Jump to content

Guidelines

Website Terms

Please take a moment to review the summary of rules detailed below. If you agree with them and wish to proceed with the registration, simply click the "Register" button below. To cancel this registration, simply hit the 'back' button on your browser.

By registering as a member on CaleyThistleOnline (CTO) or other subsites that may exist at any given time, under the CTO banner, you implicitly agree to adhere to our site policies. You can view these site policies by clicking on the "Site Rules" or "Privacy & Cookies Policy" links on the bottom right of any page within our main site.

If you do not agree to these policies then do not register ... as an unregistered user you will be able to browse the public areas of our site as a guest but will be unable to participate in discussions, polls or other interactive areas of the site.

We know most people just click to accept this sort of stuff as they really don’t want to read through it all and its full of words designed to cover every eventuality that could possibly occur, but many years ago we simplified our rule set and hope you will take a few minutes to scan the main points. Whether you read them in full or not before accepting them is up to you ... but ignorance of them will be no defence if you breach any of them!

 

Website Rules

By registering as a member on CaleyThistleOnline (CTO) or other subsites that may exist at any given time, under the CTO banner, you implicitly agree to adhere to our site policies. You can view these site policies by clicking on the "Site Rules" or "Privacy & Cookies Policy" links on the bottom right of any page within our main site.

1. The Rules

First and foremost, this is YOUR community and YOUR football club and we want all users of this site to feel welcome regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, cultural background or sexual preference. Over the years we have found that most site members have a common sense feel for what is and what is not appropriate in our forums and our members generally do a good job of policing themselves. Because of this we no longer feel the need to have a lengthy set of do's and don'ts (mostly don'ts) but we do want to highlight a few general areas for everyone to refer to when the need arises and these are below:

  • As mentioned above, we want all site users to feel welcome. This is paramount. However, like the majority of forums we suffer from having a minority of users who seek to disrupt the community by engaging in personal abuse, aggressive behaviour, and generally dragging threads away from the topic and into the personal. We have always and will continue to take a dim view of this and members who consistently engage in this behaviour will soon find themselves becoming non-members!
     
  • Unless specifically noted, our individual forums are designed for users of all ages and we ask that you keep that in mind when posting. Excessive swearing, inappropriate images or videos and such like will be removed from view and may result in the user receiving warning points, post moderation, or removal of account privileges depending on the severity or frequency of the rule breach.
     
  • If your post, content, signature, profile image or other actions associated with this site are considered disruptive to other members' enjoyment of this community we may ask you to refrain from such actions, award warning points, or revoke your access to this community.
     
  • If you post offensive, copyright protected, or other material that may be deemed 'illegal' in your country, in the country where our servers are located (USA), or that of our primary userbase (UK/Scotland) then the same will apply.
     
  • We reserve the right to restrict our site resources for those users who abuse the system. This may involve increased page load times or restricted access to certain areas of the site by way of a modification applied to your account.
     
  • If you are personally offended by any site content, please use the report link to highlight it to the moderators. It will be reviewed and you will be informed of the outcome. Please do not get offended on someone else's behalf ... let them report it if they themselves are actually offended! There are moderators on the site most times of the day and they will make a decision on how to handle things, whether to hide posts and whether to issue warning points.
     
  • We consider unsolicited advertising of other websites as SPAM. We have no objection if established site members include a link to a personal website in their signature or post a relevant link in a topic, but registering just to advertise a website or event will normally result in revocation of account privileges. If its for a good cause, or would be of interest to a large percentage of our users, PM one of the mods/admin and we will normally allow it if it passes the 'sniff test' !
     
  • We do not seek to cover every eventuality in these rules and the interpretation of these rules, and what is deemed to 'cross the line' will be at the discretion of the site moderators. If you are not sure, please ask, we would rather discuss it with you first than chastise you for it later ......
     
  • Finally, and we thought it important to mention this ... please remember that what you post is your responsibility. When we first wrote these terms (2012) there were a flurry of high-profile legal actions against individual users for internet postings. This has shown that the authorities will (quite correctly) not tolerate certain behaviours on Social Media or Forums so not only might you break our rules, but more seriously you may break the law if what you post falls foul of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 or other legislation in your local area.

