Hi everyone,

Welcome to the Global Fellowship forums community. Below are our Term and Conditions for using the forum:

Maturity
Posts that don't contain constructive comment aren't acceptable here. All posts should be considered, civil and well thought through. Robust debate is welcome; slanging matches are not. Please back up and explain your opinions; if you like or dislike something, please say why so that others may join in the discussion!

Respect
Don't insult or personally attack another member. Don't dismiss the views of other members; if you disagree with someone, please post a well thought out, considered response. Treat other users with respect at all times. You do not have the right to attack someone for having an opinion other than your own; if someone disagrees with you, they're entitled to provided they do it respectfully.

Baiting
Don't wind people up to try to get them to say something in violation of the Terms and Conditions. It's obvious to other users and to us, doesn't work (we evaluate other posts and wider context when dealing with alerts), and backfires.

Homophobic/Anti-gay/Racist Posts
You must not post messages that are vulgar, crude, sexist, racist, homophobic or otherwise offensive.

Libel
Don't post anything that might be libellous.

Bringing problems to our attention
If someone posts something you feel violates our Terms and Conditions, alert it and ignore it. However well-intentioned, trying to deal with it yourself on the board only ends up causing more disruption. Please note that sending in an alert does not mean you're getting someone banned: forum support evaluates the post and surrounding context before deciding what, if any, action to take.

Don't threaten people
People can only get themselves banned - they do it by violating the Terms and Conditions. Threatening people with "the moderators" or with bans doesn't help anything, however well-intentioned it may be. Alert-and-ignore.

We don't ban people without cause
First "offences," particularly if they are not especially severe, often result in a simple off-board warning. (On the other hand, if people are disruptive or posting a large volume of comments against our rules, a temporary ban would be more usual.) If people fail to take heed of warnings, temporary bans of progressively longer durations are used. However, once it becomes clear that someone is unwilling to use our site within our rules, they are banned permanently. We issue permanent bans only as a last resort to protect our community. This is a free service, and our forums are privately owned and operated. Every time you use our site, you're agreeing to our rules; if you don't agree to them, you may not use our site.

Advertising
You're welcome to link to your homepage in the homepage field of your profile. We only permit links to other websites in threads when relevant to a pre-existing discussion or when they refer to an interesting specific article.

Duplication
Do a quick search before posting to make sure you're not duplicating discussion elsewhere.

Phone numbers
Due to ICSTIS regulations we are unable to permit the publication of premium rate numbers on the forum. Please do not go around the filter to post these.

Copyright
Don't infringe copyright by reposting in full material to which you don't own the copyright. A short link and an excerpt is fine.

Feedback
Please contact Forum Support with your feedback.

Revised
These rules were most recently revised on January 9, 2009.