The Petra Zone Forum Guidelines

[rexreed]

Welcome to the Petra Zone, the greatest place for Petheads to talk about their favorite Christian Rock Band. When posting at The Zone please remember a few things.
A) Petra fans, or Petheads come from a variety of different countries and backgrounds. Even if we don’t agree with each other, we must respect each other when it comes to opinions. Not everything can be classified as opinions.

B) This board was created for all Petra Fans, not for your soap box or pulpit. Some apply their faith very seriously, some to a lesser degree. This varies from member, denomination or country.


Spamming
1) Spamming commercial messages is not permitted in messages or subjects
2) Consistent misuse of forums to promote an agenda. For example, if you dislike a certain song and repeatedly plaster your opinion to every post, thereby disrupting the discussion will be viewed as spamming.

Trolling- difficult to define but easy to spot
1) Trolling involves disrupting a thread by posting messages that are off-topic, rude, inciting etc. Some times topics may veer off course for one reason or another, but when an individual member repeatedly disrupts threads in a negative fashion, that member will be warned.
2) Trolling also includes creating new threads for the purpose of starting flame wars.

Personal Attacks

1) Some discussions can become heated, we will not tolerate members insulting each other in the public forums. Likewise, any racial, denomination, ethnic, gender-based insults or other forms of personal discrimination are not permitted. The strength of your arguments goes out the window once you resort to personal attacks. If you find that you often get angry when discussing a certain topic, then it might be wise to avoid public forums.
2) Sending a personal attack in a private message is viewed the same as a post on a forum.


Misc.
1) Links to obscene or explicit material is not permitted. The same goes for profanity. (this one is tricky as the definition can vary by culture)
2) Links or threads promoting the downloading or file sharing of copyrighted material is not permitted.

[rexreed]

Fixed the spelling error. As for the other points, please read over the rules again. They are as clear as we could make them. I feel like they are very open ended. This is the Petra Board for the whole world- it is not the place to argue issues like abortion. There are other places for that. Feel free to discuss them within the parameters of the forum rules. Opinions and facts get mixed up all the time. You are entitled to your own opinion- but not your own facts:)

The fact is there have been a number of actions and posts here that caused the moderators to come up with some official rules. They are not unlike what you would find at other message boards. Thanks for reading them and asking questions.

[Shell]

I think these are good guidelines. I agree, there is always room for discussion though...Civil discussion please.

Everyone has a different take on different topics. Perhaps something like "different views" or "different interpretation" might be more accurate than "opinion". And I don't think you can really know where someone stands in their faith unless you've actually spent time with them. You can't truly say you know someone just from posts on a message board.

[executioner]

All mods had at least a weeks worth of time to analyze this in the mod forum sadly though only three mods seemed to be interested in any input. Maybe this is a sign that we need to change some mods.
We as Christians are all at a different level in our faith, but we don't look at anyone here being any different than anyone else. We made these as generic as possible and looked at other forums to set the pace I guess you could say. Nothing in these rules were intended to offend anyone and were put into place to protect The Zone and its users.

[rexreed]

The forum rules have been in the works for a year.

[separateunion]

The forum rules have been in the works for a year.

Correction: I cam up with forum rules a year ago that, for some reason, were tossed aside. The rules that were posted here were written up 10 days before being posted.

Honestly, I think you need to have fairly specific rules or no rules. Saying something like "difficult to define but easy to spot" doesn't really tell us anything. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure almost every moderator has violated several of these rules multiple times. If you're going to set the rules, you'd better abide by them yourself.

Also, I feel as if some of the rules and some of the actions by the moderators were enacted specifically against the actions of certain people, fair or unfair. That's a bad way to operate. You can't knee jerk react because one guy goes nuts on the board or because you disagree with him and you want to use your power to shut him down. The rules should be fair across the board and not made specifically to corral certain people you don't like or you disagree with.

[petraman]

I just don't know what to say when the zone becomes more stress than fun.

