You're a guest here, so please be polite. We reserve the right to keep our house in order by removing posts/accounts, closing threads, editing post content, permanently banning people, and taking any other actions we deem necessary to keep the board on topic. We will not tolerate racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, nationalist, and purposefully inflammatory comments/images/media. While we respect others opinions, we are the ones ponying up the money and time to create this space. It is NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY to host opinions that we do not agree with, are offensive to the community, or irrelevant to the purpose of this message board. The great thing about the internet is that there are plenty of other places you can go and start your own website to debate these topics. Please do so.
Just to be clear: we're not here to take your shit either; even if you're not breaking the rules. We're super nice and will generally go out of our way to help you, but if the staff deems your content offensive, whether it's directed at themselves, the website in general, or anyone else, we reserve the right to ban you outright. Just because we're nice people doesn't mean we're going to let you shit all over us in our own space. Our policy is ridiculously simple: don't be a dick. If you play nice, we'll play nice.
Please search before posting!Please remember to use the search page before asking questions. If you need more clarification on the answers you find via search, please post a response in one of the found threads. If your question remains unanswered, please create a thread in the appropriate section. This helps keep clutter on the board down so we don't have 1000 threads asking the same question. If you search before posting, it'll make all our lives a lot easier.
Hate speech will not be tolerated.We will not tolerate hate speech in any form. This includes but is not limited to:
Remember, these boards are open to all walks of life and with that comes the need to respect them all. So please, leave your hate at the door.
Also, we are not interested in censoring a negative slur if it's used in the context of a civil discussion. For example, we all know the difference between using the word 'nigger' in a discussion about that topic, and using it as hate speech towards someone. The latter will not be tolerated.
Do not flame or troll other usersIn the context of a forum discussion, flaming is defined as two or more users deciding that insulting each other is more important than having a civil discussion about the subject they are having a disagreement about. Since flaming does not contribute anything useful to the community it is strongly frowned upon and will result in being issued a warning.
Trolling is when a person tries to sow discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people for personal entertainment. They do so by posting inflammatory or off-topic messages with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion. Obviously, this is contrary to the community's purpose, so trolling on these boards will result in receiving a warning.
Sexual harassment will not be toleratedIf any member of the website sends you an unsolicited message of a sexual nature via forum thread or private message, please use the report link below the message to notify the staff. Due to a recent influx of Facebook sleezebags, we are extending this zero tolerance policy to include situations such as but not exclusive to: truckers looking to give rides to travelers in exchange for sexual favors, the creation of threads solely for advertising for a boyfriend/girlfriend/partner, or any other kind of 'I need to get laid' post. This isn't a dating site, so take it somewhere else. Civil discussion of an adult nature is absolutely permitted, preferably in the Sex & Relationships forum.
Do Not Post SpamWe consider spam to be any kind of content that is either purposefully wasteful of our time or serves no purpose to the community. This includes the following:
E-beggingWe consider posts asking for money, bus tickets, or train information to be sent to you via phone/email as spam. For example, if you create an account with no avatar, no profile information, and no posts other than to ask us to call you with train information because you're 'stuck' somewhere, we will ban your account. Similarly, this rule also applies to posts in the Road Dogs and Crust Surfing areas, so if it's clear you're only here to ask for things, we will show you the door.
This website's benefits are for folks that participate in the community, and not for those only looking to take from it.
AdvertisingWhile you are allowed to post links to your own websites and promote your own projects, posting any pyramid schemes, free offers, money making ventures, or other spam-like promotions will get you banned.
Low Effort PostingWhile purposefully low-effort posting will not result in a warning or an account ban, it will be removed by a moderator and no notice will be given. The staff simply does not have the time to justify the removal of wasteful content every time it happens. This includes one-word threads, one word posts, website links with no explanation, nonsense content, one sentence introductions, or thread titles designed to circumvent the minimum amount of characters required to submit a thread (i.e. a thread requires a minimum of 20 characters so you create the title 'my post asdfadflkjad' or 'my thread title requires twenty characters so here you go'). These measures are in place to ensure you are getting quality content and so you don't have to sift through 30+ junk posts in a thread to get to the information you are looking for. In addition, putting effort into your posts multiplies the chances of you getting the responses you're looking for by nearly a hundred-fold, so invest the extra fifteen seconds it takes to make sure what you are saying is interesting.
General SpamPurposely spamming the website with senseless, vacuous, or empty messages is highly frowned upon. This includes such things as party posts, chain letters, two-word "I agree" or "me too" responses, merely posting an icon, one word replies, bumping old topics, +1, "didn't read" or "old", continually posting the same topic or post, and posting a topic with the same copied and pasted text across several forum sections. As stated above, this kind of content will be removed without notice; excessive cases of spam will result in a warning or account ban at the staff's discretion.
Read all sticky threads before posting.Occasionally we have rules and other important information that is specific to only one section of the forum. This information is contained in 'sticky' threads. These threads are permanently 'stuck' to the top of the list of threads in each forum area. It is your responsibility to read the information in these threads, as they are designed to make you aware of not only the rules of that forum section, but also give you information that will help you in your research on that subject.
Rules stated in sticky threads will always have the Read This First thread prefix attached to them. All other sticky threads are optional (but you should read them anyways!).
Do not create multiple accountsWe take many steps here to keep the site from becoming flooded with accounts no one uses, and to make sure that people listed on the member's list are real people you can meet with in real life. To help us in this task, we ask that you DO NOT register more than one account on the site. If you have forgotten your password, or even you have forgotten your user name, please use the password recovery tool. Your user name and password will be sent to the email you used to register for the site. Registering multiple accounts for any kind of nefarious purposes will result in both accounts being banned permanently. If you need to change your account information such as birth date, user name, ecetera, please use the contact form. We'd rather edit your current account than have you create multiple accounts.
What happens when you break the rules?Squat the Planet runs on a 'three strikes' policy. If a user decides to break the rules of this website they earn a warning 'point' against their account. Warning points are issued by the Admins and Moderators of StP and expire after 90 days from their issue date. This way, a user can redeem themselves if they made an honest mistake; if the user no longer violates any of the rules, the warning point will disappear after that time, essentially giving them a clean slate. You may view any warnings you have received under the warnings tab on your profile. The following actions are taken against the user upon receiving each warning.
Just to make things clear, here's an example of how point expiry works.
Another example:
So yeah, you get the idea. It's important to remember that an Admin or Moderator may choose to skip the entire warning process and ban your account immediately if the situation warrants it. On the opposite side of the coin, the admin/mod might choose to simply give a verbal warning which doesn't affect your account and isn't registered in the system (i.e. zero points). Account bans can be appealed by emailing the staff at [email protected].