Thank you for participating in the Trippy Hippie Photography Forums. We strive to maintain an atmosphere in which to discuss topics that we all have in common, in a respectful, civil and mature manner. We have published guidelines we expect our members to follow. Your participation in the forum constitutes your acceptance of our rules, terms and conditions herein.
Unacceptable Behavior
- Harassment, personal attacks and name calling.
- Questioning a moderator’s actions, publicly or privately.
- Thread crapping (opinions directly opposed to the discussion’s topic).
- Trolling (posting with the deliberate intent to antagonize others).
- Spamming (unsolicited links or mentions of products or other persons).
- Circumventing the moderation team or playing staff members against each other.
- Retaliation and baiting is prohibited. Please Report the offending content instead; staff will deal with it promptly.
- Contacting staff members privately vs. using the forums Report system.
Unacceptable Post and Message Content
- Pornography. Tasteful, artistic nude images are acceptable, but not explicit sexual acts.
- Negativity: posts denouncing, ridiculing or expressing hate towards the topic being discussed.
- Illegal or unsolicited offering, requesting, trading, selling or downloading of copyrighted material.
- Racial and ethnic slurs, racist or xenophobic comments and discussion or debates about these topics.
- Spelling and grammar corrections.
- Criticizing or questioning staff or moderator activity.
- Personal contact or location information (email, street address, phone number, etc.) of any individual, either a forum member or a person outside the forum. This include “doxing,” with intent to do harm.
- Personal communications between yourself and any forum member, person outside the forum, or organization, without their express written permission.
- Libel, slander, and attacking individuals both inside and outside of the forum; this includes retailers, online sellers, recording industry organizations and equipment manufacturers.
- Links to sites which violate forum rules.
- Copyrighted photographs (linked from other sites, or attached to forum posts).
- Criticism of other forums and audio sites.
- Posting in “text speak”; please use proper language.
- Any content which is among our Unacceptable Topics (below).
Unacceptable Topics
- Politics, including topics which can turn distinctly political (including climate change).
- Religion or religious references.
- Racial and ethnic issues.
- Abortion.
- Weapons, gun control, 2nd amendment issues (US only).
- Discussion of, or references to, illegal (aka recreational) drugs.
- Sexually related discussions (including morality, acceptance and/or legalization of gay marriage, sexual preferences and LGBT issues).
- Negative threads which ridicule, denounce or express hate towards the subject. Critical discussions based on facts and personal experience are acceptable.
- Bootleg or pirated editions of copyrighted works, including discussions of contents and sources of same.
- Criticism of forum policies, moderator actions and administrative issues.
- “Tabloid” or frivolous content, “clickbait,” or low-effort threads (example: posting only an image or link with “Discuss!” as message text).
Your Forum Account
To participate in the forums, a visitor must create an account. Member accounts require a valid email address, as email confirmation is needed to activate your account. To prevent automated (“bot”) registrations, we may utilize a feature such as a “captcha,” or a question and answer, to prove you are human. To help prevent spammers and trolls from joining, accounts may be manually approved by staff, and a new member’s initial messages are held in a moderation queue, which will be approved by staff and publicly posted as soon as possible.
To comply with COPPA regulations, user accounts may not be created on our forum by anyone under 13 years of age. In addition, we require written consent of a parent or legal guardian for those who are 13 to 17 years of age before they may create an account.
Our guidelines for member accounts are as follows:
- Members are allowed only one account per user. Multiple accounts discovered will result in all accounts for that user being deactivated. If you feel you may have more than one account, perhaps a forgotten account from years ago, staff can easily merge your accounts together. Otherwise, using multiple accounts to circumvent a suspension or banishment, or as a sock puppet account, is strictly forbidden.
- Please create a secure password using a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and punctuation. Staff is not responsible for account hacking due to the usage of weak passwords.
- Avatars (user icons) must be in good taste, not be prohibited by our content and behavior guidelines (above), and must not be used to directly attack or ridicule others.
- Signatures should be kept brief, and must follow our posted content guidelines. Spam is not permitted.
