A Reminder For All Members

[EMTbravo 312]

When you registered as a member on this forum, you agreed to follow the rules and conditions. By posting, you are agreeing to comply with the rules.

Therefore, I would just like to reinforce some rules I've noticed that some members have been disregarding.

#1. Do NOT attack another member for his/her opinion. If you're going to reply, make it constructive and responsive to the issue being discussed, not the person.

#2. "One Liners". One line posts made to incite trouble, be a comic, throw a thread off course, etc are not permitted and will be deleted. This includes anyone who posts things like "beating a dead horse".

#3. All posts must be constructive and respectful. Take some time to read over your post and think "would I like to be addressed in this matter?". Pause before you hit that submit button. And don't automatically feel it's your duty to defend yourself or be a hero defending others....everybody is entitled to an opinion.

#4. If you have an issue or question about this forum, or a complaint about a thread or another member, PLEASE contact that member or a staff member first, before hijacking a thread with it. Feel free to hit the report button to bring an issue to our attention.

#5 Irrelevant discussion. Don't "hijack" threads with off topic replies. Especially in the photo threads.

#6 Don't blame the staff because you don't know the rules or are knowingly breaking them or trying to get around them.

#7. The staff's PERSONAL opinion during discussions is to be taken the same as a member's. They are not acting in moderator capacity when they post. An EMTBravo staff rule is once a moderator participates in a thread, they cannot moderate that thread.

#8. We reserve the right to change topic titles to more accurately describe the topic, and/or to make indexing easier for the future.

#9. We reserve the right to split threads if there are two seperate discussions going on in one thread.

#10. Read the rules of this site. You are bound to follow them. If you feel something should be changed or updated, contact a staff member.

#11. Respond to criticism with facts or an appropriate rebuttal, not a "Mommy, he hit me" knee jerk response.

"Please Treat Our Topics As Conversations Between Real People"

The topics in our forum often get political. Unfortunately these political topics often degenerate into flame wars. These flame wars destroy otherwise interesting and useful conversations. The nature of the Internet makes flaming easy. You're sitting alone at your computer. You read a post that annoys you. In that moment, the post is experienced not as a comment from a friend, but as an insult from a disembodied, far-off devil. You fire off a response more appropriate to beating back a devil than to replying to a friend. And, the topic is destroyed and we are off to the flame wars. Please, folks, when you post here, especially when you post in answer to a comment you disagree with, pause a moment before you click Submit. Ask yourself, Would I say this if I were in the same room with him? Then ask yourself, "How would I feel if somebody said to me, what I am about to say to him?" If we all exercised a little more empathy and restraint, our Forum would be a much better, more interesting place/ ~Joe Grossman