Announcement: Gaia Homes Rules and Guidelines

[Malee]

~Gaia Homes~

Welcome to Gaia Homes forum. This forum is for the discussion of housing here on Gaia.

Before you get started posting about housing, what follows are a few tips and pointers to help you familiarize yourself with what belongs in the forum.

Thanks for reading!

1. Thread Creation Guidelines

2. Rules and Guidelines

3. Reporting Threads

4. Roommate Threads

[Malee]

~Thread Creation Guidelines~

There are many thread types that belong within this forum. Then again, there are also a lot of threads that don't belong, but lets focus on what belongs.

Home Forum Topics

Home discussion cover a lot of topics that can be included within the forum. What follows are examples to what is encouraged.

• Discuss Gaia Homes threads.
  This can be a very broad topic, from furniture to which looks best in the home. A general discussion about homes, including the design of Gaia homes.
  
  
• Come view my home threads.
  These are threads that are created to request people to come and view the creators home. Show off the hard work or no work you put into your home by inviting people to view it.
  
  
• Please rate my home threads.
  Similar to requests for users to view their homes are requests to rate homes. Post asking people to rate your home are great for this forum.
  
  
• Rating homes threads.
  Instead of a user requesting their home be rated, users can create threads stating that they will rate peoples homes. Giving suggestions if people ask for them is also encouraged.
  

While on the topic of what belongs in Gaia Homes, there are some threads that are better suited to other forums. Here are some guidelines to help you find where your thread might belong.

• Spam Threads.
  Spam threads that are designed to simply spam, like bumping for gold are better suited for the Chatterbox
  
  
• Feedback Threads.
  While yes, it is about homes, feedback that is related to the homes feature will be better suited for Site Feedback
  
  
• Selling Home Items.
  Selling items for Homes is best suited for The GAIA Exchange
  
  
• Buying Home Items.
  Need that last great item for your home? There are two places to look outside of the stores. Try the subforum Wanted or the Gaia Marketplace
  
  
• Need Gold/Donations?
  Homes can get expensive and begging for a little help with items is best suited for Charity/Quest.
  

[Malee]

~Rules and Guidelines~

The forums fall under the site wide rules and guidelines and Gaia Homes is no exception. Gaia Homes is subject to the terms of the Terms of Service and the Rules & Guidelines.

If you have not yet read these over, take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with them. Failure to abide by the rules that are contained within them will result in consequences to your account including warnings and possible a temporary ban from the site.

Gaia Home Forum Specific Guidelines

When posting in topics, please try to keep them on topic as much as possible. Please be respectful of your fellow users and their threads. Flaming and harassing posts are againsted the rules of Gaia and should be reported. These sort of posts are not acceptable anywhere on Gaia.

Bumping

Please try to keep bumping in Homes to a reasonable level. If your thread has fallen off the first page, bumping is okay. If your sole purpose in bumping is to get gold, the chatterbox is best for you.

Spamming

Spamming within the Homes Forum is not allowed. As stated, all spam belongs in the chatterbox. This also applies directly to the stickies within the forum.

[Malee]

<center>~The Reporting System~</center>

The report system is designed to report that are misplaced within the forums. For a great detailed explination of using the report system, I have provided a quote from Kava.

Kava

<center>The Reporting System</center>

The reporting system was implemented throughout much of Gaia Online on Friday, January 21, 2005. Since its inception, over 31,000 reports have been sent in (as of Feb. 15, 2005). Please read the announcement by Jakobo, and this post to learn about how to effectively use the reporting system. ^^

How to NOT use the reporting system.

• Do not use the reporting system to report yourself for pointless reasons.
  
• Do not use the reporting system to ask if we'll be your friends/give you items/do you a special favor/ask us a question.
  
• Do not use the reporting system to share your personal opinion.
  
• Do not use the reporting system to report very old (month-old for example) threads or posts. Recieving hundreds of reports for threads from page 800 of the chatterbox is a complete waste of our time. If there is a very old thread or post that really needs a moderator's touch, please PM one of the forum's moderators and be very descriptive in your explaination.
  
• Do not use the reporting system to report cussing or swearing. Cursing and swearing are not, by themselves, a Terms of Service violation. Harassment or abuse or trolling or posting offensive material with cursing is different than reporting "he said the f-word." You should never report someone for saying the f word or the s word, for example.
  
• Do not use the reporting system to report announcements or stickies. Now, if a user makes a Terms of Service violating post within an announcement or sticky, that post may be reported, but do not report the thread itself.
  
• Do not use the "report this post" button to report the first post of a thread. This can create two reports for the same thread (if someone reports the thread, and you report the first post), and then the mods will have to take more time to go through both reports, making it that much harder to do our jobs effectively.
  

When to use which reporting button.

• - To report posts. The violation must be in the post you report. Evidence may be given in the report that the violation is true if it is not so obvious, such as saying "it started a few pages back" or similar, but do not report a random post to report a post on the same thread or page. Do not use this button to report signatures or avatars.
  
• - To report threads. Use this when the first post in a thread or the entire thread is in violation of the rules. For example, a thread clearly requesting illegal and/or copyrighted materials such as not-normally-free software, or a thread which is full of inappropriate pictures.
  

At the bottom of the Forum Index there are also three additional buttons:

• [Report A Hacking] - Use this button to report a hacking. If you have been hacked, use this button. If you cannot access your account the best thing to do is to create a new account or use another account to report your own hacking. You need to do this as soon as you can and be as informative as possible. This will better help the moderators deal with your situation.
  
• [Report A Scamming] - To report a scam. Use this to report a case in which you were scammed. If you see a thread that you think may be a scam, and have evidence to support your case, use the [Report Thread] button instead. The Report A Scamming button should be used if you yourself are scammed.
  
• [Report Abuse or Harassment] - To report someone who is abusing or harassing you. Please do not use this button to report others being abused/harassed because the person you think is being harassed or abused may in fact not care at all, and situations like that are very hard to deal with.
  

Future expansion of the system will allow for Art Arena and Signature reporting from users.

The report system is for Terms of Service violations (which includes spam posts) and for thread moves only. Read the "do not" section of this post, and then reread it, and then read it again, so you don't get warned/banned for report abuse!

Also remember that abuse of the reporting system will not be tolerated.

Also, to clear up some common misconceptions:

• When you click the report button you need to fill out a form in order for the report to be sent. Clicking the button and then going back will not file a report. You don't have to worry about accidently clicking the button and sending off a blank report.
  
• Getting reported doesn't mean something bad is going to happen to you. If you've done nothing wrong, nothing wrong will happen to you.
  

Thanks again to Kava for letting me use what she has written up.

[Malee]

~Roommate Threads~

Hey everybody! I just wanted to let you know about our newest rule on Roommate Threads. We now have a new sticky about finding a roommate. Ninina was kind enough to let us use her thread as our new sticky.

________The Official Gaia Classified Ads for Homes________

What this means for new Roommate Threads. We know have the Friends Chat forum, where people can go to chat for friends. Since roommate threads are basically requests for friends, they are now better suited there.

So from this time on, all roommate requests threads will be moved to Friends Chat

Thanks!