Our mission is to help cycling enthusiasts and foster a healthy community. The message boards are the core of our community. As a result, we expect people to read and abide by these guidelines. The Tarheel Trailblazers’ volunteer moderators monitor the message boards, removing inappropriate content. The moderators do not always act alone. Questionable messages are removed and may be reviewed by several board members before action is taken. The purpose of these guidelines is to explain what kind of messages are "inappropriate," and therefore will be deleted. We are explaining these guidelines beforehand, so if a message is removed everyone will understand why it was removed
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To ensure that this community can continue to provide this benefit to our members, we require everyone to abide by the rules as outlined below. It is the obligation of each member of tarheeltrailblazers.com to be familiar with these rules and to honor them at all times. Failure to follow these rules will result in a request to alter your post, your post being deleted, a warning from a member of our Leadership Team and/ or loss of privileges to participate on the boards.
Here are some specific guidelines that we ask you to follow:
Respect Each Other
The number one rule here is to respect each other. We all come from different places, different families and different situations. With a large group of people, it is inevitable that some will not get along with others. However, each member here deserves respect and disrespectful behavior to a member, to the site or the Tarheel Trailblazers’ management will result in a warning or post deletion. Insulting or degrading comments toward members of our community will not be tolerated. If disagreements do occur, we expect them to be handled privately and not in the public forums. If you are unsure if your behavior is unacceptable, it probably is. If you feel you are being personally attacked in any way, please notify the management immediately by contacting a moderator or site administrator.
Respect the Trail
The main reason we exist is because of the trail systems in and around this area. Please respect the work that many people have done to build and maintain these trails. Posts that encourage riding that could lead to trail damage (i.e., riding after hard rains), posts that encourage illegal trail building or unauthorized maintenance, “poaching” closed trails, or any posts that glorify trail destruction will be removed.
Flaming, Bashing & Trolling
Hate posts and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Messages that are posted as "flame-bait" or that are posted to incite flames and insults will be removed. Treat others on these message boards as you would expect them to treat you. You have the right to state your opinion in a respectful way once on a thread. Any more than that and it is considered argumentative and will not be tolerated. Talking trash about another member or posting topics specifically to provoke a negative response from an individual, a group or an entire community is not acceptable. These posts will be deleted and may result in loss of privileges.
Our Leaders
The site administrators, moderators, and board members are all community volunteers. Their job is to keep the forums productive and positive. Moderators have the ability to edit and/or delete posts should the occasion warrant. The moderator's decision is final and any attempt to change their edits or repost a deleted thread will be cause for an immediate loss of privileges. If you feel that your post has been edited or deleted in error, please contact a moderator or administrator and we will review the situation. Our site leaders are not perfect and are only human. Disagreements occur. Try to communicate with them first on a respectful level and settle your disagreement. They are not targets for obscenities, flames or general insults. If you do not agree with a decision, you are not entitled to start a thread arguing about the verdict or flaming any of the moderators, administrators or board members. Any such messages will be removed.
If you have a problem with a moderator, administrator or board member, please contact another member of our leadership team via private message. We discourage discussions of the board itself or of moderator decisions. Any public "calling out" (i.e., posting a thread) of site leadership will be removed. Public criticism of site leadership or of the Tarheel Trailblazers undermines our community. Take it up with the administrator in private.
Keep it PG-13
The content of our community should be fit for a 'PG-13' audience. Do not post any inappropriate, profane, defamatory, graphically sexual, obscene, indecent or unlawful topic, URL, image or video. This includes swearing, graphic discussions about sex, and racial slurs. Additionally, posts will be removed if they contain racial epithets or insults based on race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.
Spam
Posts will be removed if the message is an advertisement or spam (except when posted in The Market Place). Please post Classified Ads/Want Ads/Trade Ads in The Marketplace Forum.
Illegal Activity
Posts will be removed if the message promotes illegal activity (at our discretion).
Duplicate Posts / Bumping
Posts will be removed if they have been posted to more than 1 board. Posting the same message to multiple boards is spam, and all posts may be removed and the user may lose privileges. Please post to the most relevant board only, no more than 1.
Threads that keep getting "bumped" back to the top with "hey, bumping this post back up" type posts will be locked. If you do not have anything new/informative to add to the post, please do not attempt to "bump" a thread just to keep it at the top.
Multiple Accounts / Impersonating Other Users
Posting under multiple accounts is not allowed and users doing this lose privileges. One or all accounts may be deleted, as may any and all posts under these accounts. You may not impersonate another forum member, attempt to access another account, or create an account specifically for the purpose of provoking other users. Also, accessing or using someone else's account or attempting to access another poster's account is strictly prohibited. You are responsible for keeping your log-in information, including your password, private.
Avatars and Signatures
You may be asked to change your avatar or user name, should we deem it to be inappropriate.
Inappropriate / obscene or distasteful avatars or user names may be changed or removed by us at any time.
A Final Note
Since we can't have a rule to cover everything, this is the rule to, well, cover everything. These are public boards, so please act like you would if you were in a public place and face to face with everyone you are addressing. The Tarheel Trailblazers reserve the right to choose the guidelines of objectionable content based on its knowledge of users and site policy. These issues are left to the discretion of the leadership team, but may include any material that is knowingly false and/or defamatory, misleading, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, racist, sexist, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy or that otherwise violates any law or encourages conduct constituting a criminal offense. The Tarheel Trailblazers reserve the right to amend these rules at any time without notice.
Unfortunately we must reserve the right to remove messages. However, we truly love this community, so we will only remove any given message if we judge that it is not in the best interest of the community. These guidelines may be adjusted or amended as needed without notice. Please feel free to ask questions or direct comments to us via e-mail or Private Message and thanks for your understanding and cooperation.
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