Hey there, Girltalker!
Welcome to the forums where intelligent, independent women can find relevant and current information while sharing their own wealth of experiences in a friendly, respectful and enjoyable environment. We'll be going through a few house rules to get you started:
Keep it Simple
1. Make the forums readable. No text speak and sticky caps (use of alternating lowercase and capitalized letters), please. Text speak is automatically corrected with the (textspeak!) sign and members are required to edit their post.
2. Free the boards from clutter. Post only information relevant to the parent thread. Unrelated messages, personal discussions, etc. are given the proper venue through private messaging.
3. No thread bumping or post count padding. Posts published for the sole purpose of increasing the ranking of a member or thread within the forums (post count padding or thread bumping) will be treated as spam.
Stay Classy, Not Catty
1. What goes around comes around, so common curse words are automatically censored while others are censored manually by moderators.
2. Express yourself eloquently and with grace. Profanity, name-calling, personal attacks rather than arguing points and other offensive language in posts or private message are not allowed.
3. Don't become a troll. Antagonizing others through unprovoked sarcastic or offensive remarks about individuals or groups and their lifestyles, choices, or beliefs is unacceptable.
Be the Fairest of them All
1. Don't advertise websites, products, online communities, products and services that are in direct conflict or competition with the Girltalk forums, FemaleNetwork.com site, or any Summit Media website or magazine and their respective advertisers. Simply put, if you want to turn a profit, don't do it off someone else's back.
2. GT's got your back by providing the FN Marketplace boards to help your business. Links to personal selling sites are permissible but spiels, slogans, or written solicitations are prohibited. Please don't post more than one advertisement per product or service in the For Sale forum.
3. With the exception of downloadable files from Female Network or other Summit sites, the posting of links to downloadable files (whether DOC, MP3, PDF, EXE, etc.) is prohibited on the Girltalk forums.
4. Respect people's time and don't spam. Spam refers to the repeated posting of thread entries and/or private messages, all of which contain the same content and are unsolicited by the recipient.
5. Respect people's privacy. Under no circumstances are forum members to disseminate, via forum post or private message, personal details of other individuals as outlined above, be they members of the forum or not, unless these details are common knowledge.
Girl Power
1. Practice net safety. Providing links to websites that may contain malicious or X-rated content is prohibited. It is only permissible to give part of a dangerous site's web address, name the whole of its title, or describe its contents to warn other members on the potential dangers of sites.
2. Say no to harassment. A Girltalker's right to say no or "enough is enough" is of paramount importance. Once a member asks another member to stop contacting him or her or behaving in an offensive way on the forum threads, this should be respected. Bullying is considered harassment.
3. Under no circumstances is the solicitation of sex allowed through forum posts or private messages.
