Rules and Guidelines (9,340 views)

[Baronessa]

Hello, and welcome to The Range Planet! Basically, we're required, just like other forums, to abide by the ProBoards terms of service. No one wants to see this forum removed, and to keep our atmosphere as clean as possible it's necessary to have a list of rules.

Definitions:
Staff = Any Range Planet Administrator, Moderator or Advisor.
Participants = Any user of The Range Planet.
OP = Original Post or Original Poster

The basics...

• Keep your password secure and do not allow others access to your account.
• Stick to one account only. Liking your own posts with sock accounts will result in a permanent ban.
• The Range Planet Staff are not responsible for your login information. If you have questions regarding logging in and registration, contact ProBoards Support instead.
• Automated account creation, participation, and content scraping is not permitted. The point of the Steve threads is to serve as a reference point for new research and not prepackaged research to claim as your own.
• And as far as bots are concerned, you must make one (1) post before you are able to post any new threads on the forum.
• Do not reveal the personal information of others without their explicit permission. Keep real names off the forum.
• Posts that discuss illegal activities, transactions, or websites will be removed. If you want to link a song, use 4shared or YouTube, or something similar.
• Do not post any pornographic images or adult content. 'Adult content' applies to any-and-all NSFW material whether it be in avatars or posts -- we do not make a distinction between porn/violence and art in considering this content, meaning album covers or other NSFW material otherwise considered to be 'art' is off-limits as well.
• Don't be offensive to/don't harass people of other cultures, races, genders and/or sexual orientations. Do note that discriminatory offensive comments even outwith those specific categories may also violate etiquette.
• Don't troll. Parading around in threads with unrelated topics and harassing other members will not be tolerated.
• On that note, don't derail threads with topics unrelated to that specific thread. If there is not already a discussion going that you'd like to have, you can create a thread yourself if you'd like to.
• Do not post any material that may cause distress to others, this includes flashing images and 'screamers'.
• Staff may lock or move a thread at any time if it is deemed appropriate to do so. Do not make threads about locked or moved threads.
• Do not make duplicate threads/posts of the same topic in the same board or on more than one board throughout the forum. When making threads, use the search function to ensure your question hasn't been answered before.
• If you'd like to create a range thread, be sure to check How We Include Notes before you post anything.
• Do not make "What's My Voice Type" threads. If you want to inquire about your voice type, make a singing thread of your own with legitimate vocal performances and only then may you start inquiring about your voice type. Your thread will otherwise be deleted or renamed.
• When in Off-the-Wall, if you wish to post things like mock OPs, make one thread for your assorted memes unrelated to any particular topic and keep them to your one thread.
• Generally, posts made specifically for the promotion of a website, product or service are considered unacceptable advertising outside of Musical Users. Unsolicited PMs or emailing of members specifically for the purpose of advertising is also not allowed.
• Do not delete your posts. We'd rather not give trolls the excuse to delete their posts, and if you don't fancy yourself a troll your post should be able to reflect this. if you don't want your post to be seen anymore just PM a moderator or an admin asking to move it.
• Backseat moderating is not allowed. As in, do not post with the intent of enforcing consequences on others.
• No bickering in public threads about policy or a moderation decision made by staff. You can submit feedback or suggestions on the Feedback/Contact board.
• Do not try to appeal or advocate on behalf of a banned user. They must personally contact an admin for appeal at our official Staff email [e-mail].
• When reporting a post, you must include a short, valid reason for the report even if you think it is obvious. Staff will review the report and take appropriate action if necessary. Repeated reports without proper justification may result in a warning.
• Any attempts to circumvent the rules may result in a warning or ban. Any attempts to circumvent a warning or ban will result in a permanent ban.

P.S. The Range Planet forum is moderated by a group of volunteers who have to make difficult decisions, read a lot of messages they aren't necessarily interested in, and deal with complaints, regularly. Staff are not babysitters. If your actions make the Moderators' job more difficult, it hurts the community. Participating in this site is a privilege, not a right, and as such everyone's cooperation and adherence to the above rules is an absolute necessity. If you encounter users or messages violating the above rules, please report them by using the Report Post feature.

Forum etiquette...

