The Soda Shop Rules & Guidelines

Anything important goes on the bulletin board, including the rules and guidelines.
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Jacob Isom
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The Soda Shop Rules & Guidelines

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Welcome to The Soda Shop Message Boards at The Odyssey Scoop! Step up to the counter with other Adventures in Odyssey fans everywhere and participate in discussions.

We are excited to hear from you and highly welcome your comments and discussions. All discussions and comments submitted on The Odyssey Scoop are moderated on a regular basis at the discretion of the board moderators. Since The Odyssey Scoop is dedicated to Adventures in Odyssey, we will not allow comments that are offensive, overly personal, disrespectful, irrelevant, or redundant.

Boardwide Rules

One Account Per User
We love having you here, but there's only one of you! As such, any fake/double accounts are not allowed, and will be removed.

Try to stay on topic as much as possible, no spamming*
Abusing your privilege to post here is not recommended, or tolerated. If you don't understand what the word "abusing" is defined as here, please make sure to read the section at the end of the page.

Be legible, and understandable
Be sure to check your spelling before you submit your comment and please don't use too many punctuation marks such as exclamation marks (!) and question marks (?) or smileys.

Bumping Threads
Bumping threads is perfectly fine, in fact, we encourage it. Please check to see if there is already an existing thread on a topic before you post. (You can search topic titles using the search feature.) Just make sure that when you bump threads, you're following all the other rules.

No double posting
Please avoid posting twice in a row on the same topic without giving someone else a chance to respond. If you need to add information to a topic after you've already just posted, please simply edit your last post.

Avatar
(No, not the movie) To avoid confusion, please avoid using the same avatar as someone else at the same time as they are using it. Seriously, they had it first. If you steal it you're just a copycat. Your avatar is a picture to represent YOU, but you should also keep the contents of you avatar appropriate. Think "PG" (or under).

Signature
Please, try to keep your signatures short, and to the point. If you want to tell everyone all the "clubs", or various other things you're involved with via your sig, please put all that in a spoiler. If a mod or admin deems your signature too long, they'll message you telling you so. As a general rule, please just try to keep your signatures under three lines long, with minimal spaces. Remember that the spam rules also apply to signatures.

Keep all conversations PG-rated
Basically keep all content appropriate for all ages. This includes both pictures and comments. Watch your language, violence, etc. We have all ages here, please be mindful of that.

Be safe!
If you are under the age of 14 we stress that you ask your parent's permission before sharing your age with anyone on the board. We also suggest that if you fit this age category, you consult your parents before posting pictures of yourself online. Also, please do not share your phone number with any other member, and giving out your email address or facebook account is discouraged unless you have your parent's permission (or are over 18) These are simply safety precautions, we just want you to have fun and be safe here on the Soda Shop.

Nosiness
At times, it's best to mind your own business. If you notice a member doesn't want to talk about something, don't pester them about it. Along those same lines, if you notice a member may have been banned, it's there business to tell you if they want or not. Also, as a general rule, the moderation will keep information about bans to themselves, so don't bother asking us either.

No cyber bullying
This one is pretty self explanatory. We all want to have fun on this board, and sometimes people's feelings can be hurt by offensive posts. Posts that seriously mock or insult someone, as well as posts intended to provoke or hurt a person are considered a form of cyber bullying, and will not be tolerated. If we can keep the negative comments to a minimum it would be wonderful. This includes gossiping about other members.

Other AIO Boards
The Soda Shop is one of several Adventures in Odyssey message boards. While some Soda Shoppers may naturally favor the Soda Shop, we expect everyone to respect each board. While it is okay to prefer one over the other, and express this with tolerance, it is against the rules to hurt other board's members or treat them with disrespect. Posts and topics that intentionally provoke or disrespect another board will be removed, and the author either warned or asked to edit the topic. And be careful, many members are on other boards, so slandering moderators or administration from this board could result in action against you from the SS administrative team.

Please refrain from excessive "flirting"
Again, we have all ages on this forum. Please try to keep it appropriate because it can get rather uncomfortable. This is a family friendly site, not a dating site.

Spoilers!
As this is a site dedicated to a show, there are things that some members may find out sooner than others. Because of this, we ask that if something has been in the past couple albums, to please put it in a spoiler tag at least until the episode has aired on the radio, and do not put spoilers in topic titles!

