Forum and Community Rules

 We take great pride in our  community which is why we built this new website and forum. We hope this forum/new website will be  a friendly place to participate in. Our focus on forum rules and guidelines is one of transparency and mutual respect. We invite all users who wish to participate, give feedback, or have their say to do so!

We aim to take a transparent and common sense approach with forum rules and moderating. Before using or participating on the forums, please do familiarise yourself with the below rules and guidelines. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact a support member.

Do:

1. Post threads in the correct section
2. Ensure any threads discussing or linking to you are relevant.
3. Get to know your fellow members and peers! Help out new users with any questions, be active, and share your feedback.
4. Please offer respect to your fellow users,  and moderators. Refrain from personal attacks, and refrain from posting swear words on the forum as children will also be on here. If threads become personal or heated towards a user, or moderator the thread will be locked/removed and further actions may be taken.
5. Send any  issues or problems you have to support. Support checks the forums when they can, but the only way to guarantee they’ll see and resolve your issue is to contact them directly.

Do NOT:

1. Spam. These thread will be disabled and users warned and/or banned.
2. Duplicate threads will be locked to keep the forums clear, please do a search before posting a new thread and check out the recent threads from the past few days. There is a good chance the topic has already been started.
3. Self promotion is not allowed on the forums, for examples and clarification, see the below section title A Note on Self Promotion. In addition, promoting outside services or business is not allowed on the forums. If you want to promote your business in Ballygowan please contact one of the moderators.
4. Post any threads discussing or link to piracy and/or inappropriate sites. These do more damage than good and will be locked or disabled. Report any copyright, piracy, or violations
5. Go extremely off the topic of the thread in question. We understand the forums are a fun place and a little off topic chat never hurt anyone, but the mods may step in to steer the direction if needed.
6. Discuss or link to offensive topics, such as pornography, violent themes, sexism, racism or other discriminatory subjects, even as a “joke”. Users doing so will receive a warning and further action if needed. Threads of a political or religious nature are not appropriate for this cross community website.
7. Post or solicit any kind of racism, flaming, trolling, harassment, discrimination of any kind, or behavior deemed by the website moderators to be intentionally abusive or inappropriate will result in an immediate warning. Further violations can escalate to account freezes and bans.

Anti-censorship, Pro Constructive Feedback!
We value the feedback and input we get from the community about this website and this forum. Seriously. As long as posts abide by forum rules and guidelines, we’ll step back, take note and respond to input or feedback given. If you have any issues or something you’d like to discuss privately please do not hesitate to contact. Our Community Mods are here to help and to steer the conversation and give any input needed. If you have questions about the forums let them know!

Our Warning and Forum Ban Policy
We will temporarily or permanently ban members from the forums for repeated rule breaches, including our policies on trolling or any other form of consistent disruptive behavior. Forum bans will usually be temporary and will only be used when other alternatives have already been looked at and have not been successful. To avoid disruption to your forum privileges, please observe the rules in this document at all times and always follow staff and moderators direction. Moderators will report serious rule infractions and a warning or forum ban may result. If your account has been banned (temporarily or permanently), you will still be able to browse the forums, but not be able to comment or post new threads. You will still be able to comment on items and access to other site services will be maintained. Support will contact you at your registered email address in the event that your account has restrictions placed on it with further information.

Community Moderators
Community Moderators are admin members of the forum who have volunteered to help monitor the forums. The mods role on the forums is to provide users with any assistance they may need and to ensure forum rules are followed. Mods are here to help you and treat you with respect, we do ask that you also remain respectful towards them.

Our Community Moderators are as follows:

• General Moderator – SHughes
• Moderators – CatCullen, Charlene Lappin

A Note on Self Promotion
Because of the nature of the Ballygowan website, authors are expected to understand and respect the fact that using the forum to post links to external websites may be subject to scrutiny and deleted if felt it does not benefit the forum or viewers of this site.

Have Fun!
Lastly, we encourage you to above all have fun, get to know your community members, and enjoy all the forums have to offer. It’s a friendly place with plenty of talented people and we’d love to see you participate!