Forum Rules

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1. Prohibited Uses. You are strictly prohibited from using or promoting viruses, trojan horses, MySQL squeezing, hacking, phreaking, or any software or system that may threaten, damage or burden our political forum, software, server, or any other website, software or server.

2. Disclaimer of Liability. Political Wrinkles disclaims all liability resulting from the use of our forum. To be specific: In no event shall PoliticalWrinkles.com be liable for any direct, indirect, punitive, incidental, special or consequential damages arising out of or in any way connected with this political forum, or for any claimed damage from our forum, or otherwise arising out of the use of this website, whether based on contract, tort, strict liability or otherwise, even if PoliticalWrinkles.com been advised of the possibility of damages.

3. Suspensions, Terminations and Banning. PoliticalWrinkles.com reserves the right to suspend or terminate any member, or ban/block any member or user from our political forum without providing a justification or notice if we feel it insures the best interest of our web community. If we suspend, terminate or ban you from our political forum, and you attempt to circumvent this measure and regain access by registering under a new screen name or identity or any other method, we will construe this action by you as a form of unauthorized trespass. In such case, you have attempted to breach our security and your information may be forwarded to authorities without notice to you.

4. Postings. PoliticalWrinkles.com makes political discussion forums available to its users. Any information that is written, pasted, posted or otherwise disclosed in these areas becomes public. You are advised to exercise caution when disclosing your personal or professional thoughts and/or information. PoliticalWrinkles.com will not be held liable for consequences arising due to any information put forth by the person posting. Posts and any other form of submission by users express the views of the author of the message, and NOT the views of PoliticalWrinkles.com.

5. Copyright. You may NOT submit/post any writing, pictures or any other information ("works") on our forum if by doing so you would violate the intellectual property rights of a third party. Chances are that if you did not create the works yourself --or they are not widely known as being in the public domain -- someone else has copyright protection in those works. It is your responsibility to post works that are not in violation of federal, state and international intellectual property laws. Consistent with Section 2, above, PoliticalWrinkles.com will not be responsible for your infringement.

6. Code of Conduct. You must abide by our Code of Conduct:

A. Be Civil. Don't use language that lowers the tone from that you would see on a television show (i.e., "Crossfire" or "Politically Incorrect"). Personal attacks are not appropriate. What is considered civil in heated political discourse? For example, don't say "you're stupid." Instead, you can say, "that's a stupid position." Criticizing aspects of people that are beyond their control, such as their race, gender, national origin, etc., are not acceptable.

(1) Flaming. You are not allowed to post messages where rudeness, obscenity, hatred, vulgarity, or any other "flaming" is directed at other users. Flaming that is directed at a moderator will be met with swift and strict action.

(2) Excessive Profanity. While you may use profanity lightly as a mere exclamation, to further express yourself or to underscore a point, you may not use profanity repeatedly in your posts.

(3) Adult Material. Adult material is strictly prohibited. You may not post or link to any adult and/or obscene material.

(4) Spam. You may not post messages that promote commercial products or services, or any form of self-promotion. This includes affiliate links or links to your own products or services.

B. Be Sincere. Don't post just to get people riled up. Don't disrupt the purpose of the forums which is to foster genuine, and where possible, constructive dialogue between people of opposing ideologies.

(1) Misrepresentation. Do not post comments that contain intentional misrepresentation of facts, or intentionally distort the truth. If you present information where a material element of that message directly contradicts something you have said earlier, please be prepared to justify the change of information.

(2) Misdirection. Do not change the subject of a thread or post or a discussion.

(3) Identity. Do not pretend to be another user/member or otherwise lie about your identity.

(4) Members should take note that the public posting of a PM - private message received from another member, in part or in total is expressly forbidden and violators will be dealt with severely.

Violations of the Code of Conduct are subject to moderation in any form up to and including banning.

7. Deletion, Modification or Moving of Posts. PoliticalWrinkles.com reserves the right to remove any forum posting that its moderators consider inappropriate or in poor taste. Our decision as to what we will delete will be completely subjective. In addition, we may edit, modify, or move your posts/threads at our sole discretion and at any time without notice to you.

