Your membership agreement has changed!

[Assyriankey]

Hi all, I modified your membership agreement today.  I removed the parts that are struck out and added the three words that are underlined.

Our new membership agreement is as follows:

You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this forum.

Note that it is impossible for the staff or the owners of this forum to confirm the validity of posts. Please remember that we do not actively monitor the posted messages, and as such, are not responsible for the content contained within. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information presented. The posted messages express the views of the author, and not necessarily the views of this forum, its staff, its subsidiaries, or this forum's owner. Anyone who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to notify an administrator or moderator of this forum immediately. The staff and the owner of this forum reserve the right to remove objectionable content, within a reasonable time frame, if they determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, please realize that they may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately. This policy applies to member profile information as well.

You remain solely responsible for the content of your posted messages. Furthermore, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the owners of this forum, any related websites to this forum, its staff, and its subsidiaries. The owners of this forum also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this forum.

You have the ability, as you register, to choose your username. We advise that you keep the name appropriate. With this user account you are about to register, you agree to never give your password out to another person except an administrator, for your protection and for validity reasons. You also agree to NEVER use another person's account for any reason.  We also HIGHLY recommend you use a complex and unique password for your account, to prevent account theft.

After you register and login to this forum, you will be able to fill out a detailed profile. It is your responsibility to present clean and accurate information. Any information the forum owner or staff determines to be inaccurate or vulgar in nature will be removed, with or without prior notice. Appropriate sanctions may be applicable.

Please note that with each post, your IP address is recorded, in the event that you need to be banned from this forum or your ISP contacted. This will only happen in the event of a major violation of this agreement or our rules.

Also note that the software places a cookie, a text file containing bits of information (such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is ONLY used to keep you logged in/out. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to your computer.

Important: If you are not sent an activation link by email within a few minutes of registering, then your account will need to be activated manually. The could happen in as little as 2 minutes but no longer than a day.  After this happens, you will be able to log in to the forum.  Only rarely is a manual activation required.

If any of these changes are an issue for you then please let me know privately (in this thread is good too!) and we'll work something out.

[Vynn]

Why was it changed?

[Auz]

I approve of the changes. The new Agreement is to be applied retrospectively, yes?

[Assyriankey]

Why was it changed?

To fix an oversight which a recent post of Laet's alerted us to.

It is our intention to ban members for violations of the member agreement.

Leaving those conditions in the member agreement meant that our rules were largely irrelevant in the scheme of things.  And worse - that members should be banned for fairly trivial offenses.

FYI:  Those conditions, now removed, were part of the default member agreement supplied with the SMF forum software.

[Assyriankey]

I approve of the changes. The new Agreement is to be applied retrospectively, yes?

That is the intention.  Is this fair to do?  The alternative is to ask every existing member to either agree to these changes or forfeit their account.

[JustMyron]

Is there a clause that says "you agree to be bound by any changes to this agreement" and specifies how notice of those changes is to be given? If not, then that should probably go in there as well. As for whether it's fair, I'd say so, provided you do what you can to make sure everyone knows about the change. How about sending out a PM to everyone? Legally, notice is deemed to have been given in the real world when a letter has been posted to the principal place of residence (or when a fax or electronic communication has been received. NOTE: The specific law may vary depending on country and I'm not a lawyer, but that's my understanding of the general concept and its application in Canada). So sending out a PM should be treated roughly the same, I suppose, and would cover your butt in case of any trouble.

[Auz]

Fair, yes.

But it raises the question of abuse of power. All the changes should be run past the existing membership to determine if they are A) Required B) Just and C) Appropriate.

Otherwise, what is to stop a change to what is essentially the constitution of this joint?

[JustMyron]

Well, it's not really a constitution, as those are focused on how a government can operate, the kinds of rules it can and can't make, and the composition of it. The membership agreement is more a "Cover your ass" document such that if anyone does anything really bad and there is legal trouble, they can't claim "but I didn't know that wasn't allowed!" and then the forum owners get in trouble for implicitly allowing, say, someone's copyrighted photo of their cat to be linked to when they didn't want, or kiddie porn to be distributed, or something. The membership agreement shifts responsibility on to the users.

It's like those video sharing sites which say "you agree not to use this software to download copyrighted material". A different purpose entirely from a constitution.

[Assyriankey]

An astute member has brought to my attention that the following text was part of the member agreement when they signed up at IGI 2.5 months ago and that it is not present in our current version.  I don't know how this came to be but I likely inadvertently deleted it somehow.

Please note that the forum software stores personal messages (PM's) from your message inbox and outbox in a database.  This database can be directly accessed by the administrators of this forum therefore it is strongly recommended that you do not send private information to other members.  If you do send or receive private information via the forum PM system you can permanently remove it from the database by deleting the message from your inbox or outbox.

[Assyriankey]

Hot off the press...

You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this forum.

You remain solely responsible for the content of your posted messages. Furthermore, you agree to indemnify and hold blameless the owners of this forum, any related websites to this forum, its staff, and its subsidiaries. The owners of this forum also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this forum.

You have the ability, as you register, to choose your username. We advise that you keep the name appropriate. With this user account you are about to register, you agree to never give your password out to another person except an administrator, for your protection and for validity reasons. You also agree to NEVER use another person's account for any reason.  We also HIGHLY recommend you use a complex and unique password for your account, to prevent account theft.

Please note that with each post, your IP address is recorded, in the event that you need to be banned from this forum or your ISP contacted. This will only happen in the event of a major violation of this agreement or our rules.

Also note that the software places a cookie, a text file containing bits of information (such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is ONLY used to keep you logged in/out. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to your computer.

