Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 1/27/11

Dormant threads from the high school sections are preserved here.
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Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 1/27/11

Post by millionwaves »

Welcome to The Quizbowl Resource Center. We're very happy to have you in the online quizbowl community. Before you start posting, pleasetake the time to review these rules so that you know what is expected of you as a member of the forums. Our goal is to maintain a high level of respectful discourse on the boards, and knowing and following the rules will help make you a valuable participant in the discussion.

An important change to the previous rules is that (aside from AHAN Jr.) these rules apply both to the college and high school sections, except where noted.

1) This is the most important rule for these forums. Remember that your dialogue here corresponds to a real life interaction with the community of people who post here, and that you will likely see them in real life at some point, perhaps soon. Post accordingly.

2) Do not discuss specific questions and answers from tournaments that will be running at other sites at later dates in any thread. To clarify, "discussing" questions involves posting anything on this board that will give players at future iterations of the tournament an unfair advantage over someone who has not read your post. It is the responsibility of each individual poster to make sure that a set is clear before discussing it. If you aren't sure, don't post.

3) Your posts must follow the basic rules of logical argumentation. This notably prevents you from posting "you're wrong" without providing a reason for your claim.

3a) You cannot use your region as a basis for argumentation on this board - specifically, saying "We don't do things that way here, so we're not going to have a logical discussion about it" is not permitted.

3b) This is a discussion board for all regions of quizbowl, not a collection of self contained message boards for discussions of individual regions of quizbowl. Thus, people from all regions are encouraged to discuss the state of quizbowl everywhere and you cannot imply that people should stop discussing something simply because they're not from the region in which it takes place. Further, you cannot accuse others of criticizing practices in your region only because they have a bias against your region.

4) Your posts must follow the basic rules of polite conversation. Especially, do not utilize ad hominem attacks in your posts. When you're posting to disagree with someone, make sure someone hasn't already made the same post that you're intending to post.

5) Forum moderating decisions are not up for public discussion on this message board. However, you're more than welcome to e-mail me about them, and I'll attempt to respond punctually.

6) Post using reasonable spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

7) Don't post any personal information (in this context, that means phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and the like) about other people that they have not already made public.

8) Don’t be an idiot and use these forums in a way that will cause me to ban you out of necessity. Especially, do not discuss doing anything illegal. Similarly, don't threaten spurious lawsuits.

9) If you are not a moderator or an administrator, do not tell anyone how to post on these message boards. Do not publicly call them out on breaking the rules, do not tell them not to disagree with you, and do not engage in meta-posting about other posters' tone. If you notice someone breaking the rules, please use the warning system to alert a board staff member rather than trying to call out the offender yourself. Moderators and administrators will handle enforcing board rules and keeping arguments under control.

10) Edits are currently enabled on the board, but they may not always be enabled. Do not under any circumstances edit your post to change its meaning or the meaning of a subsequent post that responds to it.

11) You must enable a signature which contains at least your first name and relevant affiliation. All board accounts must correspond to a single person; no "team accounts" are permitted.

12) This rule does not apply in the college section. No profanity is allowed.

13) You may not do anything to try to stifle discussion on this board, excepting solely attempting to stop discussion of questions from a tournament that's still running. You cannot hold your tournament up as exempt from criticism (though you may post about extenuating circumstances, I suppose), and you especially cannot tell people not to talk about something, especially quizbowl. That would defeat entirely the purpose of having a discussion board about quizbowl, and it will not be tolerated.

14) Avoid making content-free posts on the board. In particular, quoting another post and providing no additional information ("empty-quoting") is forbidden, but anyone who repeatedly makes pointless posts in serious threads will be subject to warnings and, possibly, tempbans from board staff.
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 6/16/09

Post by millionwaves »

Other Important Guidelines

A) As part of our spam prevention system, users must have their first seven posts approved by the moderation team. Once you have reached your seventh post and have shown that you understand how to use the forum, your posts will no longer require approval.

B) Tournament attendees should follow the directions posted in the announcement regarding how to register.Particularly, simply posting in the thread isn't enough to expect that someone will register you. Similarly, one post is usually sufficient to indicate your interest in a tournament and/or your desire for teammates - if you'd like to use the board to find teammates for an open event, it's better to start a separate thread from the tournament announcement.