2. The Moderating

  • Our moderators (and admins) are all unpaid volunteers and fellow ICT supporters. None of them want the hassle of moderating the forums so if you can stick to the rules above then everyone is happy! They don't need to moderate, and you don't need to be moderated!
     
  • Also, please remember that moderators (and admin) are site members too. When posting as a moderator you will know they are posting as such as it is pretty obvious !!! ... When posting as a site member they are also entitled to their opinion too. You can agree or disagree with a moderators opinion on a legitimate topic, but please do not get involved in back-seat moderating where it is obvious that the moderator is performing that function rather than just taking part in a discussion.
     
  • Our moderation system works on a points basis that covers most infractions we have seen over the years. It awards a specific number of points for each infraction and generally those points stay on your profile for 2 weeks before being removed. If you have multiple infractions, you may get to a level where the system will automatically perform an action on your account such as a post moderation for 1-7 days (yellow card), 1-7 day posting ban (yellow card), or full suspension of account privileges for 1-7 days or even permanently (red card). This automation provides both the moderators and the site users with consistency over actions taken for most rule breaches and allows everyone to avoid the accusations that anyone is being 'picked on.
     
  • These are the points awarded for specific rule breaches where a complaint has been received
  • 1  - Signature Violation
  • 1  - Inappropriate Language
  • 1  - Verbal Abuse
  • 1  - Flaming
  • 1  - Trolling
  • 2  - Aggressive Behaviour
  • 5  - Topic Hijacking
  • 5  - Illegal Content
  • 5  - Spamming
  • 5  - Copyright Infringement

Where required, moderators will continue to have the ability to issue further warning points on a case-by-case basis either where the defined list does not cover something that happens or that is posted, or where the severity or frequency of the infraction requires it.

  • 0  - First Offence
  • 10  - 1 day post ban (can still view site)
  • 15  - 2 day post ban (can still view site)
  • 20  - 1 day mod queue
  • 25  - 7 day mod queue
  • 30  - 1 day suspension
  • 40  - 7 day suspension
  • 50  - Account permanently suspended
     
  • Moderators will not enter into discussions about individual warning points in the open forum but will be happy to discuss it politely via PM.

3. The Forums

  • As mentioned in the rules, our forums are designed for all ages so we ask that users consider this when posting.
     
  • Its a football forum, and much like a football ground, we have no real issue with the odd mild profanity here and there, but please dont over-use them, direct them personally at someone else, or use ones that people tend to find most offensive ... thats not something we tolerate. We also caution users about trying to circumvent the swear filter by using variations of words, other symbols, or misspellings.
     
  • We may from time to time activate forums with a specific age range (eg 18+) and where this happens we may make slight modifications to the forum rules for those specific forums. where this happens, the adjustments to the forum rules will be indicated either in the forum header or as a sticky in that forum.
     
  • If a site member wants to suggest changes to an existing forum, or a new forum for a specific subject matter, please contact one of the moderators and we will discuss. The site constantly evolves and forums that may be relevant one year might be irrelevant the next ... As the members of this site make up the community we are happy for the community to make suggestions.

4. Copyright

  • Our content (unless otherwise specified) is copyright CaleyThistleOnline and any requests to reproduce our content must be made in writing (Letter/E-mail/PM). If someone asks then we are far more likely to give permission than if its simply copied from us secretly !

  • Over the years we have built relationships with many people such as the Club, Photographers, Stats people, Media organisations etc and they have given us explicit permission to use (some of) their work on the site. We cannot extend that permission to anyone else, you need to contact them directly for permission.

  • Posting images/content that are copyrighted to someone else in the forums is frowned upon. You should have permission from the copyright holder. If its a media article from another website, it is appropriate to have a small teaser quote with a link to the original source so users can view it on the original website.

  • Posting links to live streaming websites is not allowed in open forum. Live footage of ICT matches is copyrighted variously to the SFA/SPFL, Caley Thistle, and whatever media companies the league has an arrangement with. If its a legitimate link to one of those (EG BBC/SKY/ESPN), that is fine but links to less legitimate sites will be removed !

5. Privacy

  • We take your privacy very seriously and this is one area where we have not shortened or streamlined our site policy and the current document remains in force. The link to the current privacy policy can be found at the bottom of every page within our site.

 

 

 

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. : Terms of Use : Guidelines : Privacy Policy