Please note that the forum software stores personal messages (PM's) from your message inbox and outbox in a database.  This database can be directly accessed by the administrators of this forum therefore it is strongly recommended that you do not ever PM private information to other members.  If you do send or receive private information via the forum PM system you can permanently remove it from the database by deleting the message from your inbox or outbox.

Important: If you are not sent an activation link by email within a few minutes of registering, then your account will need to be activated manually. The could happen in as little as 2 minutes but no longer than a day.  After this happens, you will be able to log in to the forum.  Only rarely is a manual activation required.

I think that every member should be notified of these changes via PM/email (as suggested above).

[Auz]

Aye... is there a mass mail feature in SMF? Or is it a manual click-fest of a job?

[Son of Man]

Aye... is there a mass mail feature in SMF? Or is it a manual click-fest of a job?

For admins and mods, there is a window with check boxes for each member group they wish to send pm's to.

[Assyriankey]

Aye... is there a mass mail feature in SMF? Or is it a manual click-fest of a job?

For admins and mods, there is a window with check boxes for each member group they wish to send pm's to.

Every member just got spammed :)

[LaetusAtheos]

I have a related question...is it true that admins can read the information on the database?  I thought it was encrypted and the only way to read member pm's was to log on using their accounts (which I know is possible if the password is changed then forced to reset).  I just wonder because when there were some issue over at wwgha another member and I were sending back and forth pm's we didn't really want the admin to read and I researched and found somthing (I think on the SMF website) that said on SMF admins can't read the PMs.

Of course, obviously since there are ways to get into a member's account as an admin then it should always be assumed that PM information is not 100% private if an admin choose or needed to access a member account.

[Assyriankey]

Hi Laet, anyone with administrator privileges on an SMF forum can read your PMs.  This process is not straight-forward and can't be done by looking directly at another member's PM inbox or outbox but it's certainly do-able.  SMF PMs are not encrypted (and never have been in any version), they are stored in exactly the same way that posts are.

[meya]

In deleting this:

"You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law."

It sounds like the Admin is now going to allow abusive, defamatory, inaccurate, vulgar, hateful and harassing posts, the same kind of posting that has forced me to leave two other forums . It makes for a much more pleasant forum environment to have SOME standards of respect and decency towards other posters.

[Assyriankey]

In deleting this:

"You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law."

It sounds like the Admin is now going to allow abusive, defamatory, inaccurate, vulgar, hateful and harassing posts, the same kind of posting that has forced me to leave two other forums . It makes for a much more pleasant forum environment to have SOME standards of respect and decency towards other posters.

Hi Meya, that was removed to allow for our rules to better govern those behaviours.  Implementing rules via a member agreement blows because any changes made to it invalidate the members' agreement with it.

[meya]

In deleting this:

"You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law."

It sounds like the Admin is now going to allow abusive, defamatory, inaccurate, vulgar, hateful and harassing posts, the same kind of posting that has forced me to leave two other forums . It makes for a much more pleasant forum environment to have SOME standards of respect and decency towards other posters.

Hi Meya, that was removed to allow for our rules to better govern those behaviours.

How so?

Implementing rules via a member agreement blows because any changes made to it invalidate the members' agreement with it.

Explain what you mean by this.

[meya]

Duplicate

[Assyriankey]

In deleting this:

"You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law."

It sounds like the Admin is now going to allow abusive, defamatory, inaccurate, vulgar, hateful and harassing posts, the same kind of posting that has forced me to leave two other forums . It makes for a much more pleasant forum environment to have SOME standards of respect and decency towards other posters.

Hi Meya, that was removed to allow for our rules to better govern those behaviours.

How so?

Implementing rules via a member agreement blows because any changes made to it invalidate the members' agreement with it.

Explain what you mean by this.

Our rules already governed those behaviours so having them in the member agreement was not required.  Furthermore, we want to be able to summarily ban a member if they are ever shown to be in breach of their member agreement.  If we did not change the member agreement then it would force us to ban members for ridiculous things like saying the C word (i.e c**t) :)

Implementing rules via a member agreement means adding complexity to the enforcement of our rules.

Consider this example:

We decide to implement a new rule saying that spelling gaol as jail is not allowed under any circumstances.  If we use the member agreement to state this new rule then we can't prosecute members who use the word jail unless they have first agreed to the member agreement - all we could do in this circumstance is ban the member until they agree to the new member agreement.  Think how bad that would be?!

 

[meya]

We decide to implement a new rule saying that spelling gaol as jail is not allowed under any circumstances.  If we use the member agreement to state this new rule then we can't prosecute members who use the word jail unless they have first agreed to the member agreement - all we could do in this circumstance is ban the member until they agree to the new member agreement.  Think how bad that would be?!

 

By being a forum member, haven't you first had to click "yes" that you have read the agreement and agree with it?
I thought I had to do that, a member SHOULD do that.
If a member says "yes" I Will abide by the agreement, then you are justified in any action against a member who violates a part of it.
It then would help enforce, not deter from the forum rules.

Why would you want members who don't agree with and don't abide by the "Member Agreement"?

[Assyriankey]

Meya, we are discussing a situation where the rules are changed!  CRIKEY MOSES!

IF THE RULES ARE STATED IN THE MEMBER AGREEMENT AND WE THEN CHANGE THESE RULES THEN THE MEMBER'S AGREEMENT WITH THE FORUM IS NO LONGER VALID BECAUSE THE MEMBER DID NOT AGREE TO THE CHANGES - THEY ONLY AGREED TO THE PREVIOUS VERSION.

||rolleyes||