Greetings Witchbook people of the awesomeness!

I have run into a few isolated cases where people seem confused as to the definitions of what is an attack, what is against the rules, and so on.  I posted a news article a little while back about flaming, attacks, etc... and the reaction was that a lot of people thought "Oh my god, he needs to post that?  the site must be going down the pipes!" when I am not doing this because the site is going into the toilet, I'm doing this as preventative.  And what I'd like to do now BEFORE this becomes a problem, is to give everyone a plain english translation of the terms of use, privacy policy, etc...  Realize that this list is a plain english translation and is not as thourough as the legal speak, meaning this will NOT cover everything.

You need to remember that ALL of the following are rules that are ALREADY covered in verious places of the site's TOU, News articles, Privacy policy, Chat rules, etc...  I'm just trying to simplify by congesting it into one easy to read place for you in plain english, There is nothing new here, no changes to rules, just a translation to help you make sense of it.  I'll say again, this is NOT THE OFFICIAL RULES, the rules have NOT changed, this is the Tourguide to the rules, an explanation of the rules, something to help you understand and make sense of the rules.

Definitions:

Flaming, Personal Attacks:

A personal attack is anything negative that singles out, names, or identifies an individual, or group.  IE: saying that member X is a real [insert insult here] is very much a personal attack.  A Personal attack does not always need to have their explicit name involved.  for example "Remember that person who posted the blog about Vampires eating children but always saving files to their Mac after midnight" (forgive the sad example) Is still an identification, despite not using their name, and becomes an attack if you follow with "Well, they have been eating babies, selling enron, and skinning cats!".

 - Personal attacks are still personal attacks whether or not they are for all to see, for friends only, in chat, in a blog, in a comment, in the forums, etc...

 - If you MUST issue a personal attack, do it privately with the individual you are talking about.  And then STOP, so that it can't be considered harassment.

Harassment:

Harassment and personal attacks are often confused with one another, but they are two somewhat different things.  Never the less, They are both dealt with as being wrong on the site.  Harassment is not as public as say a personal attack.

 - Harassment can take place ANYWHERE on this site, messages, IM, Chat, Forums, Blogs, even Files, Music, videos, anything...

 - What happens OUTSIDE of witchbook, witchbook Has NO CONTROL over and will not react to.  Meaning that if someone is harassing you on MSN, we can't do anything about it, not even warning the member.

Profanity:

Profanity has changed as to how much we allow, since making the move to remove profiles under 18 (which is still coming soon by the way, end of march) Profanity has been something we are a bit more lax on.  But you have to remember that all profanity is not the same, Calling someone a B---h and simply saying what the F--k! are very different.  One is an insult that can constitute a personal attack, the other...is just funny.  The G-Rated Chat room is being mutated into a PG-13 room, meaning a bit more leniency is allowed, mild language and so on.  for hardcore chat, use the Van, where I allow everything short of cybering, or attacks/harassing, etc.

Offensive Material:

Here is one where a lot of people get confused.  Everyone knows fairly well WHAT offends them, but people tend to find a sense of entitlement that they should be able to dig 3 levels deep on a person's home computer, after breaking into their house, cracking their password, and still have a right to complain that they found something offensive.  (yes I know I'm exadurating, I'll get to the point).  If it's something that you have to read, then you have a right to complain, but if you had to navigate your way into it, then something simply offensive, well...big deal.

Let me see if I can make more sense, because I think that might not be clear.  Let's use Blogs as an example, and Forums as the contrast.  in the forums, you enter a thread to read about the topic at hand, and discuss it, every post in that thread, is something you have to read to follow the thread.  Meaning anything posted in there that may be considered offensive, is treated as such.  Where a blog, the only thing your forced to read is the Title, and the first 255 charachters.  (the little syndicated blurb under the title on the blogs list).  This means that anything after that, can be as offensive as it wants (as long as it's not under the catagory of extremely predjudiced, racist, illegal, or a personal attack, harassment, etc...) and it's no problem.

