LIVING DOCUMENT
The Forum Moderation Policy is not set in stone. As moderation issues arise, and the community as a whole discusses changes, these policies will be updated. It is your responsibility to stay up to date with policy changes. The Moderation Team will alert users to changes in the Operations Center.

SCOPE
The Forum Moderation Policy covers the official forums of The South Pacific. It does not govern behavior on the Regional Message Board or any IRC channel. Those communities are governed by their own separate rules and administrators.

MODERATION AIMS
The forums are a community hub for the region. Many people of differing opinions, beliefs, ideologies, cultures, and experiences use these forums. People will end up disagreeing, and sometimes having very strong feelings about their disagreements. The purpose of the Forum Moderation Policy is to maximize the quality and quantity of discussion that can take place.

The Moderation Team strives to act with fairness, but no matter what, somebody will have an issue with the Team's decisions. While unfortunate, we cannot please everybody all of the time. Decisions are made based on what is best for the forum overall.

While all members of the Moderation Team are active on these forums, we cannot possibly know everything that is going on. It is the responsibility of all members of these forums to ensure our community is great. That means, first of all, follow the Forum Moderation Policy. If you see somebody violating the policies, report them to the Moderation Team.

HOW TO REPORT VIOLATIONS
To report a violation of the Forum Moderation Policy, either report the offending post using the Report button, or send a Private Message to a member of the Moderation Team. Note that the Moderation Team will exercise their own discretion in addressing all reports. That means not all reports will be acted upon. Please only report a post once.

DON'T AGREE WITH THE FORUM MODERATION POLICY?
That is very unfortunate. However, the Forum Moderation Policy is not optional. If you want to use these forums, you must abide by it. Otherwise, please do not post.

LEAVING THE FORUM
If you decide to leave the forum, the Moderation Team will not delete your account or remove your posts. Assume that every post made on these forums is permanent and public.

THE RULES

1. Always be respectful of other users, moderators, administrators, and the forum itself. This means you should not flame anybody, troll, or bait others. Neither you should call others names. Try to be respectful of others' views and beliefs, even if you don't agree with them.

2. The forums are not the place for regional recruitment, commercial ads or ads that aren't related to NationStates. Posts containing advertising, such as newspapers and other media, should be posted in the designated forums only.

3. Please do not threadjack or post off-topic comments. While discussions will naturally drift from the original topic from time to time, excessive off-topic comments and threadjacking will be addressed by moderators. If you feel a thread is being threadjacked, please report it, rather than arguing about whether or not the thread is being hijacked.

4. This bears repeating. Do not insult other users. If someone insults you, do not insult them back, otherwise you will also be in violation of this rule.

5. Do not incite illegal behavior of any kind. Discussing illegal behavior in the academic sense is fine. This includes, but is not limited to, posts discussing how to pirate illegal content, hack, etc.

6. Do not publish personally identifiable information (“doxing”) about any user without their explicit permission. This information includes, but is not limited to: any portion of their real name; their residence; their educational institution; their occupations; their personal, non-NationStates contact information; personal websites unrelated to NationStates.
 
7. Do not engage in sexual harassment, trading of explicit images (even if consensual), unwanted personal contact, or any behavior of a sexual nature.
 
8. Do not make false accusations in order to tarnish the reputations of other people. If you make an accusation, it is your responsibility to provide sufficient proof.

9. Do not post any obscene images. This explicitly includes pornography, violence, and death. Images that disturb other users will be deleted.

10. Please attempt to keep image sizes on the lower end of the spectrum. Try to not break the forum layout with excessively large images. When possible, use a third-party image hosting website (e.g. Imgur.com), instead of using the forum attachment feature.

11. Try to not post in ALL CAPS, unless you actually want people to think you are screaming at them. Even then, nobody likes a shouter.

12. Do not post anything that would be illegal to post in the United States of America.
 
MODERATOR ACTIONS
While in the past, we used a “points” system to automatically trigger various consequences, we now use a more holistic approach. Any violations of the rules above may be met with the following consequences, based on the severity of the violation and the history of the violator:
 
1. Suspension of posting permissions, either forum-wide or in specific forums.
2. Suspension or deletions of signatures, avatars, bios, etc.
3. Manual approval of all posted content.
4. Temporary bans.
5. Permanent bans.
 
APPEALS OF MODERATION ACTIONS
Actions taken by moderators may be appealed to the Administration Team. This isn’t a “second opinion” system. Rather, appeals of moderation actions should only be lodged if the moderator wasn’t basing their actions on the rules, or their interpretation of the rules is outside precedent. Actions taken by an administrator may be appealed in the same way to an uninvolved administrator.
 
This process is not a court trial by jury. Appeal decisions are based on how appropriate the moderation action was. Appeals cannot be appealed.

NO EXCEPTIONS
It's also important to mention that moderators and administrators are not above the rules. They are expected to abide by them, and can be given the same punishments as a regular user.
 
JURISDICTION
In general, these rules apply the forums. However, as appropriate, administrators can take action against seriously egregious behavior in the game, the RMB, chat channels, or anywhere else where a person’s behavior harms another player.

Rules of Bantam Harbour (Enacted on 19 January 2014)

Given recent problems among posters due to the separation between IC and OCC and the length and detail of some posts, here are some simple rules that everyone is encouraged to follow, in order to keep Bantam Harbour a friendly and enjoyable place for our roleplaying:

• Our Forum Moderation Policy is still the main source of moderation, and should always be consulted when posting.
  
• It is the right of the original poster to establish rules over their roleplay regarding the following:
  
• Use of one-liners
  
• OOC posts or establishment of a separate OOC thread
  
• Restricting participation to certain users
  
• Posts that break thread rules may be removed upon request.
  

What does this mean?
It means that the person who creates a thread has the right to decide the conditions under which their roleplay is held, without different people arguing over the appropriateness of one-liners or the necessity of separate IC and OOC threads. Forum Moderation will honour the wishes of the OP, removing posts that break the rules they establish for their own threads.