Forum Rules & Guidelines

 

GUIDELINES

Forum ethos

The forum is intended to be a friendly place where all cyclists, both experienced and not so experienced riders can visit and chat, joke, debate, ask questions and generally hang out.

Generally the visitors to the forum are adults but there are no age restrictions. That freedom demands a level of self moderation from its users. Please remember that bad language and discussion of certain topics can and does cause offence. Essentially if you post anything that is intended to cause offence then expect to have it deleted and possible have your account suspended. In short, think twice about posting anything that you wouldn't be prepared to say face to face.

Please have respect for other forum users and refrain from bad language and abusive postings.

What topics are suitable for discussion?

Although our forum is open to 'General Discussion', this is a cycling website and any poster should bear in mind that some people use the forum solely for the subject of mountain biking, cycling, arranging rides, etc. and clogging it up with too many posts about other subjects, even if witty or funny, doesn't help those people. We'd ask that before you post you consider others.

If you really must get it off your chest then it's standard practice to indicate the post is Off Topic by preceding the title of your post with OT:
Off Topic posts should be the exception to the rule and over use of Off Topic posting will be frowned on and potentially deleted.

The forum can be used for getting rides and friends together, but is not a personal messageboard. Please don't clog it up with personal messages that can be sent by email.

If you think a post is a deliberate troll, abusive, offensive or otherwise a bit naughty then don't hesitate to email us at adminredirect@vcgodalming.co.uk and we'll have a look. We can't guarantee we'll agree with you but at least we'll be aware of any infringements to other members' sensibilities.

If you notice that a post has been moderated and after reading this page you are still unclear as to why, then please email us directly and we will try to explain our decision. DO NOT post your request for a reason on the forum as it is likely to provoke needless argument.

RULES

In addition to the above guidelines we have a limited number of hard and fast rules that you should familiarise yourself with before posting on any of our forums.

  1. No posts of a sexual nature, including images of a sexual nature or intended to provoke a sexual response.
  2. No Trade or business advertising - except bona fide retailers may respond to genuine enquiries from potential customers.
  3. No posts which, in the Moderators opinion, are likely to cause offence to either an individual, or group, whatever their sexual inclination or ethnicity.
  4. No posts, including links to other sites that are deemed to be of a sexual or distasteful nature, incite racial or sexist behaviour or are in any way discriminatory and/or offensive towards individuals or minority groups (That includes singlespeeders!)
  5. No abusive or foul language - There is a swear filter on the site that will capture what we consider to be the most offensive vocabulary but any attempt to evade this swear filter will result in that post or thread being deleted.
  6. No posts containing images larger than 500 pixels in width or height.
  7. No posts which in the opinion of the moderators are solely intended to, or are likely to provoke or abuse any individual or group.
  8. No impersonation of any other poster, or use of another poster's identity, including letting a banned user post via your account.

The consequences of infringing these rules and guidelines are entirely at our discretion.

Negative use of the forum

It is our aim that the forum should have an overall positive effect on the cyclists that use it so:

If you resort to abuse of other forum users we will consider that a negative use of our forum.
If you post irrelevant posts to the topic in discussion we will consider this negative use of the forum.
If in our opinion your contributions to the forum are predominantly off topic we will consider this negative use of the forum.

In all these cases and in others we have not mentioned, we reserve the right to ban you for an unspecified time from the forum.

Any attempt to circumvent any ban by re-registering or using the account of another forum user could result in a lifetime ban from the forum.

Basically, if you respect the forum and your fellow cyclists who make use of it then you have nothing to fear.