Another contrast is the COMMENTS on a blog.  If someone posts a blog about how they think Odin was really a gay sailor with a jesus fixation, you know this person is wrong, but if they posted it in a blog, they had every right to do so, and posting in their blog's comments a rude and angry retort will put YOU in the wrong, not them.  Posting comments on something forces a person to read your "offensive opinion" on THEIR stuff, that's "Forcing your offensive opinion on others".  But if you post your own blog, and DO NOT reference or mention theirs (to avoid this being a personal attack), but simply post what you believe is the truth regarding Odin (in our example) then you are completely in the right to do so.  In fact I say GO FOR IT!

Name Calling:

Namecalling, is something that IS considered against the rules.  Now this is one of those things that we wait until someone complains, as it's not always possible to tell the difference between playful, and painful, from the third party perspective.  Calling someone a "Fluffy Bunny", "Freak", "Idiot" these all count!  If someone asks you to stop, you stop.  If someone complains, WE will ask you to stop...if you have stopped in either of these circumstances...then there is NO PROBLEM, but if you continue...we have a problem.

Reporting something to the Admins/Moderators:

Something that isn't being done very often on Witchbook, is actually reporting issues to the admins.  I want to make this perfectly clear, WE WILL NOT LAUGH AT YOU....unless we actually think you are trying to be funny, and even then, we're trying to laugh WITH you.  The math of this is fairly simple:

 - If you DO NOT report something, then you have no right to whine about it.

 - If you DO NOT report something and then you publically attack the other person instead, and they DO report YOU....don't be surprised when your the only one who get's warned/banned.

 - If you DO report something, Don't expect us to BAN the other person immediately, for two reasons: 1. Digi isn't online 24/7, 2. if this is their first offense, we will usually just give them a warning.

 - We've been catching a lot of things ourselves.  We have received a few reports, which have been helpful, but the number of people complaining about other people TO other people, far outnumbers the number of people telling US about it.  We can't fix it if no one tells us, and just complaining to each other, and not to those who are here to help, is cowardly, and/or a reason to wonder if you are in fact more interested in just fighting back, than solving the issue.

 - Sometimes people don't want to report users because they fear the idea of getting someone else in trouble.  If it's not worth getting someone else in trouble, then it's not really a problem yet is it?  Or would you prefer to wait until you explode, cover the site in flip-out, and get YOURSELF in trouble?  No?  then report it!  You are MORE than welcome to include "I don't want to get X in trouble, but..." in your report.  Might make you feel better.

 - Some people are afraid that if they report someone, they themselves will somhow get in trouble.  Let me tell you, Please, don't worry.  The only way someone will get in trouble for reporting other people is if they REPEATEDLY do it, in a manner that suggests they are just trying to harm someone they don't like.  And even then, I'll speak with you about it BEFORE this becomes a problem.  I PROMISE not to take any action against anyone without giving them a chance to first explain, back down, or prove themselves right if I'm in that situation.  and guess what, I've never even had a problem like this occur yet, so don't worry.

Warnings, VS, WARNINGS, VS, Banning:

The Moderators and Admins here at witchbook DO track user incidents, complaints, etc...  We have a Ticketing system that does this.  Meaning we track who has been warned.  Our ticketing system is still somewhat empty, as no one has really been reporting much to us, but I've already ranted about this.  We have a few levels of action we take over issues reported.

If we find something ourselves, and it's not too terrible, we might let it slide until/unless someone complains.  A mild bit of profanity for example.

The next level of from that is a "Soft" warning.  A Soft warning is one that we don't log, or record.  We are essentially not really warning so much as simply informing.

If we receive a user report/complaint, we tend to issue a "Hard" warning, this is a warning that is logged.  No harm or real action is taken, but for almost all first offenses that are properly processed, we DO log it (assuming it was legit).

