Guidelines - commercial links/signatures/religion/politics/filter violations

A few guidelines to remember when posting on the DISboards:

Commercial Links

1. FOR SALE: For sale ads are strictly prohibited on any of the DISboards. Anyone posting such ads will have their post deleted. This same policy applies to links to your ebay/auction listings . "For sale" posts includes requests for donations (see below). In addition, "Vote for me" posts are not permitted on the DIS. This includes requests for support in an online contest, sweepstakes, lottery or other event designed to yield personal gain.

7. ADVERTISING: The advertisers/sponsors who you see on the DIS are carefully chosen. While we welcome discussion of them as well as other businesses that you have information or questions about, if its determined that you are using the DIS to promote a commercial venture, you will lose your posting privileges. This includes choosing a username/signature that refers to your business. In addition, links to the company's website will be blocked. Also note that we do not want the boards to be used for solicitations or for requesting referrals. Requests for advertising can be directed to Corey@wdwinfo.com for consideration.

10. LINKS TO OTHER SITES: You are welcome to link to your web site on our boards provided that a) you are not promoting a commercial service or for-profit venture, b) you don't post primarily to promote your site and c) that you place one of these images on the home page of your web site. Before posting a link to another site, we ask that you please first check to see if the same information is available on www.wdwinfo.com.

Please remember that you agreed to these guidelines when you joined. For those in the scrapbooking forum this means:

- you can not include a link to a blog (or otherwise show) that has a link to your for profit store (digital, etsy, ebay, or any others)- in your signature or post

- when posting a layout it should not be linked back to a gallery that is part of a store or have any stores/designers listed in the credits

- you can provide information about places to find good deals/sales and such as people ask for information and you find it as long as you are not a member of a design team or designer for that store

- you may provide links to places that have freebies and no items for sale - if they have items for sale then the freebies are for advertising and links to them will not be allowed (this includes links to digital sites and ebay/etsy sites for traditional scrappers)

- if you are posting a link to your personal site then it must have a disboards link back to here as seen in item number 10 above

- due to the nature that prizes in and of themselves are commercial in nature we will have to ask everyone to stop providing prizes for challenges and instead just encourage people to do a challenge for the sake of doing the challenge (allowing the winner to host the next challenge is not a prize with commercial ties and so that is still allowed)

Violations of the above rules can result in consequences including loss of signatures, loss of ability to send or receive private messages, or even temporary or permanent revocation of your membership here.

These guidelines will be enforced by the moderators will the full support and agreement of the webmasters. Any questions or complaints about our site guidelines should be addressed to the webmasters at admin@wdwinfo.com.


Signatures

Our signature rules were written a few years ago. Back then a lot of our posters used dial up connections and the VBulletin software did not have the functionality it does now.
The old rules were difficult to understand and they took a lot of moderator time to enforce. We have developed all new rules that should be much simpler and much easier to enforce automatically.

1. Your signature will be limited in length. The program will do this
automatically and anything over the allowed length will be cut off

Explanation- the biggest complaint we recieve is that signatures are too long and it takes too long to scroll through threads. We are going to start with a height of 250 pixels, you'll see what that means when we roll this out. We may add an additional option so that a signature only appears once per page.

2. You will be limited to a total of 25 images and smilies The program
will handle this automatically

Explanation- That should be PLENTY considering the amount of space

3. All content and links must meet DIS board posting guidelines.
Signature have the same content rules as any post on the boards

Explanation- Pretty obvious I hope, this includes commercial link, links to innapropriate sites, etc etc

4. You may not have a signature that is so wide it causes the page to
expand

Explanation- This is something the software can't control. Basically the only way to do this is to have a really really wide picture. If your signature means people with a normal resolution monitor need to scroll from side to side you'll be told to remove the picture causing the issue

5. We reserve the right to remove or modify signatures that cause
issues with the boards or slow page loading. Please make sure any images in
your signature are hosted on a reliable site. Any signature that contains
malicious or harmful code will be removed immediately and the poster
sanctioned

Explanation- Most of this should be pretty obvious. One thing people might not realize is that when people complain about the boards being "slow" it may not be us at all. When the boards load a page, if it can't find an image, it can make the boards appear slow.

We will roll this out in a few days, probably Wednesday. You don't need to take any action now, but you probably will want to check your signature after this goes into effect to see how it was affected.
If you have any questions on this please post on this thread on the tech support board, I will monitor those.

The Webmasters believe that these new, simplified rules will make the boards a better place for our posters and moderators.
Thank you for being a DIS boards member!

Religion and Politics

We have worked hard to keep the DISboards a place where people can discuss any topic as long as it's not illegal or profane, and as long as the participants can behave respectfully. Unfortunately, politics and religion often seem to bring out the worst behavior in people. Even normally polite posters find these topics pushing their hot buttons, and frequently lose their cool.

This past election season has been especially bad, and the rudeness and sniping between various groups has alienated posters and exhausted our moderators.

As a result, we are announcing a new policy on the DISboards, effective immediately: POLITICS AND RELIGION are no longer acceptable topics of discussion here.

This also will extend to signatures: no political statements, logos, or slogans are permitted in signatures.

Posts and threads of a political or religious nature will be locked or deleted, and are not to be restarted. We will also be updating our site guidelines to reflect this policy.

There are many sites on the web that welcome discussion and debate of a political or religious nature, but we feel that removing these topics from the DISboards altogether is in the best interests of our members. Thank you for your support and cooperation.

 

Reminder: Filter Violations:

Just want to send out a friendly reminder to all, as we’ve all been guilty at one time or another:

Filter violations occur when a poster uses a filtered word but messes with the spelling to circumvent the word filter while leaving it recognizable: a$$, $h!t, etc. (Please forgive me for my language. ) It is also appropriate when a poster uses commonly known acronyms for profanities: ***, etc.

Again, if the word is relatively mild and the mistake is basically innocent, we'll lean toward a warning. If the outburst is angry or attacking, or the poster has had similar trouble before, it's time for points.

Thanks all for reading this reminder!!!
We really appreciate all of you visiting our cozy corner of the DIS Boards!

Creative Community Moderator Team