Hardcore gaming
For all forum games, any user should not post more than ten times a day in the Game Room. We can't be racking up 30 pages of posts in a single day. The games are there to be fun, not to crash the server with 60,000,000 posts in an hour.

Spamming the Interview Booth
Please do not copy/paste the same set of questions onto more than 5 threads, and Please do not post in more than 7 threads per day total in the Interview Booth. The point of the Interview Booth is to get to know your fellow board members, so make your questions unique to each member. (If you have one question you /really/ want to ask a bunch of people, that's fine, but put it with other questions too.)

Excess Threads in the Gallery and Interview Booth
We'd love to get to know you, but there's only 1 of you! As such, please follow the guidelines of only 1 thread per type (art, music, & writing) in the Gallery, and only one thread per person in the Interview Booth!

Moderators and Administrators must be obeyed at all times, no questions asked
We have mods and admins for a reason, and that reason is to keep some order in what would otherwise be considered total chaos. If you don't agree with a mod on something, grin and bear it. They're the authority here, so give them your respect.

*What is spam?

As there has been some question about the specifics of these rules, a more comprehensive definition of "spamming" is as follows:

Shameless advertising
This message board is intended for conversation about Odyssey, not a billboard for advertising your own projects. We don't mind you sharing some of your work; in fact, we have a special sub-forum called The Gallery for that sort of thing, but consistently using your posting privileges to advertise third party websites or content is not tolerated.

One word (or smiley-face) posts.
If you have something to say that adds to the conversation, then you may make a one-word or short post, however, if you only want to agree with someone without adding anything, you might as well just say it out loud to yourself so you at least have the fun of shouting out your "AMEN!".
Posts such as "Definitely! " or "YES!" with no other words, are considered "spam" and will be deleted.

Abusing the caps lock
WHEN YOU TALK LIKE THIS YOU LOOK LIKE YOU'RE YELLING AND IT ISN'T VERY FRIENDLY AND IS INSTEAD SPAMMY. So please keep writing in all caps to a minimum.

Abusing the "color" option
If you want to emphasize something, go for it, but don't highlight everything you say, or it will be considered "spamming". Your post will be edited, or likely deleted.

Abusing the "quote" option
Please refrain from quoting entire walls of text, especially when all of that text is on the same page as your comment. The only time quotes should be used, is if that post you're replying to is on a different page, or if you need to reply to something specific, in which case you should try to edit out all of the message that you're quoting except for the part that relates to your post.

Mass copy/pasting questions
Please refrain from copy and pasting questions to more than five different threads in the Interview Booth. If you want to ask more than five threads at a time you can feel free, just keep it reasonable (i.e. don't ask every thread in the forum) but make sure the questions are unique and aren't just a copy and paste!

Post Milestones
It's awesome if you've finally reached 2000 posts, or maybe it's only 200; but either way, please don't make separate posts for your milestones. However, feel free to celebrate in a spoiler on the bottom of another post! Hooray for you! :D

Hardcore gaming
For all forum games, any user should not post more than ten times a day in the Game Room. We can't be racking up 30 pages of posts in a single day. The games are there to be fun, not to crash the server with 60,000,000 posts in an hour.

~

As a way of making sure these are followed, there are consequences for breaking any of the above rules. We keep a pretty tight record of each user on the site, so don't think you'll slip by without being noticed.

1st offense - Gentle reminder
2nd offense - 1 week avatar and PM removal
3rd offense - 1 week ban
4th offense - 3 week ban
5th offense - 5 week ban
6th offense - 6 week ban
(and 7 weeks for the 7th offense and so on...)

Any user who believes that a posted message on the main board is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately either by reporting the comment or sending a PM to an admin or moderator. Upon receipt of such notification, we will make every effort to remove any problematic comments. If you have any further problems with any user in particular, or are feeling that you are being treated unfairly, don't hesitate to contact any of the mods or admins discuss your situation. We suggest that if you do wish to do this, you should contact a mod or admin of the same sex as you.

Before You Begin
Finally, please be aware that we have incorporated an external message board service (phpbb) for use at The Odyssey Scoop; therefore, you are subject to the terms and conditions of the service as defined at account registration. The account agreement may be changed without notice at any time. The Odyssey Scoop is not responsible for the content of messages by users.

~

(Rules by Jacob Isom, Waldo, Kaida, God's Girl/Belle, T.S. (myself), SirWhit, and Aaron Wiley)
Jacob Isom | Webmaster, odysseyscoop.com
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