Site Posting Rules

Welcome to the Splitcoaststampers ("SCS") Site Posting Rules. We thank you in advance for your cooperation with our policies.

SCS is an open community - everyone is encouraged to participate, and everyone is welcome until a member proves that it is unlikely that he or she will comply with the rules.

Any guidelines we institute are in addition to rules of common sense and courtesy, and we are not outlining or providing for every situation. The simple rules we write here can in no way constitute the entire scope of how SCS will be managed. We can only provide the guidelines, and do our best to maintain this site with its original purpose in mind - providing a place for people to get together and share their creativity and talent, and provide support for one another in a positive way.

SCS expects and welcomes contributions that stimulate and add to our creative atmosphere. While encouraging all discussions, we expect all participants to treat each other with respect and courtesy.

With those thoughts in mind, here are some simple guidelines to follow to help maintain the site in a positive way:

• Respect and courtesy
• Advertising/Solicitation
• Signatures
• BST/Swap Forum Issues
• Galleries
• General Site Policies

Respect and courtesy

Members are cautioned to take the greatest care when they post new threads or create a response to an existing thread. We ask that no one creates or condones a post openly disparaging any individual, company or group of people. A good way to understand this rule is if a person is the subject of a post, and not a product or a topic, and that post is in any way negative, it's a violation of this rule. Comments such as "XYZ company stinks" are not allowed, but factual information about a company like "I placed an order a year ago and still haven't gotten my product" is allowed. Our culture is one where everyone feels welcome and safe, and the discussions should be based on techniques, products, etc. This is our most important rule, and a violation of it will jeopardize your account immediately, even on a first offense, depending on the post. Additionally, if a company officially responds to an issue on our site, we consider that topic closed and ask the parties to correspond privately from that point forward.

Bottom line - we have a safe, fun community. If that doesn't appeal to you, this is not the place for you. Everyone is welcome, and everyone who is here deserves respect and courtesy. If you can't comply with that, you will not have access to our forums and galleries. It's not censorship, it's civility. We love civility. We love kittens. We love unicorns. We love our members - all of them. We will protect them and their happiness with both kittens and unicorns.

Posting personal contact or biographical information of others without their permission is not allowed.

Posting from multiple usernames in an attempt to remain anonymous is forbidden. Members  who knowingly maintain and post from multiple usernames will be banned.

Abusive comments, flaming, or insults are strictly against the rules. If you must disagree with another member's point of view, do so in a mature and civil manner. If someone posts to discuss their personal opinions, or seeks help from other forum members, please do not respond unless you have something positive or helpful to add. If you do not like what a particular member has posted, please remember that each person is entitled to their opinion, even if it differs from your own. (Crazy, right? That someone would have a different opinion?) Similarly, our galleries and comments in those galleries may not contain offensive or derogatory comments.  If you find yourself being attacked or insulted by another member, please do not dignify that content with a response. Notify a moderator and we will be sure to look into the matter as quickly as we can. 

We have a "be nice" comment policy - If you cannot offer a positive or constructive comment in the gallery or on tutorials and art shared on the site, please refrain from commenting. Negative or disparaging comments will jeopardize your account. So, for example, if you feel the urge to tell someone you hated their tutorial because you don't like the color green, just write that in your diary instead of leaving a comment on the site. Everyone wins!

Profanity is strictly prohibited. Abbreviating or using symbols to indicate profanity is also prohibited.

Messages that you send privately through the site, known as PMs, must follow the guidelines set forth above. We will not tolerate any abusive comments, name calling, or insults that are sent through our private message system.

You don't have to agree with another member's opinion, but we ask that you respect that person enough to realize that it is THEIR opinion, which may differ greatly from your own. Signatures, Avatars, and Profile Fields may not contain personal statements regarding other members or any other material which violates our posting rules. However, if someone is expressing an opinion in their signature such as "I LIKE HAM" and you do not like ham, that is not really something you should be concerned about. Just ignore the ham likers.

