New and Revised Terms of Service (TOS)

Terms-of-Service (TOS) - revised 11/11/2023

These apply to each and every poster, and staff member.

1. No pornographic, obscene, graphically disturbing material, or links to such material. The gauge used to determine such material is whether a person would get in trouble if the given image was displayed in a typical office environment, and/or whether a parent or guardian would be comfortable showing that image to a young child. If the answer is no to either question, it’s inappropriate.

2. No profanity, vulgarity, or attempts to bypass the language filter using alternate spellings of such words.

3. No racist, sexist, or other derogatory comments referring to another’s gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, illness, or sexual preferences /orientation. Same goes for their family members.

4. No Personal attacks or communication that is intended to harass, belittle, humiliate, embarrass, threaten or otherwise demean another poster. If you must vent towards a fellow poster as a result of words exchanged, you may do so via private communication such as e-mail, or PM. Remember that personal communication should be professional, as threats via the personal messaging system will not be tolerated. Veiled attacks directed at another poster and determined to be obvious by the Bills Zone staff will be considered an attack. Failure to honor or oblige to requests to leave a poster alone by the said poster or a Bills Zone staff member will be considered a violation of this policy. Conversely, if you feel that your rights as a poster have been violated by another, contact a moderator or staff member with your concerns and we will assist you in resolving the issue.

5. No posting information about another member’s family, work situation, or personal life. If someone wishes to share information about themselves or their family, it may not be weaponized, and used against them. Please respect one another’s personal privacy, and please use good judgement about what you share with the rest of the board, as this is a public site.

6. No blatant or flagrant bashing of the site or message boards. Constructive criticism and questions are encouraged and welcomed when it is made in the proper forum in the “Suggestions” area. Consistent abuse of the reporting system will be considered a violation of TOS and may render you subject to disciplinary action. The staff reviews all complaints as a team and renders a decision as such. The individual in question is then dealt with privately on a case-by-case basis. The staff’s decisions are final, and not subject to public criticism. Believe it or not, we as an Administration team, have a combined Eighty years of moderating experience. Most of us were professionally trained.

7. No Flames (or posts intended to harassingly antagonize a fellow poster). See Rules 3, 4 & 5.

8. No spam or commercial advertisements without prior approval by site management.

9. No posting of entire articles/copyrighted material. Posts containing news stories/article segments must also include a URL link to the article where it is originally published at the minimum.

10. Moderators reserve the right to relocate, remove, close, or spam any postings including but not limited to threads, posts, messages, links, and images that are deemed inappropriate by the Bills Zone staff in the greater interests of the message board.

11. Any disagreement with actions taken by the Bills Zone staff may be discussed and appealed privately with the individual or other staff members. As always, the communication must be professional at all times. Name calling, threats, and slurs will not be tolerated, be they public, via PM, via reputation comments, or via comments made in the reporting process. These comments will be considered personal attacks, flagrant bashing of the site, or flames, as indicated in Rules 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 above.

12. Failure to adhere to these Terms of Service will be considered grounds for immediate disciplinary action, including the loss of posting privileges in specific, or all forums which may end up in a temporary suspension and/or permanent banning. The Zone will make every reasonable attempt to warn users of TOS violation(s) via PM (private message) and/or the e-mail that the user provided at time of their registration.

13. Any disciplinary actions taken are directed towards the individual offender, not the username. Re-registering under a different username is considered an attempt to circumvent disciplinary action and may result in further loss of privileges. Multiple accounts are forbidden for the same reason. The Zone can ban individual IP addresses if necessary.

14. Spin Zone specific rules. The staff understands that the Spin Zone forum by nature deals with hot-button topics that elicit strong emotions on both sides. PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK ‘POST’. Why am I responding in this thread? Is my response to put forth a viewpoint, or simply to enflame the situation? Please use good judgement in this forum, as we all are products of our individual environments and upbringings.

15. Attempt to have fun and meet people of differing backgrounds and viewpoints. Remember that there is a person behind those characters, who has thoughts and feelings the same as you.

Please also note that - if in the opinion of the staff - that any forum is getting out of control, we reserve the right to close that forum at any time