We got Rules here!

[paulcalloway]

There was a time when we only needed two rules. Four years and several thousand users have changed that. Please be aware that we do have rules here... especially if you are new to this forum.

1. Sign your Full Name to every post - that your username contains your real name is NOT sufficient. We want your full name (first and last) to appear at the bottom of every post.
2. No Farbism - All discussion here must strive toward authenticity - this is not the forum for status quo reenacting or status quo thinking. Don't come here to argue with hardcores about what they are doing "wrong."
3. Be Nice - We don't expect this place to be Woodstock, but make an effort to show respect and courtesy to every poster.
4. Avatars - You must use a real photo of yourself as an Avatar. Approved Vendors will be allowed to use their company logo until we decide otherwise. If you want to have another picture posted, use your profile space - which is in your User Control Panel. Keep it appropriate and clean.
5. No Modern Politics - Period discussions of the intricacies of liberalism or conservativism are encouraged, but not beyond the calendar year of 1865.
6. No Auctions - Absolutely no auctions are to be conducted on our forums... use Ebay.
7. Commercial Sales are Not Allowed Except by Approved Vendors - ONLY our Approved Vendors may make commercial advertisements on this forum. If you want to advertise here, become an approved vendor.
8. Use at Your Own Risk - Purchases/Sales made here are not guaranteed by the Authentic Campaigner or Paul Calloway. If something goes wrong with your transaction, we will help if we can but we can not be held responsible ultimately to reimburse you.
9. Watch the Swearing - We prefer NOT to engage our swear-filter unless we have to as we would not want to censor historically valid use (such as in letters) - do not take advantage of this liberty or we will fill the swear-filter up with every swear, curse and innuendo we can think of - and it will be off-limits.
10. Free Speech is Not Guaranteed Here - While we welcome constructive criticism, this is a private forum and if you can't handle the way we do things here, you're welcome to create your own forum.
11. Event Organizers Post their own Announcements - If you expect to use the AC Forum to advertise your authentic events, we expect you to do it yourself. Second-hand guesses and 3d generation rumors are not the stuff of authentic event announcements. If you're not the official event organizer, your announcement will be removed.
12. Dont Send me Hate Mail - If you send hate mail to the Administrators or Moderators of this website, we will post it online for everyone to see... and we will include your full name and email address. Constructive criticism is always accepted... for purposes of brevity we can't define the difference, but we'll know it when we see it.
13. Sellers Post their Own Sales - If you're selling an item on our forums, you must sell your own items. We will not allow items to be sold that are "listed for a friend." This is the same line of thinking that we use with events. We want the info straight from the horses mouth... so to speak.
14. Only One User Account Per Person - In order to keep our userbase clean and to keep trolls at bay, please only register one account for yourself. If you want to change your username or some such, notify a moderator... don't create new accounts like you [hopefully] change your shorts.
15. Only One Copy of Any Given Post on the Forum - Unless specifically authorized by the moderators, please do not post the content of a single message in several folders. One should be enough and if not, the moderators have a much better copy function then you do that doesn't take up bandwidth.

There will be more rules as soon as I can think of them.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Sign your Full Name to every post

The Logic Behind the Rules:

Sign your Full Name to every post - that your username contains your real name is NOT sufficient. We want your full name (first and last) to appear at the bottom of every post.

I grew up with my Dad telling to be a man and sign my name to anything I wrote. He would get livid when anonymous letters published in the local newspaper.

Fast-foward 15 years or so... it's 1998 or 1999 and I witnessed terrible and cowardly attacks on upstanding members of this hobby on other forums, by anonymous posters.

When I first decided to add a forum to the Authentic Campaigner Site (which originated as simply an extensive collection of links) I knew that I didn't want to have a forum where anonymous posters made baseless attacks against notable people. I don't have a problem with confrontational posts, but do it with your God-given name or don't do it.

That's been the rule for about 4 years now here and as long as I'm connected with the forum, it will continue to be the rule.

[paulcalloway]

Re: No Farbism

The Logic Behind the Rules:

No Farbism - All discussion here must strive toward authenticity - this is not the forum for status quo reenacting or status quo thinking. Don't come here to argue with hardcores about what they are doing "wrong."