Purposefully changing a thread topic to draw attention away from the topic of the original poster, commonly known as "thread jacking", is not permitted. If you don't like a post that someone has created, please respond civilly or just ignore the post completely. Ignoring things is like a magical force field! Topics do change in the natural course of conversation and we know that it also happens naturally in posts - our policy is not concerned with that. What we are trying to eliminate would be the intentional diversion from the original post topic, or an attempt to make the topic a member rather than the subject matter of the thread.

Spamming is strictly prohibited. Spam may consist of promotional links or repetitive postings of the same material in multiple locations on the site. Users posting such material will be banned permanently. Repetitive bumping of a thread in order to promote or conceal a topic is considered spamming. Repetitive reporting of posts to moderators because you are mad about something is also considered spamming.

Cross-posting is prohibited. Cross-posting is when a user quotes or copies material from one thread into another. Discussions about a topic should be conducted in the thread in which they were originated, not cross-posted. This ensures the integrity of topics, thread integrity and search functions on the site. Additionally, material cross-posted from other message boards, which is derogatory or negative, is prohibited.

The edit feature is to be used carefully. It is appropriate to edit a post in order to update or clarify. It is not appropriate to delete all of your text or completely change a post. We ask that you think carefully before submitting a thread to ensure you are being clear and are expressing yourself in the manner you are comfortable with. If we find the editing function is being abused that privilege will be revoked.

Moderators may remove any post at any time that is directed in a negative way at another user, or that the community at large may find offensive, and users may be banned temporarily or permanently at the discretion of the moderators.

References or links to sites that violate intellectual property rights of craft industry designers will be removed and users posting such links risk an immediate ban. Sites that steal original art are the biggest threat to the craft industry and Splitcoaststampers does not support or encourage these activities.

Advertising/Solicitation

• You may not advertise your company, product or site in our forums or solicit customers. This includes but is not limited to your own specials, sales, open houses, stamp camps, market research, products you sell on your website, etc. We allow no posting for personal gain, or promotional posts by company owners and their agents (employees, Design Team members and other "friends" of the company).
  • Promotional posts can include things like "XYZ company is the best thing since sliced bread/has the best stamps in the world/is more awesome than a unicorn with a kitten on its back," etc. if you are in any way affiliated with XYZ company. Feel free to rave about companies that you are not affiliated with. Again, factual or information posts in responses to questions are fine. If someone asks "Does XYZ company sell cardstock?" you may answer "Yes, XYZ sells 30 colors and 20 weights of cardstock. " You may not say "XYZ company sells the finest cardstock in all the land."
• Purely blog/site promotional posts fall under this category. So a post that says "come check out my site (link)" is prohibited. This is true even if the link is not to a store, etc. Any posts purely designed to draw members to a website will be removed.
• Posts that are promotional in nature or contain commercial solicitations may be deleted by one of the administrators or moderators.
• Posts offering blog candy are prohibited. While we have a forum for events where SCS members can get together and make projects, this forum cannot be used to promote for profit events or events where the focus is fundraising for charitable or non charitable causes.
• Posts that are informational in nature regarding a company or its products are permitted.
• Should you wish to advertise on our site, you may contact our advertising department at [email protected] for rates and availability.
• Solicitation of any kind is prohibited on the site. This includes but is not limited to soliciting for: a demonstrator or consultant for a direct sales company, charitable contributions, craft supplies, stamped images, finished craft projects.

Signatures

• Signatures may contain a maximum of 3 off-sitelinks to blogs, shops, etc.
  • Promotional language and referral links are not allowed. Examples of promotional language include any call to action for a user to visit a commercial site, and include but are not limited to, phrases such as:
  • "Check out XYZ"
  • "Get XYZ at XYZ for less." Keep your signatures to 5 lines total. This will still give you plenty of room for fun and creativity.
• No limit of number of SCS links as long as it fits into the line limit.
• Keep signatures at or below a size 4 font.
• No blinkies, pictures, animations.

