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It was brought to my attention the other day that while I was on "Vacation" a new member to this forum violated this organization's code of conduct innumerable times with no action taken against them by other moderators.
I reviewed the articles at length last night, as well as the offending member's comments and indeed found him to be obnoxious, insulting, and disrespectful. I deleted as many of his unprofessional posts as I could find, resulting in a total of 5 whole pages being erased.
I am now re-posting our rules for everyone to revisit:
Forum Moderator Policy
"All of the moderators on this discussion board are volunteers. They provide their time and their good judgment to this website free of charge, and the administrator of this website is grateful for their help."
When moderators are performing their duties, they are acting on behalf of Fugitive Recovery Network. Their judgment should be respected. They are human, and they occasionally make mistakes. But in most cases, they do the right thing. Moderators are allowed to participate in all discussions, just like other visitors to our site. When they do so, they are speaking for themselves only. They do not represent any official position of Fugitive Recovery Network.
However, when moderators participate in discussions that are unrelated to their official duties, they are expected to do so in a manner that respects differing points of view, and promotes solidarity rather than division. Even when they are not performing their official moderator duties, moderators are required to hold themselves to a higher standard than other members of this discussion board. (Like there is such a creature)
With this in mind, moderators are expected to observe the following guidelines:
They are expected to behave themselves at all times in a way that reflects positively and complies with all the Rules and Regulations(1) of this website.
They are expected to share and help promote unity and solidarity.
They may not engage in personal attacks against other members of this site or elsewhere.
They may not use their powers as a moderator to threaten or ban someone with whom they do not agree.
They are expected to be fair and even-handed at all times, especially to those with whom they disagree.
* If you feel a moderator has acted inappropriately, please contact the site administrator. The site administrator will decide what response is appropriate, if any.
Moderators have the following duties:
Answer questions from and provide guidance to website visitors.
Move, close, merge, split, delete and edit threads when appropriate and for various reasons.
Deal with copyright violations by website visitors.
Delete disruptive and offensive posts.(1)
Keep conversations flowing in their assigned forum(s).
Help mediate any arguments between members and be available to answer general questions from them.
Alert the administrator of any issues they need to know about.
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What is an 'inappropriate post?'
An inappropriate post is one that transmits any defamatory, abusive, obscene, threatening or illegal material, or any other material that infringes on the ability of others to enjoy the Forum or that infringes on the rights of others. The moderator has the power to allow more - or less - leeway when he or she deems it appropriate. Entire threads can be closed, moved or even deleted, individual posts can be split from the original thread and moved or removed, members can be banned.
What are the powers of a Moderator?
Moderators can lock, unlock, move, sticky, split, merge, bump and even delete an entire thread if necessary. Initially this may sound very complex and technical but it is actually quite easy. If in doubt please ask the admin before doing something. A deleted thread cannot be recovered.
Sticky. Also known as "pin". Puts a thread at the top of a forum.
Bump. Put an older thread back to the top of the list. This is different from "sticky" as the thread will not remain at the top always but will move down over time like all others. (threads are sorted by the time/date of the last post).
Lock. Close a thread. No more posting.
Unlock. Reopen a thread to allow more posting.
Delete. It's gone for good.
Move. Moves a thread to a new/different forum (with or without a redirect)
Merge. Merges two threads into one.
Split. Split one or more messages of a thread to form a new thread. Can be moved to a different forum afterwards.
Under what circumstances can they delete a post or thread?
If the post or entire thread is clearly a violation of the rules(1) then the decision is easy - they will delete it. However, most of the time it is not that easy. In cases like this is is best to discuss it with the other moderators.
For minor offences - e.g. tone of a thread getting out of hand or argumentative, they may simply post a message at the end of the thread stating that members should be more civil to one another and then lock the thread. Please also report this in the Moderators forum so the rest know about it.
(1)- being that at present there are no Rules or Regulations in place this may be extremely difficult to enforce.
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Administrator
Fugitive Recovery Network
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River City Associates
Decatur, Al. 35601
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