One of the original two rules (in addition to sign your full name with every post) was "No Farbism." At the time of the creation of the original AC forum, there was a plethora of forums and websites which appealed to mainstream reenacting. The hardcore/progressive movement was the counter-culture.

I didn't want just another forum where mainstreamers argued with hardcores. I wanted a forum where hardcores could come and discuss issues of authenticity without having to dodge the jeers and invective of mainstream trouble-makers.

Thus the rule - No Farbism. Admittedly it's nebulous rule but if we made rules to address every single aspect of farbism imaginable, we'd run out of space on the server. The No Farbism rule is concise and for four years, it's worked pretty well.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Be Nice

Be Nice - We don't expect this place to be Woodstock, but make an effort to show respect and courtesy to every poster.

The "Be Nice" rule originated a couple years ago when the AC and some of it's moderators were by my judgement becoming too confrontational. The purpose of this website was always to share the resources of the authentic community with all who had an interest - regardless of their personal level of authenticity. The purpose was to make authenticity the mainstream.

Some of our users and even some of our moderators were going too far in their defense of authenticity - even though on many occasions they were being baited.

I finally had enough. It occurred to me, and as evidenced by a recent poll on this website, that we were largely educated men and women and if we disagreed on subjects - we should be able to communicate that disagreement without insults, physical threats and vitriol.

Be nice means - find a way to communicate your position/disagreement without getting down in the gutter to do it.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Avatars

Avatars - You must use a real photo of yourself as an Avatar. Approved Vendors will be allowed to use their company logo until we decide otherwise. If you want to have another picture posted, use your profile space - which is in your User Control Panel. Keep it appropriate and clean.

Our new software allows each of us to have an Avatar image as well as a separate profile image. The Avatar image is the one that appears in each of your posts, the Profile image would appear only on your personal profile.

The reason/logic behind asking you to use only your own image in your posts is akin to the reason we ask you to sign your name to your posts. The AC forum is a unique online community and our online personality shouldn't vary widely from our on-the-field personality. Furthermore, we are building a reputation as a community of serious historians with legitimate ideas to contribute to the Civil War research discourse.

Museum Curators, Battlefield Historians and Professional Preservationists frequent this website. Images of black-servant/slaves or of Robert E. Lee or of Bugs Bunny or whatever-else as your avatars don't lend themselves to scholarly research or professionalism.

We don't have to be all doom and gloom around here, but please share in our desire to put our best foot forward toward serious Civil War research and help us present ourselves as a community of courtesy and professionalism.

Please feel free to use your profile space to upload an image that you might ordinarly have preferred to use as an avatar. Keep it clean and appropriate.

[paulcalloway]

Re: No Modern Politics

No Modern Politics - Period discussions of the intricacies of liberalism or conservativism are encouraged, but not beyond the calendar year of 1865.

We're getting a couple hundred posts or more each day on issues relating to authenticity. They are difficult enough to moderate and administrate without adding to our workload with brawls about modern politics, modern religion, etc etc.

There are other forums and folders all over the internet for that sort of discussion. Please discuss it on those other sites and allow us to concentrate on the topic at hand here.

[paulcalloway]

Re: No Auctions!

No Auctions - Absolutely no auctions are to be conducted on our forums... use Ebay.

Again, our Buy/Sell/Trade forums offer us plenty of headaches without being forced to moderate auctions. It's just too much to worry about. We prefer straight-foward sales...

If you want to sell something, post what it is (as long as it's a quality item) and how much you want for it... it's worked that way for years and we see no reason to change it.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Commercial Sales are Not Allowed Except by Approved Vendors

1. Commercial Sales are Not Allowed Except by Approved Vendors - ONLY our Approved Vendors may make commercial advertisements on this forum. If you want to advertise here, become an approved vendor.

Our reptutation in recommending quality vendors is very important to us. If we let just anyone sell their products commercially our endorsement will mean nothing and the products you purchase here will be junk.

