This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at the NJROTC Unit Information Portal Forum. Please read it and become familiar with it, as its terms are retroactive.

Board-wide Policies
1. Forum rules: First and foremost, this is a discussion board dedicated to topics for and about the NJROTC Program. Posts that are not considered relevant to this subject will be removed and the user warned.

a. Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below).
b. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.
c. Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning. In addition, adding punctuation to prevent a normally censored word to appear will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.
d. Members should post in a way that is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large (greater than size 14 font), small (smaller than size 10 font) or colored text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Additionally, the use of Instant Message/Text Message abbreviations (such a "u" for "you" or "JK" for "Just Kidding") is not considered professional and will not be tolerated. Users consistently abusing these rules and not using correct spelling/grammar will be officially warned (Yellow Flag).
e. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering anything for sale, services, etc. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. Users are limited to a maximum of ten (10) posts per 24-hour period. If you exceed this limit you will be given a Yellow Card and your allowable post count reduced to 5 per day.
f. The board administrator(s) and/or moderators reserve the right to edit or remove any post at any time. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, or simply "chatty" as noted in these points is up to the administrators and moderators and not regular users.
g. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revocation of private messaging.
h. Users should limit themselves to a single account on this board. Members who open up a second account will have that account deleted. If the problem continues to occur, it will be grounds for an official warning and possible removal from the board.
i. Pictures of individual Cadets, whether identified or not identified, are NOT allowed either in posts or within the signatures on this board. Within the photo albums section of the portal, individual photos (or couples) uploaded to the album section will not be approved as they may be identified by the username of the poster. Users who are not NJROTC Instructors are limited to two pictures in the Album section of the portal at a time.
j. Members will refrain from directly attacking individuals, whether identified by name or position. Such posts only give one side of an issue and rapidly degrade into name-calling and useless complaining. Posts deemed to violate this rule will be deleted without notice.
k. Discussions and posts within topics should remain professional at all times and be related to a professional topic. "chatty" type posts should be avoided and will be deleted by moderators and administrators. If members want to pass informal and one-on-one information of this type to another member they should do so using PMs and emails, not posts within established topics.
l. Posts on this board should have substantial and worthwhile information. One word or one-line posts will generally be deleted and the poster warned. The board administrator will make the decision, and that decision is final. It is better to use the PM system to pass short messages. Generally, if something is important enough for you to post it should have enough information to take up at least two or more sentences.
m. Members are not able to change their usernames. If a user wants their username changed, they need to contact a portal administrator. Each user is allowed ONE, and only ONE username change. Because of this users are advised to think when creating a username during the registration process. In particular, Cadet Rank should not be use when selecting a username, since that rank will change over time and, once again, only ONE username change per member will be allowed. Multiple requests to change a members username will result in their account being deleted and may be grounds to ban the user from the portal permanently
n. The posting of video links, videos and/or pictures within posts is prohibited. Users who place these things within their posts will have their posts deleted and be awarded a Yellow Card.

2. Signatures

a. Signatures may contain up to five lines (one line being that displayed on a browser opened to 800px width) of text (of small or normal size) and/or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 60px high, 400px wide and 10KB in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 30px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to three lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text.
b. Text sizes should be between 9 and 12 (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, emoticons, etc.
c. Links are permitted in signatures. Links are included within the text and image limits above. Links to offensive sites will be subject to removal without notice.
d. Users abusing these rules will be warned and may be given Yellow Flags as noted below in section 5.
e. Moderators and Administrators may exceed the five-line limit for signatures due to the fact that they have additional lines of contact information they need to make available to users of the boards, and the signature line is a useful way of doing this

3. Avatars

a. Users are permitted to utilize a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 90 pixels square, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimicking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 10KB in file size and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed).
b. Users shall not use personal pictures as avatars.
c. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, etc.
d. Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges.

4. Private Messaging (PM)

a. Private messages sent and received are not really private. The contents of these messages can and may be reviewed by discussion board administrator(s). This review process is done at random to ensure that portal members are not the subject of harassment.
b. If a portal member is being harassed via the private message system, they should contact a portal administrator. The portal administrator will review the PM records. If it is discovered that a member has been using the PM system to harass another member, they will be given an official warning. If the harassment is serious enough in the opinion of the administrator, the offending member may be immediately banned from the discussion board or have their PM privileges taken away.

5. Policing

a. This board operates on a three-strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offenses in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.
b. Arguing with administrators or moderators after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three warnings, a temporary ban will be put in place as above.
c. Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact njrotcor (discussion board founder). If he feels you were treated badly he may remove a warning. His decision is final.
d. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned username, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account to evade an email ban.
e. An exception to the three-warning rule applies when users contact administrators or moderators personally (via any method) with insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.
f. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While njrotcor may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.
g. On each occasion where a ban is put in to place, the portal administrator will directly contact the banned member's NJROTC Unit.