- Member Behavior
- First and foremost, common sense rules the day. Common sense? Yes, common sense. Common sense and a sprinkle of logic. That is the first and foremost item of decorum that we at NYKFP preach. That means that you have to take on the responsibility of thinking before you post and understanding what is considered acceptable behavior in a forum. Trust us, you do not need a psychology degree to figure this out. If you are criticized for making a stupid post, do not come crying to us. If you post something inappropriate, then it is your responsibility to understand what purpose the "Edit" button serves.
For us, common sense means that not every rule will be applied to the absolute letter of the law every single time because each infraction has to be taken into consideration with human judgment. Two people engaged in a flame war will not necessarily be treated equally if one person is more guilty of causing trouble than the other. If you mock a poster utterly lacking in common sense, we won't ban you unless you cross the line yourself. Now, speaking of crossing lines...
- Respect each other. The content and demeanor of your posts dictate the type of reaction that you will get from other forum members. For example, if you post a ridiculous trade proposal, someone will surely call you out on it. It's not supposed to be personal, but this ties back to common sense. Know what you are talking about so you don't look like an idiot. You don't have to be a basketball genius, but we like people who can put some rational thought in their ideas.
Likewise, if you say things that are off the wall and piss people off, we are not going to defend you if others return the favor. Again, this is common sense. For instance, if your first post in the forum denounces forum members for whatever reason, we hope that you are aware that this is not the way to get off to a good start here. Your speech isn't protected because you registered and activated an account to post here. If you can't respect others, then you don't deserve any in return.
Feel free to debate with other users, but try not to make matters personal. Yes, we understand that some posts are completely lacking in logic or reason. However, that is not an invitation for you to be irresponsible. Don't make character judgments about someone or tell that person that you pity his or her parents. This is an online forum. Don't let someone else's lack of common sense affect yours.
- Do not post false or misleading information. Bad information hurts your integrity as well as the integrity of the forum. Do not pretend that you are someone who you are not, do not pass off your opinions as facts or absolute truths, and do not make unfounded statements. The fact of the matter is, if you do such things, someone will call you out on it and make you look silly. Do some research. It's not that hard. This applies to both matters pertaining to the team as well as debates or discussions with other forum members. Cite sources if possible with team-related issues. The number one team-related matter related to this rule is to not post trade proposals that cannot be executed under the rules of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Also, think and speak for yourself and do not put words in other forum members' mouths in debate. You do not have the right to speak for other forum members without their permission. You do not have the right to assume the mindset of the entire forum community. If others agree with you, they can say so themselves.
- Do not troll. A troll is somebody who starts threads in order to incite a flame war with an individual or the entire forum with either ludicrous or venomous comments. While we try our best to allow open discussion, we will not tolerate people who intentionally attempt to disrupt the forum.
- Post Content
- Think before you post. First, the obvious part of this rule -- don't post information or links relating to illegal content and don't make comments that could get you in trouble with the law. Also, don't make posts based on pure emotion. For example, you hurt your own credibility if you think that a player deserves to be intentionally taken out with a career-ending injury. That's just ridiculous. Irv will make special exceptions for such comments made against James Dolan, but that's about it.
- Make sure your ideas (especially trade ideas) make sense. If you have no knowledge of how the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement works, then don't post outlandish trade proposals. We want to promote an understanding of the game and the NBA here and do not want to pass around bad information. Besides, why waste other people's time with ideas that are impossible to implement?
- Cite your sources. Don't try to pass off information originating from others as your own. We don't feel that this needs any further explanation.
- Do not curse excessively. Any posts that excessively abuse curse words will either be edited down or deleted, and you will most likely be given a warning to tone your posts down. It's not a huge deal in the big scheme of things, but your parents didn't teach you to use these words in regular discussion (or so we hope).
- Do not type in ALL CAPS. It's an Internet no-no and will annoy people a lot. No questions asked. This one is obvious.
- Do not title your posts with vague subjects such as "Everyone read this!" They won't. Be descriptive.
