The following is a list of rules, guidelines and other general information pertaining to the use of the Zoobb.com community. Please note that while these may be long and somewhat excessive to some they should be read and understood. The issues covered are important and range from general community etiquette to personal online safety and security. Contact a staff member via pm or email if anything is at all unclear. These rules are subject to change though notification will be given.
General Rules
1. People viewing this forum and any contents herein must be over the legal adult age in their country. For this board the minimum age is 18.
2. All posts regardless of what forum they are posted in must be in english. Non english posts even if made in the personals forum will be removed.
3 a. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users and staff. Flaming or abusing others in any way will not be tolerated. This includes but is not limited to general rudeness or abrasiveness, derogatory comments, racial comments and general abuse.
3 b. Respect the opinions of other members. Members will not always see eye to eye but it is important for the overall sake of the forum that all opinions be respected. If you disagree state your contrasting opinion using clear and concise points. We will not tolerate any arguing on the forum.
4. Members should post in a way that is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large, small or colored text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts.
5. Keep swearing to a minimum and derogatory racial comments as well as other general abuse off of the forum.
6. Spamming will not be tolerated. Spamming includes any post that the staff deems to not contribute positively to the forum. This includes but is not limited to bumping one's own topic, advertisements, duplicate posts, blantently off topic posts in specific threads and posts made in the media section to increase one's post count.
7. All posts must be made in the relavent forum. Users are encouraged to read the descriptions of the forums before posting as well as understand the rules. If anything is unclear contact a member of staff.
8. Proxy posting will not be allowed under any circumstances. Banned users are free to contact the site admin via email but have no entitlement to use any of the board features either themselves or via a third party.
9. Posts depicting harm to either people or animals are not allowed.
10. The public posting of any personal information is not allowed. This includes any information that can be used to identify you personally such as telephone numbers, real names, addresses, images, etc.
11. Do not post any information that in any way either directly or indirectly identifies the personal details of any zoos, forum members or anyone in association with zoos and other forum members. This includes but is far from limited to posting real life information, idenfifying individuals who have made the news, and exposing any real life information that could lead to any individuals being outed or exposed in any way at all. Any member we deem to be spreading such information will earn an instant ban followed by us alerting other zoo forums.
12. You can talk about any and all parts of yourself and your journey to today. There must, however, be some discretion. We do not want graphic physical details or suggestions that forced or under age participation is desirable. We do not wish to ignore or minimize your personal experiences, however, anything that appears to advocate harm to any living being, especially an immature one, will be removed and the poster's status re-evaluated.
13. Discussions on or about the topic of pedophilia are expressly forbidden. Breaking this rule could result in an instant no questions asked ban.
14. Discussions which show approval for and/or defense of inceset are prohibited. Details of sexual acts of an incestual nature are also not allowed.
15. No rule circumvention in posts will be tolerated. Users caught trying to find a loophole or skirt the edges of the rules will be made an example of.
Attachment Rules
ZooBB.com defines an attachment as any media (including but not limited to text, images and videos) that is uploaded and added to a users post.
16. No media with visable copyright marks is allowed except for where the user uploading the media is the owner of the copyright or has express permission from the copyright owner to post the media.
17. All attachments must meet the established General Rules listed above.
18. Attachments depicting abusive acts will not be tolerated. This includes but is not limited to rape, torture, and depictions of sexual acts with partners who have no way of enjoying the acts such as reptiles, birds, insects, etc.
19. Attachments depicting what we deem to be underage actors (either human or animal) are not allowed nor are posts encouraging this.
20. All external links to media which has been uploaded must be freely accessible to the users of the forum. If a user is not able to follow a link and download the material there without registering or paying a fee then the link(s) will be removed.
21. Users are not allowed to post spam or short meaningless messages in order to access more attachments. Users caught doing this will completely lose the ability to download media from the board. We insist everyone contribute fairly in one form or another.
ZooBB.com Guidelines
1. We try to operate a three strikes policy as opposed to instantly banning accounts. First strikes will come in the form of a warning and likely combined with post(s) removal. Second strike comes in the form of a temporary ban to be decided by the staff based on the severity of the rule(s) broken. The third and final strike will be a permanent ban of the account. This however does not apply to rules 9, 11, 12, and 13 which could at the discretion of the ZooBB.com staff earn a user an instant and permanent ban.
2. Final decisions regarding interpretations of any given rule will rest with the Staff, with such interpretations being made in the best interest of the forum. While such decisions are not closed to discussion, the final decision rests with the Staff and Owners of this site
3. Members who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to discuss with another staff member. Administration decisions are final.
4. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban is not allowed. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned username, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account to evade an email ban. Circumvention includes posting as an anonymous user.
User Security
While the owner and staff at ZooBB.com will make every possible effort to ensure security it is ultimately up to the end user to ensure their own safety while publicly posting on a zoo forum. We advise all users to exercise the following precautions:
1. Choose a username and use an email account that isn't used outside of the zoo community. Creating a GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Hushmail or a multitude of other email addresses is simple, easy and free.
2. Do not post an amount of personal information that can easily be linked to you. This can include posting details such as animal names, city of residence, first name, details about past, images of animals, etc.
3. When filming videos or taking images ensure that things appearing in the background are not easily identifiable. It is also advisable that users not allow their face in any shot and that easily recognized animals not be filmed or photographed.
4. Do not access zoo sites or save zoo media on a public computer.
The above points are mere suggestions as to how you can better keep safe online. If anyone has any further suggestions to add to this list please contact the board admin so it can be updated.
If any of the above has been at all unclear then contact a member of staff for help and advice. If in doubt about the rules and guidelines of the forum always ask.