General Rules and Guidelines for posting and chat room use:
Please use our FAQ, Archive and Search function to find the answer to your question before posting. We have a large amount of information available, making redundant posts makes it harder to find. Even in an emergency situation this can be helpful as the site is not monitored 24/7. If you have a technical question about the use of the site, PM Christa or send an email to techsupport[at]hermitcrabassociation.com No swearing is allowed. Testing the filters is the same as swearing. Avatars should be kept to a reasonable size and of appropriate content. Inappropriate or oversized avatars will be removed. If your avatar contains offensive material, you will receive a warning. Signatures should be text only, no images. Links to other sites will be allowed in the case of personal sites intended to offer information. Links to sites with forums, or otherwise requiring membership will not be allowed. No member recruiting for your site, publically or privately. The HCA is a crab care resource, not a supply of members to be farmed. Do not post topics intend to incite or anger people. This board is not a debate forum. Controversial topics should not be posted, this will be considered trolling. No spamming. No trolling. No flaming. Do not hotlink to images posted on this site. Do not download images from this site without permission. Do not steal content or other information and repost it elsewhere claiming it as your own. Adult discussions do not belong on this forum. Do not impersonate another member. Do not post personal information of other members.This is all basic commonsense. Christa once said "Don't post anything to someone you wouldn't say within slapping distance of them." That pretty much covers it all. There is no excuse for acting like a jerk and the HCA will not tolerate it.
Reporting Inappropriate Posts
We have added a report post feature to the forums. You will notice a new icon on each post made in the forum.
Click the exclamation mark to report inappropriate posts to the forum admins and moderators.
I think Christa's message here is pretty clear, if someone post something that is rude, insensitive, sexist, bigoted, contains adult content or politics/religion, or is hurtful in any way click the exclamation mark to report it to one of the admins or moderators; do not engage the poster, let us handle the issue.
Be careful when reporting a post, before you click the report button review the post a second time to ensure that the post is really inappropriate. With a membership of almost 2,000 members there are many different communication styles and sometimes members may interpret a post as rude when in reality it's not. Abusing this reporting feature because you don't like another member is not appropriate.
A post can only be reported once, a reported post will appear with a red exclamation mark.
Example of how violations will be dealt with:
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Generic (for both chat and forums) Being rude to other members = 2 warnings, 2 week suspension, then ban (depending upon the degree of rudeness, this can be accelerated) Cussing, whether the censor catches it or not = 3 warnings, 2 week suspension, then ban Flaming other members in any way = 1 warning then ban Publicly mocking Board members - same as flaming (1 warning then ban). Willfully impersonating another member and lying about it when confronted with the truth = immediate ban from chat and forum Posting or threatening to post links and/or files which contain computer viruses = immediate ban Threatening to cause physical harm to other members = immediate ban