- Do not title your posts with misleading or inaccurate subjects. Don't title a post as "Kurt Thomas has been traded!" but say "just kidding" or something unrelated to the subject in the post body. Screwing with other people's heads on the Internet is not funny because there's no chance for other people to beat you in the face in retaliation. (We do not advocate violence, but that's half the fun of screwing with someone's head in real life -- the chance that you will receive real punishment for your prank.)
- Do not title your posts with one exceedingly long word or overuse of punctuation. For example, do not title a post "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!" In addition to being unnecessary, doing this will stretch the right-hand toolbar on all other NYKFP pages and disrupt our HTML tables. Your title will be edited down appropriately. Likewise, you will also get the smackdown if you feel the need to append 20 exclamation points to the end of a sentence.
- Please consider previewing your posts, especially if you use any BBCode or HTML markup. Previewing will allow you to catch errors and therefore save you from looking silly, whether it is a typo or a coding error.
- Please do not post off-topic posts in the New York Knicks Forum. If you would like to discuss something not directly related to the New York Knicks, feel free to do so in the Off-Topic Forum, or in the NBA Forum if it's about another NBA franchise or player. Any threads related to the NBA but not specifically to the Knicks will be moved to the NBA Forum. All other off-topic posts will be promptly moved to the Off-Topic Forum. Sometimes the post will fall under a gray area. In such cases, use your best judgment.
- General Decorum
- Do not register multiple usernames, try to impersonate someone, or otherwise deceive people. If you have a legitimate reason for needing to change your username, please contact Irv or Linda.
- Do not post meaningless posts just for the sake of posting. Don’t post messages that do not contribute to the discussion just to increase your forum stats. This pertains especially to meaningless one-liners that have no substance other than to needlessly take up space in a thread. Likewise, do not bump your posts because you want someone to respond to them.
- Please avoid posting new threads that cover existing topics. Unless your point of discussion falls outside of the scope of an existing thread, please post in the existing thread. This will keep things more organized for your fellow forum members by not making them have to post the same response in multiple threads.
- Do not double-post. Don't post the same message more than once and don't spam your posts across multiple threads.
- Know who the administrators and moderators are. That way you won't be startled if they edit a post of yours, point out a rule that you've broken, etc. The site is owned and operated by Irv and Linda, who have forum administration privileges and moderate all forums. Ethan (SlingBlade), Matt (MLintzenich), and RT (rtn393) are moderators in the New York Knicks and NBA forums.
- Do not ask to be a forum moderator. If we feel that we need to add another moderator, we will privately contact members whom we feel will make good moderators. It will not be an open job competition.
- Do not spam. Do not post advertisements to endorse your own web site, products, etc. if you do not intend to be a regular poster. All such posts will be moved to the Off-Topic Forum or deleted.
- Do not ask for your post to be made a sticky. Most sticky posts will be made by the forum admins, such as game threads for each game in the regular season. Others will be picked at the administrators’ discretion. Putting the word “Official” in your post titles will not result in it being made as a sticky.
- Do not abuse emoticons. People will understand you if you use them sparingly. There’s no need to post entire rows of emoticons.
- Abide by rules regarding forum avatars. If you would like to add an avatar to represent you in your posts, you can add one by going to your user profile and entering a link from an off-site URL. The avatar will be automatically and proportionally resized to fit a 150x150 space. Also, please keep the content of your avatar appropriate -- no depictions of pornography, illegal behavior, or disgusting matter will be allowed.
We reserve the right to delete your avatar without warning if it does not follow these guidelines.
We do not allow users to upload avatars to our site. If you cannot find a picture already hosted elsewhere and would like to use one of your own, you might consider getting a free website and hosting it yourself. Free-Webhosts.com has a directory and user rankings of free image hosts. Please take a look at their directory and pick out an image host that best suits your needs.
We have a warning system in place that assigns point values to each infraction of the forum rules. If a user accumulates 10 or more points, he or she will be banned. Points depreciate one per week. For example, a person who has 14 points would be banned for five weeks until he or she is eligible to post again. A person with X points would require X weeks to have all points on his or her account cleared, provided that this person does not commit any further infractions in the meantime. However, we do still record all points on a user's account and store them indefinitely.
