[Ben E Lou]

OK. Here are the basics:

1. No links to porn sites (hardcore or soft). Period. This includes hxxp links.

2. If you think a site has questionable content contained therein, use hxxp when posting a link.

3. Please be careful about posting pictures in a thread, even if they are pictures from a legit site like ESPN. Think of the FOFCer who is surfing sitting at the desk at his office.*

4. Please note that these are general guidelines. It just isn't feasible to attempt to write a set of rules that take into account every single possible linking scenario. The mods will make judgement calls on enforcement, and their decision is final.

*--And before you say, "Well, they shouldn't be surfing at work," consider that there are those who are allowed to surf the 'net during "down-times" at work, but if someone walks by and there's a picture of a woman in a bikini/underwear/skimpy clothes, they may get called into question.

OK. Now that the basics are out of the way, below I've copied and pasted some comments from the original thread that I found important to help people understand why we have this policy. The bottom line is this: it is a courtesy to other board members who may have different guidelines at work than you do. Here ya go:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Today I heard from yet another long-time, respected forum member who may have to stop coming here from work because things that are linked to from here are coming up as potentially objectionable. This could *kill* our forum. By far, our largest day-to-day activity is during the work day. As more and more offices use 'net snooping software, this is going to become more and more of an issue. It is my understanding that a number of these programs use what a site links to as one of their criteria for determining whether it is appropriate or not. I issued a suspension today to someone who posted such a link, and I won't hesitate to continue doing so.

Originally Posted by HornedFrogPurple

This is coming from Mrs. HFP:

"Any network admin with 2 minutes on their hands and knows what they are doing can shred an anonymizer." Believe me she knows what she is talking about so be careful.

She also suggested to stop actual direct links from this forum to whereever to use something like:

hxxp://www.yahoo.com/news/tiddlywinks/yaddayadda.htm

Then you can open up a new browser, copy/paste and change the in hxxp to http. This prevents direct linking from here in any way. So if you aren't sure, just do that.

Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by Ryan S

Most employers who use net snoops are just checking to see nobody is using work time to search for objectionable material. The seaches are usually fairly primitive, and most companies will look for trends.

Originally Posted by Ryan S

The majority of companies would have no problem with employees occasionally visiting this site if we stuck to our normal content.

Originally Posted by SkyDog

This has come up before. There is no possible way to lay out every possible suspense-worthy offense. Further, if I tried to do so, the obvious result would be that the people who enjoy being jerks would post every possible offensive picture that didn't violate the letter of the guidelines. Trying to lay out something like this is a recipe for a modding headache/nightmare. There are basically two rules around here:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

RULE 1: Don't act like an asshat.
RULE 2: Mods will make a determination on a case-by-case basis as to whether or not someone is acting like an asshat.

Link to original thread.