8. Severability. If any provision in this agreement is held to be unenforceable by a court of law or equity, this agreement shall be construed as if such provision did not exist and the unenforceable provision shall not be held to render any other provision or provisions of this agreement unenforceable.

9. Modification of Terms. We reserve the right to modify these terms and conditions at any time and without prior notice to you. It is your responsibility to review the Terms of Service (ToS) on a regular basis.

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There's been some confusion on rule #5 when it comes to creating a thread title, so this post is to clear it up.

Here's the rule.

5. Copyright. You may NOT submit/post any writing, pictures or any other information ("works") on our forum if by doing so you would violate the intellectual property rights of a third party. Chances are that if you did not create the works yourself --or they are not widely known as being in the public domain -- someone else has copyright protection in those works. It is your responsibility to post works that are not in violation of federal, state and international intellectual property laws. Consistent with Section 2, above, PoliticalWrinkles.com will not be responsible for your infringement.

In other words, the author (or editors of the site) came up with the title of the source so credit should be given by using that same title.

An exception to that rule would be where the poster wishes to talk about something further down in the article unrelated to the article's main thrust.

But in any case, the title of a thread where an article is posted should NEVER do any of the following.

1) Personally attack individual members or a group of members for their political or personal beliefs.

2) Meant to inflame instead of debate

3) Is vague on the thread's reason for existing. ("I Told You So" and "Check This Out" are NOT reasonable thread titles).

Rule #7 is still in full effect.

7. Deletion, Modification or Moving of Posts. PoliticalWrinkles.com reserves the right to remove any forum posting that its moderators consider inappropriate or in poor taste. Our decision as to what we will delete will be completely subjective. In addition, we may edit, modify, or move your posts/threads at our sole discretion and at any time without notice to you.

At any time, the staff may change the title of the thread to reflect the actual content and not the opinion of the member posting. That is what posts are for in the first place.

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New rule

When reposting someone's post to re-interpret what you believe they mean or simply giving your opinion by changing something, include the "strikethrough code" and make sure you write the word "fixed" (and not an abbreviation) so the members know you're not being malicious.

This was brought about recently because the intent isn't always obvious. Sometimes, intentional or not, a member will attempt to give their opinion by quoting another member's posts by making subtle or direct changes, but doesn't make that fact obvious enough to the rest of the members, who now think that a member posted something they didn't.

In order to alleviate that confusion, this rule has been instituted. Members MUST make the changes obvious in order to insure that there is no deceit going on.

Here is the "strikethrough code" used...

[strike ]text struck[/strike ]

If you remove the spaces after the "e" in both occurrences of the word "strike", it code makes the words look like this...

text struck

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New rule

"Signatures may not mention, reference, or use the words (twisted or not) of another member without permission of that member expressed through Personal Message to the Moderation Staff."

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From time to time, we receive complaints of threads going off topic.

So here is the official position of the staff.

Sometimes, threads go off-topic...It happens.

There are multiple reasons for this...They include...

1) A member intentionally takes the thread off-topic because they simply don't want the subject matter discussed.

2) A member finds a side-issue very important and discusses it intently

3) A member makes a comparison of the topic with a previous event, and then that event starts getting discussed.

4) A member only reads the last couple of posts and responds to them instead of what the original topic was about, increasing the distance from the OP.

Reason number one is unacceptable. It has been moderated in the past and we will continue to do so.

All other examples (and ones not mentioned) are NOT MODERABLE.

It is NOT our job to keep topics on-track, nor would we want that job. Topics can ebb and floe, and when they do naturally, there is no reason for staff to get involved from a moderation standpoint.

I understand that when a thread is started, the member who started it feels it important to keep that track straight, and may even feel personally offended when "their" thread gets sidetracked, but it is incumbant upon that member (or others) to swing the discussion back to the original reasoning. It is NOT the staff's job.