BST/Swap Forum Rules

We maintain BST and Swap forums for our members to use. Although we cannot guarantee any sales/trades, we will ban users who do not fulfill obligations they have agreed to. If you intend to hostess a swap, buy, sell, or trade on this site please do so with the knowledge that if you do not follow through you may face mail fraud charges from the individual you are doing the sale/trade with, as well as permanent banning from the site. We will use our best judgment and evidence provided to us by affected members in making all disciplinary decisions. We thank you in advance for working to ensure all sales, trades and swaps are carried through. Our guidelines for BST are below.

Galleries

• Our galleries are for showcasing our talented members' and guests' papercrafting projects. Images which are unrelated to papercrafting, personal in nature, or in any way inappropriate will be removed. Abuse of our gallery feature repeatedly may result in a permanent ban.
• Our members work hard on their creations, and we encourage members to comment on these entries.
• Gallery creations should ideally contain basic instructions and supply lists and we encourage our members to share these details. Gallery creations without details will be ineligible for promotions we run at SCS, and will not be showcased on our Facebook and Twitter pages. Our community loves getting a crafty education about products and techniques, and so we encourage members to share their expertise for the benefit of our community.
• If you list a blog link in your gallery post, the link should go directly to the post containing that project, not to your main blog address.
• Gallery posts with links to blog posts containing blog candy, promotions or giveaways will be removed by moderators. Our advertising and promotional policies that are in place on the site govern gallery posts as well.

General Site Policies

• SCS Moderators and Administrators will move threads and replies to the most appropriate forums. Please spend a little extra time when posting and help us to make the board run as smoothly as possible by making sure when you start a thread that it is in the proper forum and category. Additionally, please refrain from posting duplicate threads or posts in multiple forums.
• The Moderators do their best to maintain this site and add to the overall positive nature here. We are here to help, and with that in mind, here are some guidelines for addressing your concerns to moderators or administrators:
  
  • Please be civil and polite when communicating with moderators and administrators of the site. Bring up your concerns in a mature and respectful manner.
  • If you want to contact the SCS Administrator or Moderators, please send us a private message.
  • Please use the post reporting feature to let moderators know about spam or posts that concern you - the asterisk in the lower left corner of each post will allow you to report a post to moderators.
• We do not offer refunds for the Fan Club. This is because once Fan Club access is granted, a user has access to the entire archive of all past and present Fan Club resources, and that cannot be "returned" for a refund.
• If we posted every single possible example of things that might result in a post being removed from our site, we would run out of internet and the world would be angry with us. So please know that these rules are as clear as we can make them, and human beings will make judgement calls for many cases not listed here that fall under these general guidelines.
• We are proud to have human beings and not robots as our volunteers, and occasionally mistakes might be made. We will own those.
• SCS members may have profiles either at a "basic" level (free) or may sign up for a paid membership. SCS charges member fees for each paid membership account.
  • Login/account information cannot be shared. Disclosing login, passwords or sharing an account will result in permanent banning.
• SCS reserves the right to increase member fees or to institute new fees at any time upon reasonable notice (a minimum of 30 days) posted in advance on SCS. The act of paying fees does not exclude you from the Terms of Use, which must be adhered to by all members.
• Member fees are charged up-front. SCS does not provide refunds or credits for any member fees. Downgrades to a less expensive membership or cancellation of any membership or termination of any membership will not result in any refund or credit of fees already paid. The cancellation or downgrade of a membership will go into effect at the end of the then-current billing cycle. We may offer other paid services or features associated with the Services, subject to specified terms and conditions, which are incorporated by this reference.
• Any links or references to sites promoting counterfeit craft products or stolen designs of any kind violate our site posting rules and could result in removal of your access to the site.

Our members are the most creative and talented artists on the internet. We are proud to be the #1 papercrafting site, and we appreciate everything you do to make that happen. Thank you for participating in our site in a positive and creative way.

Revised January 30, 2017