We reserve the right to override the warning system and permanently ban a forum member if he or she continues to be detrimental to the forum community after repeated bans given by the warning system. Thus, you should not assume that you can continue to freely break forum rules as long as you stay under 10 points.
Below are the list of possible infractions and the point values assigned to them.
Disrespecting or harassing a moderator: 5
Do not flame a moderator for his or her actions or otherwise whine about an abuse of power. Civil discussion of moderator action is tolerated, but flaming or belligerent ranting is not allowed. This applies to both public and private discussion.
Trolling: 5
Do not make incendiary or controversial posts that bait people into responding. If your ideas have merit, then you don't need to troll to bring attention to them.
Flaming other forum members: 2-5
Do not disrespect or attack another forum member, publicly or privately, because you share different views on a subject.
Flaming the forum: 2-5
Do not flame the forum. If you don't like this forum, then find another forum in which to post.
Spamming: 2-4
Do not post advertisements in threads or reply to a series of threads with posts of insignificant content to increase your post count.
Making self-congratulatory comments: 2-4
Do not flaunt your intelligence, the predictive power of your crystal ball, or otherwise make comments that are merely attempts at bragging about how great you are.
Harassing, provoking, or disrespecting other forum members: 2
Do not harass, provoke, or cut down another forum member based on his or her views on a subject.
Multiple posting: 2
Do not post the same posts in more than one thread. This includes anything that involves a copy and paste job of your own posts, whether in part or in full. If you are bringing up a point you made in the past, please link to the post instead of copying its contents to the current thread.
Making useless posts: 2
Do not post senseless drivel that does not provide any value to the forum community. Make some sense when you post.
Posting an inappropriate picture or avatar: 2
No disgusting or visually shocking matter, nudity, pornography, or depictions of illegal activity.
Posting comments degrading ethnicity or sexual orientation: 1-4
Making these comments is just ignorant.
Typing in all caps: 1-2
Learn to use BBCode. Typing in all caps signifies shouting and is extremely irritating. This rule will be enforced for a string of words, sentences, seemingly random insertion of all caps in select words throughout a post, and entire posts. Acronyms and infrequent use of all caps words is acceptable.
Abusing expletives and vulgarities: 1-2
Posts are not censored, but cursing or using slurs in every other word is not acceptable reading in the forum, no matter how pissed off you are for whatever reason.
Posting false or misleading information: 1
Do not make factually incorrect posts that may deceive or mislead other forum members. This applies to post content as well as thread titles.
Reviving outdated threads without indication: 1
If you have good reason to revive a thread that is at least a month old, then mention it as you post. Otherwise, start a new thread. This is the rare exception when it is actually better to start a new thread than to post in an existing one.
Posting an impossible trade proposal: 1
At the very least, use the RealGM Trade Checker when suggesting a trade. We can't verify how realistic a trade proposal is, so at least make sure it fits under the salary cap rules.
Posting meaningless one-liners: 1
It's great that you agree with someone or you can answer a simple question, but a little more insight would be nice or else you're just commenting for the sake of commenting.
Posting off-topic threads: 1
Put your thread in the appropriate forum. Because topics sometimes overlap, a point will be given for blatant infractions. Discussions of the current performance of former Knicks go in the NBA forum.
Vague thread title: 1
Do not make unclear or vague thread titles. Make coherent thread titles that describe the subject that you are discussing.
Emoticon abuse: 1
Do not post more than three emoticons in a row. You don't need them to make your point.
Typing with sticky-keyed hanging letters or punctuation: 1
Do not excessively use ellipses, exclamation points, question marks, or a single letter of a word (e.g. "Noooooooooooooo") in posts to emphasize your point. Learn to use BBCode.
Using extremely large fonts in BBCode: 1
Learn to use BBCode responsibly.
Typing incoherent posts or using lazy English: 1
This is not an AOL chat room. Use punctuation appropriately and don't use lazy internet shorthand such as "u" for "you". Perfection is not expected, but don't be careless.
Irv, Matt
NYKFP Admins
http://www.nykfanpage.com