Introduction
Theology Forums features monitored chat rooms and discussion forums to make your visit safe, enjoyable, and family friendly. We want your visit with us to be a pleasant one, so if you need help, or wish to report a problem, the Moderators are here to assist you. Their online handles are listed below along with their email address if you find it necessary to contact them. If you are reporting abuse, be sure to include the offenders online handle and IP address such as 209.555.555.55 displayed next to their handle in the chat rooms, and in the forums only the users handle is necessary. Please be specific as to the nature of the complaint. Please read our rules below before participating in any of the forums.
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Forums Rules...
THESE RULES APPLY TO ALL FORUMS: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT PERMITTED;
- Swearing, threats of retaliation, personal attacks including insults on character and name calling.
- Chatting about sex or sexual activity in a lewd or explicit manner. Promoting pornography.
- Using the forums as a personals column, or posting links for the sole purpose of advertising a website, topics are posted for discussion...not advertisement.
- Cutting and pasting large amounts of material.
- Using an inappropriate handle or graphic, exalting or promoting Satanism, representing or promoting racism.
- Filling the room with repetitive messages (flooding), or the continuous use of capitol letters.
- Please establish one handle in the forums and do not impersonate others handles.
- Finally, each forum has a specific theme, we ask that discussions be related to the forum you are visiting. Moderators will move posts to the appropriate forum, or delete them if they are off topic or just plain non-sense.
- PERSONS WHO VIOLATE OUR RULES MAY BE BANNED WITHOUT WARNING. IF A PERSON REPETITIVELY VIOLATES THE RULES THEY MAY BE PERMANENTLY BANNED FROM ALL FORUMS. THE DECISION TO BAN IS AT THE SOLE DISCRETION OF THE MODERATORS.
- GRIEVANCES: You AGREE to not express your complaints in the FORUMS and you AGREE to not attack the Moderators for their actions in the forums. If you have a complaint about a Moderator or of being banned or wish to report a problem, you may Email or page the Webmaster or Administrator. Your complaint or grievance WILL be dealt with fairly.
How we will deal with conflicts.
There are many "gray" areas, aside from the stated rules, we must consider in managing a diverse community of varying beliefs, philosophies, doctrines, religious affiliations, etc...
It is the nature of our community to engage in debate. We consider constructive debate to be beneficial. But, determining what is true and what is not concerning man's relationship to God or even His very existence, plunges us into conflicts within ourselves and other members of this community. We understand this, although it makes our job as administrators and moderators a difficult one. So, the purpose of this statement is to lay a brief foundation of what we expect and how we manage inevitable conflicts.
As managers of this community we are responsible for its well-being, growth and usefulness. Our primary consideration, as a community of followers of Christ, will always be to manage for the good and edification of those followers and to the precepts of Christ. To some that may sound unfair, however, this community was created for that primary purpose and it is from this platform we will base our decisions. This does not mean we will overlook believers who fight dirty, are the principle in conflicts and who disrupt the community or violate our rules.
It is our intention that debates and exchanges will be carried out in a mature, considerate and responsible way. Certainly most know the difference between mature debate and conflict, however we will point out the ingredients we deem unacceptable. The key indicators we look for in an undesirable exchange or conflict: -- win/lose power struggle, ideology and ego are the gods served, aggressive anger, malice, disrespectful, condescending, character attacks, insults, etc..
We feel most know how to be courteous, respectful, considerate, and responsible selves who accept reality honestly, try to understand, admit mistakes and who do not resort to dirty fighting. We would also like to point out that assertiveness is a good quality. We certainly recognize the difference between being assertive and conflictive.
Our management process:
In undesirable conflicts we will generally edit posts and ask that future exchanges be reframed.
Persons who are repetitively conflictive will be warned, edited and asked to reframe.
Finally, as a last option, banning from the forums will result where no previous course of action worked out.
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