Forum Policies

[Witness]

Anyone who posts in these forums should be aware of our policies about the following subjects.

Posts and attachments containing or linking to the following are not allowed:
- pornography or sexual material
- illegal files (mp3s, warez, cd cracks, serial numbers, etc.)
- hate speech, libel, personal threats (in either posts or private messages)
- spam, advertisments, chain-linking schemes/games
- trojans, viruses

To prevent the forum environment from devolving into utter chaos, we frown upon, and may also warn/ban you for:
- starting and/or participating in flame wars
- bashing Dungeon Siege (note that this is *not* the same as posting constructive criticism, which is allowed)
- being disrespectful to another forum member (in either posts or private messages)
- excessive profanity

Any of the above offenses qualify you for receiving a warning, temporary ban, permanent ban, account deletion, cease and desist notice or action from the proper authorities - wholly dependent on the severity of the offense.

Locking and Deleting Threads
Administrators and moderators may close or delete a thread with or without prior warning for violating any of the aforementioned reasons or Terms of Use.

[Sweetest Thing]

One question, isnt a private message supposed to be "private"?

[Wynne]

In forum terms, only insofar as it not being able to be read by everyone on the board.
The type of abuse Witness is trying to prevent by making PM's reportable is something like this.
For some reason, member IHateEveryone decides they want to attack you. Instead of posting in in the open where the mods would quickly see it and act on it, they decide to send you PM's. This goes on for several days to the point you cannot log into the forums without having a PM box full of 'hate mail'.
Should you continue to have to suffer this abuse?
This is not a public forum where freedom of speech applies. Witness owns this site and therefore has a right to say what she will allow or not.
In the normal course of forum interaction, yes PM's are private. The report feature is only to prevent unwanted harrassment.

[Loviatar]

sorry for giving incorrect info
have it straight now

[Witness]

To clarify, Private Messages are not screened, and they are not read by third parties (moderators, admins, etc.) retroactively either.

However, to adhere to the Terms of Use/Service as well as the policies mentioned in the first post, forum members are not allowed to use the forum system to communicate harassing or threatening messages to someone else.

If you have received harassing or personally threatening PMs and report it to me, I have to follow up on the report and verify that this is indeed the case. To verify it, I would require the person reporting the issue to me to give me the ID numbers of the offending PM messages and the username(s) of the sender(s). Suffice it to say, it takes some cross-referencing of member and PM ID numbers to pull up the right PM messages in the database, and only people with access to the database can access them.