- Location must be your true, actual location, as granular as you are comfortable with. (Uncomfortable with city? Use state/province and country. Or, just the country.) Phony and frivolous locations, witticisms, etc. are strictly prohibited. In short, your listed location must be found on Google Maps or equivalent.
Failure to follow forum account guidelines can lead to account suspension or banishment, and/or removal of any content posted (which can include profile information, and forum posts and threads). Staff reserves the right to use Private Conversations and/or email to reach members with issues regarding their account regardless of member’s privacy settings.
Posting Guidelines
To keep posts clear and legible for others, please observe the following forum etiquette:
- Use proper spelling, capitalization, grammar and punctuation to the best of your abilities.
- Use of “text speak” is prohibited.
- Do not post in ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS. We hear you just fine.
- Use an accurate thread title; half-sentence “click bait” titles, or exclamations (“Check this out!”), are frowned upon, and are also not searchable by others.
Removal or Closure of Content
- Content may refer to posts (or portions thereof), threads, avatars, signatures, locations, profile posts and comments, member profile data, and embedded images or media (video).
- Staff reserves the right to close or remove potentially offending content at any time for any reason, and without notice. If you find your content has been affected, and the reason is unclear, please Report your own post so that our entire staff is alerted to the issue.
- Removal of offending avatars, signatures, and custom titles may also result in loss of the usage of these forum features.
- All content posted is considered to be under public domain and freely available. As such, staff will not delete any content whatsoever in order to “deactivate” an account, or under any other circumstances.
Warnings, Suspensions and Banishments
Behavior in violation of our published guidelines may result in an action taken against the offending member in the form of a warning, reply ban, reduction or removal of privileges, suspension, or banishment. A warning is a message sent to the member(s) involved, often in the form of a cease and desist of the warned behavior. Repeated or accumulated warnings, or a severe enough infraction, can result in a suspension, of a length to be determined by the offense. Staff reserves the right to issue a “reply ban” on individual discussions for members who are disrupting a single discussion. Banishments are considered only after multiple suspensions, or in the case of the most severe of infractions, and are to be considered permanent.
Keep in mind that any attempt to circumvent the staff, or play the moderators off of each other, to reverse a warning or punishment can result in an immediate and permanent ban. Also, members attempting to circumvent a banishment by signing up another account will find the new account banned as well.
Copyright Terms and Conditions
Content posted in our forums is copyright the original creator of the content, and may not be reproduced, republished or otherwise linked to without prior written permission of the copyright owner. Certain forum content is also copyright the Steve Hoffman Music Forums and likewise may not be reproduced, republished or linked to without prior written permission of the copyright owner. Your usage of the Forums constitutes full agreement and understanding of our published copyright terms; unauthorized usage will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and the Forums may seek to recover damages from said copyright violations.
Fine Print
- While our guidelines attempt to cover most situations, we cannot anticipate all of them. There are times that content and behavior are unacceptable, yet not be clearly spelled out. Staff reserves the right to make a judgment call into what is acceptable, and will take appropriate action as needed to deal with these situations.
- Our staff is limited based on time available. It is not always possible to deal with forum issues immediately. There may be a delay in acting on or communicating about moderation actions.
- The moderation team attempts to keep objectionable content off of the forum, but cannot realistically review all messages posted. Please Report any content you feel may be objectionable and we will give it prompt attention.
- All content posted expresses the views of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of Trippy Hippie Photography Forums, its owner or staff, or any related parties; these parties will not be held responsible for any and all posted content posted by members.
- All user generated content, posts, and discussions, contained on Steve Hoffman Music Forums are the intellectual property of the forums, and subject to copyright laws in all jurisdictions. (See copyright notice above.)
- You agree not to post or otherwise make available content that constitutes or contains affiliate marketing, link referral code, or unsolicited commercial advertisement.
- These guidelines and policies are regularly updated without notice. Please review them for updates regularly. If you have any questions about these guidelines, feel free to contact us for clarification.
- Your continued usage of the forum, as a member or guest, constitutes your agreement with all policies, rules, terms and conditions listed herein.