Finally, if our Hard Warnings go unheeded (on the 2nd or 3rd offence, depending on the severity of the issue) we will issue a BAN.  It might be for a week, for a month, or for this lifetime, again that depends on the severity of the issue.  Bans are only issued by the admin (whereas warnings can come from moderators).

Impersonating Moderators, Admins, etc..

Admittantly this one we've never come across, but it's in the legal-speak, so I'll mention it.  If you pretend to be a moderator, an admin, or a community leader when you are NOT, then you may be warned, or banned from the site.

Incitement to riot, or rather, Trolling for War:

These are people who always post the most contraversial topics they can find.  There's nothing in the rules explicitly saying this is wrong, so long as they never violate a rule in doing so, we can't ban them....wait...yes we can, because there is one policy in our TOU that allows for us to action against people who intentionally walk the line ALL THE TIME just to see how far they can push things without getting banned.  It's called "We reserve the right to terminate your membership at any time at our discression without giving express explanation as to our reasons".  This means that while we do lay out our rules pretty plainly, we do reserve the "right" to clean our system of those who may be technically obeying the rules, but who are always pushing things over and over.  Granted if you are NOT breaking any rules, it will take a LOT before we do this, and you will receive warnings ahead of time "meaning no one need fear us just up and banning them without warning or reason".

Spamming:

Spamming on Witchbook is handled one of two ways.  If you are a new member who has been on the site less than 48 hours, and Spamming is the only thing you have done, it's an instant ban.  HOWEVER, if you have posted other things, participated in the site, you've proven you are human, and not a spam bot, as such you have earned rights to a warning, possibly two, before we resort to banning.

Hacking:

If any member is cought willfully attempting to circumvent witchbook's security, privacy, or similar components, they will be Banned, and depending on the severity of the issue, they may be reported to Law enforcement, along with a full report and copy of their actions, IP address, Audit Trail, Geo-IP records, complete profile and message history and so on.  We take this very seriously.  but don't fear, We also take "False Accusation" very seriously, we won't do this unless we are certain.

Legal Issues:

For Legal issues regarding witchbook, Please contact webmaster@witchbook.net.  Whether it's a request for us to take something down, a request for information, or a copyright issue, anything legal should go through our webmaster contact so that we can read and action it as soon as possible.  Failure to do this represents a lack of urgency in the request.

HOW-TO:

How to Report a member who is Attacking/Harassing/etc...

If a member is harassing you, causing issues, posting offensive content where it should NOT be, then there are two ways to PROPERLY report the issue.

1. using the menu at the top of the site, Find the "Help & Support" menu, and under that choose "Bugs & Support"  (I'll label this less confusingly later on).  Then choose to "Open a new ticket", finally fill out the form.
2. Alternatively, you can e-mail your issue to webmaster@witchbook.net, and a ticket will be created automatically.

If you do not wish to file an "Official" complaint, then you are free to simply message Digi, but you MUST RECOGNISE that doing so is NOT considered an official report.  Chances are I'll treat it the same way, but if I don't, or I forget (because it's not logged as a ticket) then you've no right to cry about it, or point the finger at me.

How to make Tandori Chicken:

Wait...what?

How to Lodge a complaint about the site itself:

Oh wait, you didn't know you were allowed to do this?  Of course you are!  This site doesn't belong to just me, it's the community's site!  Two options:

1. using the menu at the top of the site, Find the "Help & Support" menu, and under that choose "Bugs & Support"  (I'll label this less confusingly later on).  Then choose to "Open a new ticket", finally fill out the form.
2. Alternatively, you can e-mail your issue to webmaster@witchbook.net, and a ticket will be created automatically.

Well, that all took me an hour to write, plus some time spent interpreting the legal-speak.  I'll say again, this is not a COPY of the TOU, rules, and so on, this is just a plain english EXPLANATION of them.  Do not take this as the official cannon rules, This is just the guideline to help you understand an easy, simple, safe way to follow them.

Regards,

DigitalMagick