Please be sure to follow the Terms of Service and Rules and Guidelines.
Scamming. Taking or attempting to take another member's gold, items or efforts, through false promises, deception, tricks or get-rich-quick schemes is considered scamming and is not tolerated on Gaia.
Reporting Non-Violations. Using the report system to report things such as spam, swearing, and advertising is not the proper use of the report system. Such things are allowed in the Chatterbox and in-thread rules must be enforced by the thread creator. Abusing the report system in this way may result in a warn on your account.
Quoting ToS Violations. Users should NOT quote Terms of Service violations of any type at any time in the forums. This includes, but is not limited to the following:
Explicit images or text
Flaming/trolling
Page stretching
Scam links/posts
When you quote a Terms of Service violation, it is almost as bad as posting them yourself. Feel free to report the post through the forum report system.
When to Contact a Moderator Directly
People continuously posting offensive images.
People continuously posting images which are not appropriate for Gaia.
People continuously scam spamming.
Anyone continuously violating a major rule.
Terms of Service violations may result in a warning or a ban on your account and you will be reported immediately!
Stretching the forum pages using excessive amounts of unnecessary text, text that contains no spaces, or large images is disruptive to the flow of the forum/conversation and is thus a violation of the Terms of Service of Gaia.
An example of this rule includes 14/28 Gold Bumps. There are several versions of this kind of post, and all have the same general premise: that by copying and pasting a long message, you will get more gold than normal. You do not get more gold for longer posts.
Other examples include excessively and unnecessarily repeating a word or phrase such as "bump" many times in one post, posting long song lyrics for no particular reason, posting images that are excessively large (either resize the image or use a link to the image), etc.
Distribution of chainletters is prohibited on the forums, in PMs, and anywhere else on Gaia.
Many chainletters resemble something else such as a petition or warning message and sometimes even say "this is not a chainletter" on them.
Other chainletters claim to be from the admins and sometimes make threats about banning people if they don't send it on. The admins can use stickies and the Announcement forum to disperse information and will not use chainletters (something they have prohibited) to do it.
Just remember any message that asks or encourages you to repost/resend indiscriminately to other users can be considered a chainletter.
Please report any threads that ask personal questions such as address, phone number, email address, or any questions related to security questions.
Do not reply to these threads. However, threads that do not ask such questions and only ask harmless or neutral questions (favorite color, video game, etc) are allowed.
Any posts containing flaming, racial slurs, verbal abuse, etc. directed at a user or comments made with the purpose of provoking anger (trolling) are against the ToS.
Posting any content (images, links, etc) that encourages other users to harm or kill themselves, even in a joking manner, can be considered abusive. In cases where a user has posted about their intent to commit suicide or harm themselves, any encouragement at all will lead to a warning or even a banning.
When another user starts to abuse or harass you, there is a wonderful feature to help you out before you even have to resort to filling out a form. It's called the Ignore feature and surprisingly, many users are unaware of exactly what it does.
Once you have added a user to your ignore list, the following things will happen:
They will not be able to PM you
They will not be able to post in any thread that you created.
They will not be able to comment in your profile.
They will not be able to start trades with you.
Often this simple step stops the harassment right at the beginning and prevents it from escalating any further. If the user continues to harass you after being placed on ignore, then you should report them through the proper channels.
Many thread creators have a list of posted rules at the beginning of the thread. Please attempt to respect these rules even if what you are doing is not a violation of Gaia's rules.
If you make your own thread rules that are not reflected in Gaia's rules, then you or your clearly designated agents (commonly called "thread mods" or "thread staff") have to enforce them on your own.
In the Chatterbox thread creators have the ability to delete any post in threads they create (and not just their own posts).
Thread creators can use the Ignorelist feature to prevent a user from making further posts in a thread.
You can also set up a blacklist - this allows designated agents to disallow users from staying in the thread.
After being clearly asked to leave a thread by thread creator or designated agents for any reason, a user should stop posting in the thread or face the possibility of violating Gaia's rules regarding harassment.
When reporting this kind of harassment (ie. if the user continues to post), you need to include a link to where the user was asked to leave the thread by the thread creator or their clearly designated agents.
Do not be rude when telling users to leave. Just clearly tell them to leave the thread.
Make sure the post telling someone to leave is clearly directed at the intended user. This can be done by quoting their post or including their full username in the message.
When blacklisting, include a link on the blacklist to the post where the user is informed they are being blacklisted.
If you are not the thread creator or their clearly designated agent, then telling someone to leave will not hold any weight. (Yes. Even if you are a "regular".)
However, you can still report them if they are violating Gaia's rules.
By "clearly designated agent", we mean that they are listed prominently in the thread's introductory posts as having the ability to enforce the thread's rules.
How to Report
Abuse of the report system will result in a warning or ban of your account.
Report a Post
Use the
button when an individual post in a topic contains inappropriate content.Reasons to Report a Post:
The content of the post violates the Terms of Service or forum rules.
The content of the post is off-topic.
The member who made the post has a signature which violates the rules.
Report a Topic
Use the Report this Topic button at the bottom of the page when a topic is not appropriate for the forum.
Reasons to Report a Topic:
The topic violates the Terms of Service or forum rules.
The topic is in the wrong forum and should be moved to a more appropriate forum.
If you need to contact a moderator via Private Message, please use the "View Forum Moderator" link at the top of this forum to find a moderator.