• The Range Planet is a PG-13 forum and members are expected to conduct themselves accordingly.
• The universally accepted language on The Range Planet is English and members are expected to compose their posts accordingly. Replying in other languages excludes most people from the conversation and makes Staff's job harder to moderate posts. Range threads with song titles in other languages are an exception to this.
• Posts that purposely belittle other people, causes or organizations will not be tolerated.
• Political discussion generally will be removed. We are a singing forum after all, and political discussion on a forum like this simply isn’t necessary.
• If you cannot be civil when replying, then do not reply.
• Do not try to speak on behalf of another user.
• Avoid changing names constantly so we know who you are, and also keep the names appropriate. Some users aren't active enough to tell who you are.
• Keep your posts looking clean. Use a spoiler if you're linking more than two videos, and spoiler any videos or media while quoting. You can highlight the one post you're responding to and break it up to avoid quote chains. Your post may be edited to suit this.
• Avoid replying to old conversations unless you have something new to add.
• Keep posting in rows to a minimum. If you have a new thread update every few weeks, double-posting is a bit more excusable, but if you have a quick update you missed in your last post, just edit your last post and tag the person you want it to be notified of in your edit.
• While member post count has meaning, it should not be taken too seriously. The mass creation of short or meaningless posts is prohibited.
• Do not reply to obvious spam threads. In addition to unsolicited advertising, spam is considered any thread that lacks any point of discussion or is inappropriate to be discussed at the The Range Planet. The only action should be to report the post by using the Report Post feature.
• While the amount of messages you can post consecutively in the Shoutbox is a bit more lax because of the format, the rules about being a nuisance or spamming aren't any less.
• Videos/threads about your own vocal range are frowned upon as they can look really self-indulgent.
• Don't try to mislead people when it comes to vocal advice.
• Don't try to be objective! Much of what is said here is speculation, assumptive, or simply subjective. Varying opinions are a feature of the site, not a bug, so please acknowledge this and recognize that discussions on threads go both ways.
• Yes, we are The Range Planet... Still, vocal range alone does NOT matter -- good singing (and music) does!

That'll be enough to get you started. We wish you an enjoyable stay! If for one reason or another you either don't have an account or can't access your current one, you can reach out at our official Staff email [e-mail].

[Alex61]

Just to add to this: Because of things that have happened before, political discussion generally will be removed - this isn’t to silence anyone’s beliefs or promote some agenda, this is just because we are a singing forum after all, and political discussion on a forum like this simply isn’t necessary. We’ve had issues with discussing politics before and to avoid that kind of confrontation, it’s safer to just not discuss them by and large.

Thank you for understanding :P

[clem]

Could my old FAQs from 3.0 be added to the Public Relations board, if any record of them still exists? I think they'd mostly ring true, save a little spring clean for rank changes.

[josephmichael]

Thanks! I found a profile of my singing here and was curious what this form is all about.
therangeplanet.proboards.com/thread/2127/joseph-michael

[juliae]

Thanks for helping!

[Baronessa]

We haven't made addendums to this one in a while, so there's no time like the present, right? You may have noticed that some threads that used to be there are not there anymore. You may have even found that some of your own threads have fallen by the wayside or merged into another thread of yours. This is because staff have noticed some pretty glaring issues with the quality of OPs* in recent times.

In an effort to avoid further spam there's a few things we have to clear up in regards to what consistutes spam.

Consider these three factors:
1. Is this idea original enough to have its own thread? Could I post this on an existing thread instead?
2. Does this thread have a shelf-life of more than two posts before it becomes irrelevant?
3. Do I have anything to say on this topic myself in order to post a thread on it in the first place?

Mock range OPs are still supposed to be posted in your own dedicated Off-The-Wall thread in order to prevent saturation on that subforum. Particularly mock OPs that just rip the Range Stuff version of that thread may be considered spam, and that subforum — while open to any topic under (and beyond) the sun — is still subject to the rules laid out on our Rules and Guidelines.

More than anything, exercise quality control when you're posting. If a thread idea seems very specific to you, there might be an umbrella thread for just the thing you're looking to talk about (for example there is a TV thread for talking about TV shows in Off-The-Wall). Be sure you've looked for these threads before posting your own. Creating atomised variations on existing threads has a high risk of discouraging posting as opposed to encouraging discussion about the things we're passionate about.

On a less stringent note, if you're looking to create more passionate discussion for a longer amount of time, you might want to present a specific idea which ranges widely in examples. This is a more difficult balance to strike, I suppose, and we won't be pulling you over for not creating the 'perfect thread' every time.

But yeah, the rules are all still the same. Merely FYI that in the future staff will probably be a little more hands-on with your threads if we suspect your posts might be spam, and if you make our job harder in this area we will consider warning you.

*This does not concern any Range Stuff OPs.

[jckinswo]

Is my geezer newbie assumption correct that "OP" = Original Post? If not, I'm sure it's something obvious, but I'm drawing a blank (common occurrence now-a-days), at least on the probable first word. I couldn't find the acronym after scanning several threads; I even tried Search with "ops" since three letters are required. Thanks for your help :)

[BAZanine]

Yeah, 'OP' either refers to the thread itself (Original Post) or to the owner of the thread (Original Poster), depending on context.