Christian Fellowship Rules & Guidelines Updated on 23 May 2006

Welcome to the Christian Fellowship Forum
The Christian Fellowship Forum is a place for the free exchange of thoughts and feelings on topics connected with Christianity. We hope you'll find it a useful place to meet friends and enjoy warm Christian fellowship. Issues of faith, stewardship, spirituality, family life, and more are all welcome topics on the Christian Fellowship Forum.

This forum is not sponsored by, nor does it have any affiliation with any church or other religious organization. It is operated privately and there are no religious, doctrinal, or affiliation tests for members to participate or for forum staff. However, since this area is dedicated to the discussion of Christian topics, a respect for that faith is a basis for communication and behavior.

If you wish, you may change the name you are known as in this Forum.

In addition to complying with all the rules (as found in the operating rules and service agreement) of CompuServe and which you voluntarily agreed to be bound by when you first became a subscriber, the following are the specific agreements for participation in the Christian Fellowship Forum:

Membership Requirements
The only requirements for membership are:

(a) A willingness to recognize that each person's religious beliefs or lack of beliefs deserve to be treated with the utmost respect and consideration and
(b) A willingness to abide by the rules of the forum, cooperate with the staff, and abide by decisions of the staff.

Resources, Grievances and Procedures
Please read the general guidelines on forum courtesy as well as examples for rephrasing potentially offensive messages.

If you have a concern about a decision we make, please send a Private Message to Forum Manager Tom Sims or to Assistant Forum Manager Richard Waterfield. They will review the situation or ruling and make a determination. The decision of the Forum Managers will be final.

We will attempt to catch all rule-breaking messages, but this is a forum staffed by volunteers and is not constantly monitored. We appreciate being told of anything we miss or haven't noticed. Please remember that messages are posted as soon as you enter them and are not pre-screened. The staff watches for rule-breaking messages, but may not see them before you do.

We will attempt to catch all rule-breaking messages, but this is a forum staffed by volunteers and is not constantly monitored. We appreciate being told of anything we miss or haven't noticed. Please remember that messages are posted as soon as you enter them and are not pre-screened. The staff watches for rule-breaking messages, but may not see them before you do.

Rules
Please note that messages deemed to violate the following rules or the preceding agreements may be moved by staff at their discretion and may result in official warnings or lockout from the forum. In addition, forum management reserves the right to move messages to various sections where they may deem appropriate.

(1) Please respect the beliefs of others. Using terms which are disrespectful of other religions is a violation of forum policy. In particular, posting disparaging remarks about a religion or its followers in the section devoted to discussion of that religion is out of order.

(2) Messages that call for illegal action, that might result in harm to others, or that advocate violence or death are not allowed on this forum.

(3) Impersonation of another user or a public figure living or dead is illegal and against the forum rules, resulting in lockout without further comment.

(4) No obscenity, profanity, explicit sexual references, lewdness, or abusive language.

(5) You may take issue with a person's ideas, but you may not attack or insult the person as a person or for his/her faith. For instance, you may identify an idea as a lie, but not a person as a liar.

(6) No proselytizing or reverse proselytizing (attempting to get people to renounce their faith). You may seek to persuade people of the strength of your ideas, but you may not prescribe what they should do or believe.

(7) This is an English forum unless there are specific exceptions. So that staff can adequately facilitate discussion and all members can participate, messages must be posted in English. When brief quotes are posted in another language, an accurate english translation must accompany them in the same message.

(8) A message or file may be submitted once to one section only. This saves our members time, frustration, and money. also, please keep your quotations from previous messages as brief as possible.

(9) Messages and library files from other forums, private E-mail and other private information will be considered copyrighted or privileged for this forum's purposes. Previously published material may not be posted without the specific permission of the copyright owner and Sysop unless it is properly attributed and set off by quotation marks, within reasonable length, and does not constitute the majority of a message or file. Contact the Sysop to make arrangements for copyrighted material.

(10) No advertisements will be permitted except in sponsored sections and by the sponsors themselves or their delegates. Forum Sponsorships are available for purchase; send email to Forum Manager Tom Sims for details.

(11) No disruptions in messaging or conference - this includes disruption of forum discussion or conferences, harassment of other users, disregard for forum policy or disrespect for forum staff members performing assigned tasks. Offensive nicknames are also considered disruptive. Arguments about forum policy, staff decisions or staff are also disruptive to the flow of discussions.

(12) Messages that advocate hatred and racism are not allowed in the forum.

(13) Participation in the forum is at the sole discretion of forum management. Also, at the discretion of staff, a message may be moved, a thread renamed, or a message deleted. If possible, the sender will be informed.

(14) Each message writer is responsible for what he or she writes; neither the forum nor the staff assume responsibility, legal or otherwise, for what is written here by others. All members agree to this stipulation.