C) When posting images, make sure they are no wider or taller than 600 by 600. If you need to show a larger image, make sure you include a hyperlink rather than a direct link, i.e. use the URL tag instead of the img tag.
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 6/16/09

Post by millionwaves »

E-mail Policy

Your email address is displayed by default to all users of this forum; however, it can be invididually disabled in the User Control Panel. Please do not insert words into your email address that are not there; this prevents us from being able to automatically contact you through the boards. Please make sure your email address is up to date so that you can reset your password and receive board notifications.

Your email address will never be sold to marketers. The only circumstance under which your email will be given to someone else is if they need to get in touch with you for a legitimate reason that does not involving selling you something (unless this is something you've already agreed to have sold to you).

There are NO active email addresses at the hsquizbowl.org domain. Any e-mail you receive from "[email protected]", "[email protected]", or any other such address is FAKE and should be deleted on sight.

For spam protection, any accounts associated with Russian or French IPs or e-mail addresses will be deleted on sight. If you are a legitimate quizbowl participant who plans on posting from Russia or France, let me know ahead of time.
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 6/16/09

Post by millionwaves »

Board Staff

Chief Administrator

Fred Morlan (Fred).

Administrators

Mike Sorice (Captain Sinico).
Matt Weiner (Matt Weiner).
Rob Carson (Ukonvasara).
Pat Freeburn (Pat)

Moderators

Andy Watkins (Crazy Andy Watkins).
Andrew Hart (theMoMa).
Susan Ferrari (myamphigory).
Jeff Hoppes (bt_green_warbler).
Chris Ray (DumbJaques).
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 6/16/09

Post by millionwaves »

As we all know, making the stats from your tournament public in a timely manner after your tournament concludes is one of the best ways to make everyone on hsquizbowl think you're a really responsible TD. But we've seen a recent trend of people uploading them as attachments to their posts, and that's not ideal for a variety of reasons.

Luckily, the incomparable Jeffrey Hill has made this awesome service available. It's super easy to use, and it makes it really easy for the rest of us to see how awesome (or not) the teams at your site did. Please use this instead of attaching stats to your posts in the future.

Thanks, everyone!
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 6/16/09

Post by millionwaves »

The rules have been updated above! For your convenience, here are the new rules:

This is the most important new rule: You cannot do anything to try to stifle discussion on this board. You cannot hold your tournament up as exempt from criticism (though you may post about extenuating circumstances, I suppose), and you especially cannot tell people not to talk about something, especially quizbowl. That would defeat entirely the purpose of having a discussion board about quizbowl, and it will not be tolerated.

As a clarification to Rule 3, and sort of as a continuation to the above rule, you cannot use your, or others', region as a basis for argumentation on this board - specifically, saying "We don't do things that way here, so we're not going to have a logical discussion about it" is not permitted.

I want to say something, briefly, about the spirit in which we're making these rules. This board is for the discussion of all quizbowl tournaments by intelligent, responsible individuals. We're here to encourage discussion, not to stifle it.

As they've been posted in the rules thread, these rules are now enforceable by warnings and, if necessary, tempbans.
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 2/7/10

Post by millionwaves »

I'm pleased to announce that we're welcoming Jeff Hoppes to our forum staff as a moderator!
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 2/7/10

Post by millionwaves »

Please note that there has been a slight change to the language of the new rule about regionalism, in an effort to clarify its original purpose. It now reads "your, and others' regions."
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 2/7/10

Post by millionwaves »

Another change to the rule about regionalism has been posted.
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 2/7/10

Post by millionwaves »

Effective immediately, I am resigning as the Chief Administrator of hsquizbowl.org. Fred Morlan has graciously agreed to take over as the interim Chief Administrator until PACE appoints a new permanent administrator.
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Re: Forum Rules and Important Information, Updated 2/7/10

Post by AKKOLADE »

millionwaves wrote:Effective immediately, I am resigning as the Chief Administrator of hsquizbowl.org. Fred Morlan has graciously agreed to take over as the interim Chief Administrator until PACE appoints a new permanent administrator.
i didn't vote for him :mad:
Fred Morlan
University of Kentucky CoP, 2017
International Quiz Bowl Tournaments, CEO, co-owner
former PACE member, president, etc.
former hsqbrank manager, former NAQT writer & subject editor, former hsqb Administrator/Chief Administrator
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