1. You believe in the value of a free and open exchange of ideas. Astorialogues.com celebrates the enlightening and transformative power of dialogue. Astorialogues is offered as a free forum to adult residents of Western Queens/Astoria.
2. Members of the Astorialogues community respect the principles of free expression and personal responsibility both for their liberating power and for the rich diversity and honesty of expression they encourage. By registering for this site, you accept responsibility for helping to make this forum a place where people feel comfortable expressing themselves honestly and respectfully and where people expect their posts to be read and responded to creatively, critically, and constructively. That said, emotionally charged exchanges, including ad hominem attacks, are permitted, even though they are not encouraged. This site places a premium on voluntary moderation, which is the notion that a strong community is based on honest communication and the moderating effects of extended, unrestricted dialogue.
3. Astorialogues.com is a discussion board for adults to discuss and debate and share opinions, thoughts, and feelings about anything they wish. At this point, it is not a place for people to conduct business. In the future, we may add a forum section in which people would be able to buy and sell goods and services. But until then, your registration constitutes an agreement not to use the site to buy and sell goods and services in any area of the forum that is not expressly set up for such activities. Improper use of Astorialogues.com for commerical purposes will result in warnings and, ultimately, banning.
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5. You agree to express your disagreements with the content of the posts of other members by customarily focusing responses on specific content. Expressing opinions about the state of mind or thinking process or emotional status of another poster is permitted as long as the opinion is derived in a reasonable way from explicitly referenced posts and is stated in a manner that is creative and/or critical and/or constructive. Astorialogues.com takes a laissez faire approach to moderation. Satire and other creative ironical forms of expression are permitted.
6. You agree not to violate any applicable U.S. laws. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned. You will not verbally assault or threaten other members. You will not knowingly post any material that is false and/or defamatory. This is not a politically correct board. However, racism, sexism, and any other kind of bigotry is discouraged and may result in temporary or permanent banning. Threats of violence, libel, and slander will almost certainly result in immediate and permanent banning from this site. You agree that the webmaster, administrator and moderators of this forum have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic at any time should they see fit. The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions.
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8. Please remember that the site owner is not responsible for any messages posted that he did not author. Astorialogues.com will not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and is not responsible for the contents of any message other than those of the site administrator. All messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of Astorialogues.com, which is first and foremost a community forum for the free exchange of ideas. Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to state those objections. Please also feel free to contact the site administrator to express any concerns you may have at any time. Generally speaking, if the posts of a particular user of this forum consistently diminish your enjoyment of it, please access your user control panel and make use of the friends/foes feature.
Astorialogues awaits the participation of those who understand, agree to, and accept these terms.
So there they are, the rules of Astorialogues, for your review.
Last week I upgraded the software that powers this forum and the process overwrote the Registration page content so that these rules may not have been visible to people who recently signed up.
Astorialogues is a little over three months old, so these rules are not exactly immutable, nor do I consider this list necessarily too long or too short. This is where I'm starting from, based on ideals of freedom of expression, personal responsibility, and voluntary moderation, aiming to promote honest communication, and hoping to see a strong sense of community emerge within this framework. Your feedback is more than welcome via public posting in the Spontaneous Order thread or private messaging.