By only allowing our Approved Vendors to advertise, we are taking steps to insure that the items that you purchase based upon posts on our forum will be of quality construction, patterns and materials.

We are also providing a value-added service to our Approved Vendors by giving them a forum to present their goods and services to you. It makes their time here more worthwhile and in the long run it's their substantive and financial support of this forum that will keep us operational for years to come.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Use at Your Own Risk

1. Use at Your Own Risk - Purchases/Sales made here are not guaranteed by the Authentic Campaigner or Paul Calloway. If something goes wrong with your transaction, we will help if we can but we can not be held responsible ultimately to reimburse you.

We sincerely hope that by requiring all of our users to sign their real, full name, and use their real photo, and by only allowing Approved Vendors to advertise commercial sales here that we all will be at lesser risk to being scammed here.

As you can see, we're going out of our way to maintain an environment condusive to making safe transactions. But even after taking all these steps, we can not guarantee that any one or any vendor will live up to their end of the bargain. Use at your own risk, realizing that we'll do what we can if something bad does happen... but that we can't be held responsible for your financial loss.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Watch the Swearing

Watch the Swearing - We prefer NOT to engage our swear-filter unless we have to as we would not want to censor historically valid use (such as in letters) - do not take advantage of this liberty or we will fill the swear-filter up with every swear, curse and innuendo we can think of - and it will be off-limits.

We had a long discussion on this topic and people on both sides of this equation made some very good points. If we crack down and say no swearing, we're going to be censoring the words of our Civil War ancestors - and we don't want to do that, it is of historical value.

But we certainly don't want to see the forum turn into a mosh pit of juvenile name-calling and foul euphamism. We want to promote a research-heavy environment - and as recent polls on our forum indicated, we are largely a well-educated bunch and therefore we should be able to express ourselves without being crass or offensive.

Keep the language civil and presentable. We can engage the swear filter, and will if it becomes a problem.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Free Speech is Not Guaranteed Here

Free Speech is Not Guaranteed Here - While we welcome constructive criticism, this is a private forum and if you can't handle the way we do things here, you're welcome to create your own forum.

Every once in awhile, someone (usually a kid) will make an allegation that we are violating someone's constitutional rights to free speech by moderating his posts here.

If you come to my house and barge in to my front room - trumpeting your causes and beliefs without invitation, you're likely going to also find your constitutional right to free speech being encroached upon... most likely by a Louisville Slugger.

This forum is no different. This is a private forum paid for by private funds and donations... If you want to know what your rights here are, look no further then this thread. The Bill of Rights doesn't extend to your participation on this forum. I have no obligation to provide a platform for you or anyone else to espouse your mantra. You are more then welcome to create your own forum and say whatever it is that is upon your mind.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Event Organizers Post their own Announcements

Event Organizers Post their own Announcements - If you expect to use the AC Forum to advertise your authentic events, we expect you to do it yourself. Second-hand guesses and 3d generation rumors are not the stuff of authentic event announcements. If you're not the official event organizer, your announcement will be removed.

Nothing gets my goat worse then a event coordinator who thinks he's too busy to post his own announcements on this forum. I don't care how authentic the event is, if you can't take a minute to post your own announcement - I don't want to support it.

Who is to say what 3d hand rumor is real and which one isn't? I don't want to encourage our community here to support an event unless we're getting the straight scoop right from the horses mouth. This insures that the information is above all, accurate.

If you want to make your announcement and then say "so and so" is our official spokesperson and will be posting from here on out in my stead, I won't like it, but I'll probably put up with it.

[paulcalloway]

Re: Dont Send me Hate Mail

Dont Send me Hate Mail - If you send hate mail to the Administrators or Moderators of this website, we will post it online for everyone to see... and we will include your full name and email address. Constructive criticism is always accepted... for purposes of brevity we can't define the difference, but we'll know it when we see it.

Nothing is more discouraging to the moderators of this website then to work our butts off trying to give the hobby a forum and then to receive FU emails as thanks. It makes me irate. If you send us that garbage, I will post it and include your email address in the posting.

And you can then enjoy the several hundred replies you get in your mail box from the well-wishers of the AC.