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Hello and welcome to RO! Rules... who needs 'em, eh? Unfortunately, some people tend to use the lack of rules as an excuse to treat others badly. In the past, we have seen people spam, troll, create flame wars, attempt to embarrass and disclose private information about other members, and generally create the atmosphere of a poorly-written soap opera - some doing so in the name of free speech! This was not our intention when we created RO. We have devised some simple guidelines to help make your stay here as enjoyable as possible. (Special thanks to our friends at Atlas F1 for helping us develop them!) We hope you will find these terms reasonable, and keep them in mind whenever you post. If you have any suggestions for further improvement of these guidelines, please email RO admin. Please read and understand the following before posting on any of RO's forums:

• Moderation of posts - RO reserves the right to delete or edit any post which is deemed counterproductive to our goal. This does not mean we will edit and delete posts with wild abandon, but that we can and will exercise our right to do so when it is neccesary. At what point it becomes neccesary is at the discretion of the moderator of each respective forum.

There are some who believe that all written word should be left alone for the sake of free speech. Some also believe that all conversation is an organic process, and that discussion should be allowed to run it's course without interference. While we respect those views, we cannot let RO go unchecked. We believe that antagonistic behaviour (such as personal insult) can be very detrimental to the free exchange of ideas.

Experience has shown that insults always inspire more insults, and as a result inhibit productive discussion. When an insult-fest occurs in a thread, there are negative consequences. Some readers are discouraged from contributing to the original topic, anticipating that they will also become the target of insults. Others may feel obliged to take a side and jump into the fray, adding kerosene to the fire. Once this happens, it becomes very difficult to return to the original topic of the thread. The exchange of thoughts, ideas, and experience comes to a grinding halt, and the topic of the thread no longer indicates what is contained in that thread. This is inconveniencing and frustrating to anyone who hopes to glean information or participate in that thread. Once a thread has decayed to the extent that it becomes irrelevant to the vast majority of readers, it becomes a signpost to everyone that we are collectively incapable of intelligent discussion. That is not the way we want the rest of the world to perceive RO; hopefully the reader feels the same.
 

Members are always welcome to inquire why a post was deleted or edited by directly emailing the moderator. If you don't know which moderator edited or deleted your post, you should e-mail RO admin to find out.. Under no circumstances should you start a discussion about it in the forum or thread itself. Such action would serve no purpose, as moderators will not respond to such publicly. It merely instigates pointless arguments over how RO should be run. This point needs to be clear: "how RO should be run" is not open for public debate. Members can ALWAYS make suggestions (and RO has proved responsive to those who have made reasonable complaints or suggestions to us directly) but public demands and challenges to the way this place is run will not be allowed. RO is a private service. We are not public officials, and sadly (or happily), you do not get the chance to elect any of us.

• Warning and Bans - These will ALWAYS be carried out privately, and remain the business of the admins and the poster involved. No other member will receive any information about this, including when he himself was the offended party. I can understand that some here think that justice must also be seen, however those who adhere to that are missing out on a very important point: we are not here to pass judgment nor educate anyone. Absolutely no one here is our 'pupil', 'disciple' or 'subject'.

We carry out the rules that govern this place in order to preserve the orderly functionality of this service for the wide audience. Someone is banned not to punish him (although no doubt the side effect is that he is punished by it) but rather to remove an obstruction from the BB's normal work.

Therefore, not every 'offense' must or should end in a ban. When someone posts over a year here, with thousands of posts to show for, and has once posted something 'bad' - as bad as it may be, it must be seen as a one-off 'offense' and therefore banning that person will not serve any other purpose than mere punishment. It won't make the BB better or worse. In such a one-off case, removing the POST and not the POSTER must be seen as is the solution.

However, if someone is repeatedly offensive, then he has no place here. Again, not as a punishment but rather as a measure of removing a cause of constant friction from the BB.

If someone accepts in principal the rules that govern this service (and in theory, all that have clicked on "I Agree" when they registered have accepted it), then there is no reason to ban him/her. If it seems obvious to us, however, that someone disregards these rules, then, as I said, he simply does not belong here.

Marketing:

• Flame Baits vs 'Freedom of Speech'. I know that my above statements may lead some to think that this should encompass posters who have repeatedly posted what some here consider 'flame bait'.

We happen to agree - but only to a certain extent.

Pro Talk and DAWworld are public domain. They are there to be adored and scorned, admired and admonished, revered and questioned constantly. But, there is a fine line between scorning/admonishing/questioning and defaming/wrongly accusing/slandering.

It's not always easy to know where that fine line lies, nor is it easy to always make a unanimously agreed judgment call on whether something falls under what we would constitute as allowable and what we would constitute as not.

