Forum RULES & GUIDELINES

[Martyn]

Mission Statement:
What we are...
BritishBlades was created as an interest website and forum. It's purpose is to provide a place to discuss, exchange information and ideas about knife making and collecting. Primarily and interest group for custom knife makers in the UK, but also catering to the interests of production knife collectors. We aim to provide a common resource, for the preservation of the history and practice of this much declining craft in our country. Discussion of the manufacture and collecting of custom and production knives is our business, if this is your interest also you are welcome to join us.

What we are not...
We are not a group that caters for, or is interested in martial blade craft (MBC), or martial arts of any kind. We are not concerned with the use of knives as weapons, other than in a historical context. If you are looking for an MBC or martial arts website, you should look elsewhere. We have no political affiliations, and are not interested in yours. If you are looking for political debate, you should look elsewhere. Similarly, we respect your religion, but that is not what we are here for. If you want to talk about religion, we respectfully request you look elsewhere.

Forum RULES & GUIDELINES:
These rules & guidelines have been created for the BritishBlades community. Some are firm, no nonsense rules, some are simple guidelines. All members are expected to follow these rules & guidelines as part of their acceptance of using the forums. In order to keep the forums running well and to prevent problems, please follow these simple rules for the forums here. If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to contact me. These rules & guidelines can be updated at any time, it's your responsibility to keep yourself up to date.


1 Selling & Advertising:

Advertising is not generally allowed here at BritishBlades, the only exception to this rule is the Portobello Road forums, where you may submit your items for sale. Generalized "great deals at myshop.com" adverts are not permitted unless you pay BritishBlades £100 per post! There will be no exception to this. Commercial adverts found outside the Portobello Road forums will be deleted or invoiced accordingly. However, we do like to see genuine resources made available to our members, so a single link and a brief description of a website is perfectly acceptable without penalty (links in signatures are also acceptable, see rule #5). Overtly commercial language is not. The bias here is toward and in favour of the individual maker & collector. The Portobello Road forums are provided as a means for members to advertise and share their products items and services, without unduly detracting from the content of the forums. Excessive spamming or flooding of the sales forums with adverts will be penalised. Moderators will use their judgement as necessary.

If you are a private seller who uses the classifieds, note if you sell more than 10 items a month for a continuous period of 3 months or more, the moderators will likely consider you to be a trader and ask you to upgrade your account accordingly and they may suspend your trading privileges until you do so. Moderators will use their judgement as necessary.

If you are new to the forums, you will note you cannot post an item for sale in the classifieds unless you subscribe to a premium account.

2 Charity Fund-raising:

It has always been our opinion that there are so many means and ways for people to raise money for charitable causes, that there is room for somewhere that does not allow it. We understand that there are very many worthy causes, but equally, there are very many ways of raising money. Britishblades does not need to be part of a fund raising portfolio or awareness campaign for any charity and we believe that the majority of our membership value having somewhere that is free from those pressures. We polled our community and 83.48% agreed that they did not want to see charity fund-raising on our forums. To that end, it is completely forbidden to run any kind of auction, sponsorship, raffle or any other kind of charity promotion on our forums, either for money or simply to raise awareness. To repeat ....all forms of charity promotion are prohibited, no matter how worthy the cause. The only exceptions to this are that you may carry a single, unformatted, plain text link in your signature to a charitable website or promotion of your choice and you may also use the classifieds to sell items for charity, providing they carry a fixed price and follow the normal formatting rules for adverts.

3 The Gallery and posting pictures:

Please do not use the gallery for selling items. The gallery is a showcase, for illustrating and showing off custom, customised or unique blades. Pictures of factory produced blades should not be posted. Pictures of knives posted for sale in the gallery will be deleted and permission to use the gallery will be revoked. You *may* post a picture in the gallery, with a description of the blade, then reference it as "for sale" from the classifieds forum, but no "for sale" text should appear with the gallery image. Picture posting in forum threads is most welcome, but the size of the picture SHOULD NOT force the screen to horizontally scroll at a resolution of 1024x768 - if it does, either post the picture as a link, or resize it. Moderators will either ask you to resize the picture, or turn it into a link for you.

4 Spamming:

Spamming of the forums or members is not and will not be accepted. Members caught spamming will be banned from the forum, no exceptions, no second chances.

5 Signatures:

Members signatures are not to exceed 6 lines of text or 1 image no larger than 500x80 pixels, or a combination of image and text that do not exceed the equivalent to 6 lines of text. Text should not be more than size 2 font.
Links in signatures must follow these guidelines:

· Linking to a commercial product/service is fine. Promotional text for a commercial product or service is ok, provided there are no price(s) of product(s) or service(s) listed, and that the language is not overtly commercial. We do not allow commercial referral links or links that are part of a syndicated advertising scheme.

· A link and promotional text for a site that is not commercial and does not contain product(s) and/or service(s) is allowed, provided the site is not sexual or does not violate BritishBlades community standards. The BritishBlades team shall be the sole arbitrator of what does and what does not violate community standards. (Examples might include links to sites about drugs, warez, violence, invective political opinion, promotion of religious hatred and/or pornography.)

· Duplicate links to the same URL in a sig are not allowed.

· Links to websites or forums (other than a personal, non commercial homepage) should be reciprocated - that website should have a clearly visible link pointing back to britishblades. Failure to reciprocate may result in the link being removed from the signature.

Signatures that are in question will be wiped and replaced with a URL to this thread.

6 Avatars:

Members can upload their own custom avatars. They must not be pornographic, threatening or offensive in nature. Moderators will use their discretion.

7 Bannable:

Posting of links to pornographic sites, illegal software downloads, or warez links will earn a ban.

8 Do a search:

Before posting members should search the forum for a direct answer to their question. Admins and Mods may ask members to search for the answer to their questions, should it already have been answered.

9 Flaming:

Aggressive slander, foul language, or serious harassment of other members will not be accepted (otherwise known as flaming). However, BritishBlades supports an informal, friendly and relaxed discussion atmosphere, and in deference to this, acknowledges some tolerance to the above. As these forums are often viewed both at home and in workplaces, family language is encouraged. Moderators will use their discretion.

10 Usernames:

Members may have one (1) username, multiple aliases are not permitted.

11 The Law:

The United Kingdom has some of the strictest knife and gun laws in the world. It is the responsibility of the members to ensure their activity (particularly in the trading forums) conforms to all UK (and international) laws . This will be enforced rigorously. Please note, there is a distinct difference between law and political opinion. Free discussion of points of law is encouraged, but BritishBlades is a politically neutral site. There are no forums here available for political discussion. You are of course, entitled to hold whatever political opinion you wish, but you cannot engage is subversive, anti-establishment or politically extreme discussions on this site . Such discussions or comments will be moderated heavily (moderators will use their own discretion as to what constitutes subversive, politically extreme or anti-establishment - their decision is final) and persistence in this area will result in a ban from the site.

You agree to comply with this set of rules as part of your terms of service of this site. If at any point you decide you no longer wish to abide by these rules, contact a moderator and we will suspend your account for you.

OK, that's the heavy stuff out of the way. The rules are there not to prevent your enjoyment of the forums, but to prevent abuse of the community and jeopardize it's existence.


Thanks for your time & enjoy the forums.
Martyn.
(BritishBlades owner/administrator)

We reserve the right to amend or update these rules at any time.