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SFPA Forum Rules & Guidelines

SFPA maintains an official moderated message board called the SFPA Forum. While there are several other message boards, listserves and online communities of SFPA members, the SFPA Forum is the only official message board sanctioned by SFPA and moderated by appointed SFPA volunteers. When participating in this forum, please follow the rules and guidelines below.

Forum Rules

All postings will display courtesy and consideration for other members. The following will not be tolerated on this board:

Ad hominem attacks. Feel free to disagree politely, but keep the subject of your disagreement to the topic, not the person.

Prejudices against any group of people for factors including but not limited to: race, age, sex, gender, sexual preference, national or cultural identity, disability.

Assertions that any subgenre served by SFPA is inherently superior to any other. (Assertions that you yourself prefer one to another are fine.)

Assertions of the moral authority of one's own opinion; in other words, "I think that -- " is fine, "You should think that --" is not.

To avoid copyright issues, private outside messages and published material are not to be reposted here without the author's permission, except for the sort of small excerpts of published material that are commonly quoted to illustrate a point in newspapers, theses, and the like. Board messages remain the property of the author, and should not be copied elsewhere without the author's permission.

Violators of SFPA message board rules may be placed on moderation status, may have their message board privileges suspended for 30 days, or may be banned from using the message board at the discretion of the moderators. Every effort will be made not to revoke message board privileges, but repeat offenses will not be tolerated.

Forum Guidelines

Remember, in any public Internet forum, you do not know who will be reading your posts. Therefore, it is not wise to post your home address or other personal information that could be misused. Posting your own information is left to your own discretion; posts containing personal information about others will be deleted.

Remember that your readers here may include children and quite certainly will include those of other cultures. It is wise to choose your words carefully, to avoid accidental offense.

Please take the time to read over your message before posting. Errors in spelling or grammar can be distracting to readers trying to get the sense of what you're saying.

Some of your readers here have been online for a *loooong* time, and sometimes feel we've seen every Internet forward and joke out there. Therefore, please keep those to the appropriate areas. In addition, virus warnings and other warnings which have the potential to cause much upset should be verified before being sent on. You can check whether viruses are real at sites such as http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes or http://www.symantec.com, and can check out other stories (such as telephone scams and other cautions) at the Snopes Urban Legends site.

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