It's easy to know what to do when something is - in our view - blatantly illegal or a mere flame-bait. We simply delete it.
It's easy to know what to do when something is - in our view - within the acceptable realm of speaking up. We simply let it exist here, regardless of whether we think it's ridiculous or ludicrous.

But, in a case of doubt, it goes down to your own level of tolerance. Personally, in such cases, We prefer to be lenient and allow these thoughts to be heard.

There is a price for that, though; those who elect to take upon themselves a crusade on a particularly controversial issue should bear in mind that they themselves are bound to be scorned back for their views.

You cannot stand in the city square and tell everyone they are blind fools (and telling all JV fans that he's the worst driver ever, or telling Schumacher fans that he's nothing but a cheater, is exactly that - either way, you are telling those fans that they are blind fools) and expect it to go unnoticed. If you get a tomato in your face, you should also ask yourself if you didn't ask for it.

Having said that, it should be made clear that counterattacking a poster is different to personally insulting someone. Telling someone that his post is ridiculous, or even that he's a liar (if you can found that!) is not the same as telling someone "you are an idiot who should be shot to death". We will tolerate to a large extent the first; We won't tolerate to any extent the second.

• Personal Feuds. Sometimes, though luckily not often, a Bulletin Board debate will turn into a personal feud between two posters. I want to make it perfectly clear that, a) we will not allow, under no circumstances, this feud to be carried out publicly; b) we will not intervene nor be a judge to personal feuds; and c) we will not offer any of the RO tools - primarily the Private Messaging system - to serve this feud, unless BOTH sides are willing to engage in this dialogue.

If you send an offensive Private Message to another poster, unsolicited, be aware that it is his\her full right to complain to us about it, and should we find that PM to be indeed offensive, we will not allow you to again use the PM system, and upon repeated complaints (from one or all) treat this as any other public issue - we will ban that user altogether from the BB.

Furthermore, in radical situations, when a couple of posters constantly attack each other or harass each other - in public or via PM - we will bar BOTH sides from exchanging ANY word on the BB (in public or via PM) with each other. If they continue to do so, one or all, they will be thrown outside. This is NOT a fora for personal feuds, put simply.

Moreover, this is not a "who started it" situation. If someone insulted you, you are not absolved for insulting back. And, if you think someone should be banned and we disagree - then tough; if we're not convinced about it (and you're welcome to try to convince us reasonably) then it doesn't license you to take the situation into your own hands and launch a campaign of harassment's against that poster. Insulting him back won't make us think you're right; it will only make us think you're the trouble we should be dealing with 

• Reference to the hosts. We have an underlying rule that you may not like but I insist on: ALL admins on the BB are to be treated with respect. That is pure and simple. They are a bunch of GOOD people, with the best of intentions regardless of what you think, who really put in hours a day (and in some cases for a very long time now) to serve YOU. And by saying SERVE YOU I do not mean they are your servants. Please learn to differentiate between the two.

If, however, an administrator is in your views out of line, then you are perfectly welcome to complain. But you do it in PRIVATE and reasonably. We will handle it through our channels, not you. And, although some here seem to want to see blood running through the streets, we can tell you this much: this is not the "let's flog <insert admin name> show". If you want to see that one, it must be playing on another channel - not on mine.

We want you all to know something: we really are working hard on improving the service - the BB as well as the rest of the website. We are grateful every day for having your readership and membership, and we are grateful every day for your loyalty. We will continue to do our best to provide you with a premium service, and we will continue to do our best in aiming at being the finest recording forum's around.

Thanks for your patience and time,

RO Team

MISSION STATEMENT
 
"Our goal is to provide the best environment for musicians and recording industry professionals across the globe to exchange information and ideas for the promotion of mutual advancement, education, and success.  Your  input will enable us to advance toward this goal.  Welcome to recording.org!
www.recording.org

What is trolling

USENET is one of the oldest means of communication within the Internet. Rules of so-called "Netiquette" developed gradually in this medium and various USENET specific checks and balances have been created. The two worst offences within the USENET community are spamming and trolling. Spamming, which involves posting off-topic, generally commercial commentary to large numbers of newsgroups, can be an enormous drain on the computer resources that support the Internet. As spamming became more common, USENET programmers and administrators found ways to cancel or erase spam posts. Trolling, which involves posting on-topic but inflammatory statements to single newsgroups in order to create dissension, can also be a drain on computer resources as a successful troll may spark hundreds or thousands of angry responses. Unlike spamming, however, trolling does not attract a systematized erasure of objectionable posts. The general consensus of Netiquette is that ignoring trolls is the best way to get them to leave... the second best, of course, being to respond strongly enough to, perhaps, make the troll lose it's enjoyment of the game.

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