting conversations.

Posting Rules

The Short List

• Use common courtesy in your posts.
• Respect others.

The Long List

• Following the spirit of these rules is at least as important as following the rules themselves.
• Do not abuse, harass, mock, insult, stalk, demean, threaten, belittle, or otherwise attack other users or groups of users, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, even if they started it, they deserve it, or they are public figures or people who can take it.
• Do not swear too much.
• Do not post images that are explicitly sexual, contain gratuitous nudity, or graphic violence.
• Do not spam, flood, or otherwise be a nuisance.
• Do not use excessive signatures for posts. A word or two is acceptable. Using images as a signature hurts the readability of the site and is prohibited. Posting ads or links as part of a signature is likewise prohibited.
• Do not post a bunch of links to your off-site blog/webstore/etc.
• Do not complain about inappropriate posts by other users--flag them instead.
  • Do not quote inappropriate posts in your replies--this defeats the purpose of the user flagging system.
• Do not troll. Wikipedia defines an internet troll as "someone who posts controversial and irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."
• Do not accuse someone of trolling. Calling someone a troll, even if it could be considered justified, never helps and often can exacerbate a situation.
• We have a dedicated Religion, Sex, and Politics forum. Discussion of these topics outside of this forum can be considered disruptive posting and is not permitted.
• Do not talk about who is in your hide list - This is a zero-tolerance offense and will result in immediate restrictions placed on your posting privileges.
• Do not request or provide information that allows others to create, purchase, or download complete unofficial replications of a game or other works protected by copyright without the permission of that game's designer/publisher.
• Do not list your games for sale in the forum--use the marketplace instead.
• If you are selling many games, it may be more appropriate to use the forums to promote those sales, but you are expected to execute that sale through the BGG marketplace, and thus pay BGG its 3% commission on the transaction.
• Do not post links for "Hot Deals" that give you money or credit for referrals.
• If you don't like something (a game, a publisher, a whole genre, a feature of the site, etc), it is OK to say so, but don't harp on it endlessly--there are games you like, right? Talk about those.
• Do not discuss ways to block ads. We depend on ads for the revenue necessary to maintain the site. We offer members who donate $25 the option of disabling any and all ads on the site. Discussion of unauthorized ways to block site ads is prohibited.
• Threads which degenerate into flame wars will be locked by moderators, regardless of who is at fault.

Also, try to post in the right folder. If you post in the wrong folder, someone may move it for you, but you won't get moderated for that unless you keep doing it when you clearly should know better.

Private Messages

The posting rules also extend to private messages. For example, you may not send unsolicited messages to a user that abuse, harass, mock, insult, stalk, demean, threaten, belittle, or otherwise attack the recipient, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, even if they started it, they deserve it, or they are a public figure or someone who can take it. Other rules are similarly extended, where relevant. Violation of these rules will result in suspensions similar to violations of the rules in forum posts.

If you are the recipient of an inappropriate private message, you may forward the entire exchange (for context) to one of our forum admins.

Moderation Consequences

• Your posts will be flagged for rules violations by the other users in the community - people will not see them.
• You may have posting privileges suspended, or you may even be banned from the site. We reserve the right to immediately terminate or suspend anyone who fails to abide by our rules. The decision to suspend or terminate accounts will be made at the sole discretion of the site administrators. All account terminations (bannings) are to be considered final.
  • The length of a suspension will depend primarily on your history of past warnings and suspensions. All things being equal, each subsequent violation will bring a longer suspension.
  • Context matters. Individual posts are evaluated in the context of both the thread and other recent posts by the user.
  • Bypassing a suspension with a duplicate account will get you permanently banned from the site.
  • Because admins cannot read everything, enforcement will never be completely consistent; as with a speeding ticket, "what about the other guy?" is never a valid defense.

User Driven Moderating

You can moderate the forums yourself by clicking the thumbs up button on thread and individual posts, or flagging them as rules violations by clicking the Red X icon. Here our some moderating guidelines to get you started:

• Give thumbs up to posts you like. (We encourage the use of liberal application of the thumbs up.)
• Label a post as a Rules Violation only if it blatantly violates our forum rules.
• Do not moderate maliciously, or label something as a Rules Violation simply because you disagree with it. Instead, use the Personal hide option.
• Go easy on new users.

Anything that receives enough Rules Violation labels will be automatically "collapsed," so that it takes an extra click to read it.

Admins will periodically review posts that have been flagged to see if they require official moderation. Please do not complain about getting having your content hidden.

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If you feel a post requires immediate attention, please geekmail the link with a description to

Matthew M Monin

(Octavian)

United States
Pittsburgh
Pennsylvania