The 10 commandments

Illustration of the 10 commendments

Someone said a long time ago: ‘Love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself.’ If you stick to that, you won’t go far wrong here. However, just in case, here are the 10 commandments of Ship of Fools, in easy-to-swallow tablets. The rules apply to everything here, including posts, profiles, signatures and private messages.

1. Don’t be a jerk – Lively, intelligent discussion is what we’re about. Jerkish behavior includes racism, sexism (and all the other negative -isms), plus trolling and flaming.

2. Engage brain before posting message – Read the words you’ve written before you post them. Once they’re out there, you can’t take them back.

3. Attack the issue, not the person – Personal insults are only allowed in Hell. Attacks outside Hell are grounds for suspension or banning.

4. If you must get personal, take it to Hell – If you get into a personality conflict with other shipmates, you have two simple choices: end the argument or take it to Hell.

5. Don’t easily offend, don’t be easily offended – Disagreement is normal here. Try not to nurse hurt feelings. Conversely, if you know you’ve screwed up, admit it without excuse. We’ve all had to at some point.

6. Respect the Ship’s crew – If you disagree with an admin, host or editor in their Ship role, raise the issue in the Styx, our board for in-house stuff. Personal attacks on crew members for their official actions aren’t tolerated.

7. Don’t post illegal material – Posting libellous material, copyright violations or links to sites advocating illegal activities puts us in legal hot water, which makes us very unhappy.

8. Don’t crusade – Don’t promote personal crusades. This space is not here for people to pursue specific agendas and win converts.

9. Don’t advertise or spam – Don’t advertise your site or product, or lift email addresses to spam our members.

10. Only one identity per member – We do not allow sockpuppets (multiple usernames).

Please read the FAQs for information about the admins, hosts and the way the forums operate. Your comments and suggestions on our house rules are welcome – simply post your ideas on our permanent 10 Commandments thread in the Styx.

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