[rexreed]

Hmm SU. This is the section about trolling.
Trolling- difficult to define but easy to spot
1) Trolling involves disrupting a thread by posting messages that are off-topic, rude, inciting etc. Some times topics may veer off course for one reason or another, but when an individual member repeatedly disrupts threads in a negative fashion, that member will be warned.
2) Trolling also includes creating new threads for the purpose of starting flame wars.

So you see the part about being "difficult to define..." isn't a rule. I think that trolling is explained in lines # 1 and 2.

The mods have been working on rules since there was a lot of discourse after Classic Petra was announced.

[Shell]

Hey SU. It's been awhile.

My take: This wasn't about disagreeing with or not liking someone. This person was abusive towards people THEY didn't happen to like or disagreed with, both in thread comments and by PM. I'm all for sharing different views, you can learn a lot that way. That is what message boards are for. However, that does not include blindly accepting abusive behavior. Someone has to do something and set boundaries. There should be guidelines, and yes, they should apply to everyone.

This isn't the only message board that has issues with things getting out of hand sometimes by the way. It isn't unusual for things to get heated sometimes on message boards; I've seen it happen on other message boards too. The Internet can bring out the worst in people. Just an observation.

I do think there should be at least one warning before actually banning though.

[Dan]

I agree there doesn't really need to be any rules.. maybe just guidelines.

[separateunion]

My take: This wasn't about disagreeing with or not liking someone.

At times, for certain mods, it has been.

This person was abusive towards people THEY didn't happen to like or disagreed with, both in thread comments and by PM.

I'm not arguing that the person in question shouldn't have been banned. I'm arguing that hastily throwing rules up because one person was abusive is a knee jerk reaction. We shouldn't be handling how we respond to possible abuses in a reactionary manner. There have been other bannings, thread deletions and editing that have occured unfairly because a mod was having a knee jerk, emotional reaction rather than being objective.

However, that does not include blindly accepting abusive behavior.

No one is doing this.

Someone has to do something and set boundaries. There should be guidelines, and yes, they should apply to everyone.

I agree, but the boundaries that have been set are so vague, they don't mean much and could easily be abused. Like I said, the way the rules are written now, it might be better to have no rules at all.

[Shell]

Okay, you bring up some valid points. Any suggestions on how to make the guidelines less vague?

[rexreed]

How vague are they? They cover a few things that are common to most boards.

[adpetrafan]

I caught up reading this stuff and tried to reply to the other post about it only to find that it was locked. Somehow I was not surprised...

"Swift justice? Growing resentment?" I too felt like this quote. One of the most bitter and negative people on this forum is an admin. And now I find that one of the best contributors here, who used to be an admin has been banned?

From my perspective, it all stinks... I seriously doubt this message will not be deleted, and there is a good chance I will be banned too. So be it. I have felt mildly threatened by several people in power since I joined here. Now it seems they have moved to a new level. So much for a fun place to discuss a great band.

[p-freak]

I caught up reading this stuff and tried to reply to the other post about it only to find that it was locked. Somehow I was not surprised...

"Swift justice? Growing resentment?" I too felt like this quote. One of the most bitter and negative people on this forum is an admin. And now I find that one of the best contributors here, who used to be an admin has been banned?

From my perspective, it all stinks... I seriously doubt this message will not be deleted, and there is a good chance I will be banned too. So be it. I have felt mildly threatened by several people in power since I joined here. Now it seems they have moved to a new level. So much for a fun place to discuss a great band.

I found it kind of premature that the other thread in which SU made solid valid points was suddenly locked. I fully agree with Matthew and SU about the rules being vague. They can be interpreted in many different ways.

I'm surprised to read that the measure of banning people seems to be taken up so lightly. I have no idea who's being banned and why and that lack of transparency is a problem. If moderators decide to ban someone, they need to explain it to the rest of us and give good backing and reasons for doing so. I've never seen something like that and apparently still people are being banned. So who exactly have been banned and why? And I would also suggest that people can only be banned if it's a unanimous decision by all moderators. And just for my information, who are exactly moderators at the moment and how has that been decided?

I'm hoping we can continue this conversation, because some respected members of the zone have made some very valid posts in this thread.