Board-wide Policies

This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community users here on the Team Law Open Forum system.  Please read it and become familiar with it; it’s terms are retroactive and agreed to by all of our Open Forum system users.

1. Registration on our Open Forum System affirms that you read and agree to comply with these Board-wide Policies. Thank you for your participation and interest in our service and our Forum.
2. All rules, policies and guidelines that apply to our Open Forum also apply to our Beneficiary Forum, which together comprise our “Forum System”.
3. The purpose of our Forum System is to eliminate e-mail to and from Team Law; We require that all posts to our Open Forum must comply with our standards and the purpose of our Open Forum, which is: to eliminate e-mail to and from Team Law.  The idea is, if people can ask us their general questions in our Open Forum, others can read their posts, learn about Team Law and our work to preserve our country and thus help us eliminate the repetitious need for others to send us similar e-mail; thus, we can disseminate massive amounts of information without repeating ourselves much.
4. Thus, before posting questions, users need to read the posts already on the forum and see if your questions were already answered.
5. Team Law cautions all of our Forum System participants with our statement on Advice as posted on Team Law’s website and with the Site Terms of Use also there posted.
6. If your posts are of a personal nature, they should be posted to Admin in a private message.
7. I you have questions regarding how our open forum system works, first check out the FAQ page.
8. Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below). #
9. Users should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning. #
10. Users are asked to not act as "back seat moderators". If users note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of Admin by way of a private message. Only do this if a moderator team member has not replied within 6 hours. Do not respond to such topics yourself. Members who consistently "act" as moderators may be warned. #
11. Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to cancellation of your registration and banning access to your ip#. #
12. Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc. Users linking to or asking for information on third party systems, etc. or re-printing material without permission will receive a warning and their post will be removed. #
13. Members should respect the bandwidth of other users and sites. The use of inline ([IMG][/IMG]) image tags pointing to data stored on third party systems for which the user has not received permission to link to may be removed. #
14. Members should post in a way which is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large, small or colored text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Users consistently abusing this will be warned. #
15. Members should use an appropriate, descriptive title when posting a new topic. Examples of bad titles include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "I've got an error!", etc. Examples of good titles include; "Does Having a State or Federal Job pose any problems?", "A Jurisdictional Question?", etc. #
16. All participants on our Open Forum system are required to be individual people. #
17. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes any and all offers of services of any kind (charged or free), solicitation of any kind, etc. Recruiting of any sort is not permitted either. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information. #
18. Members must not disclose to any 3rd party, their username and password; such information must remain private.  Disclosure of such information to a third party constitutes at least cause for immediate cancellation of all Open Forum system privileges. #
19. Team Law reserves the right to edit or remove any post at any time. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, etc. as noted in these points is up to Team Law’s Admin and our forum moderators, not our forum users. #
20. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revocation of private messaging. #
21. One of the main principles Team Law observes is that it is right and proper for people to obey, honor and sustain the law; further, it is impossible to either obey, or honor, or sustain the law if you do not know what the law is; we further maintain that you cannot know the law without first hand study of it and of its history and environment; thus, no one should ever take any other person’s word on what the law is, or what its meaning, application or intent is; rather, we must all do our own research.  
22. Thus, Team Law says you should not believe anything we or anyone else tells you about anything especially about the law, its history, meaning, application or intent unless you have first done your own research to discover the truth for yourself, which you establish by two or three first hand evidentiary witnesses (that means from the law itself and from its history).
    

1. Signatures may contain up to five lines (one line being that displayed on a browser opened to 800px width) of text (of small or normal size) and/or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 60px high, 468px wide and 6kB (6000 Bytes) in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 30px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to three lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text. Animated images are not allowed.  Also, website links and e-mail addresses are not allowed in signatures. #
2. Text sizes should be between 9 and 12 (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, emoticons, and so forth. #
3. Links in signatures are strictly forbidden. #
4. Users abusing these rules will be warned. #
   
   

1. Users are permitted to utilize a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 90 pixels square, contain no animation, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimicking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 6kB (6000 Bytes) in file size and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed). #
2. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, and so forth. #
3. Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges. #
   
   

1. We reserve our Open Forum to our work and effort to save our country; therefore, we reserve it from being a marketplace for others to spread their services or ideas that have nothing to do with our work; thus, we restrict the forum from external links unless such links are first authorized in writing by Team Law’s Admin via private message.  Failure to comply with this policy once a user has been warned of it can result in at least the loss of posting privileges. 
2. Therefore, posting links to 3rd party sites is only allowed when it is first approved by Admin.  Admin is the final rule on all offsite links.  If you believe an offsite link may be helpful to our work you may freely send a private message to Admin requesting the privilege of posting the link.
3. Any offsite link made without Admin’s express written permission may subject your access to our Open Forum system to be terminated.  We do not tolerate unauthorized offsite links. #
   
   

1. Team Law provides no forum for users to promote their sites or services.
2. Such posting constitutes spam and may lead to a warning. #

1. All posts made to our Forum System are copyrighted by Team Law.
2. Team Law reserves all rights to said content, which rights include but are not limited to the complete control of said Forum System as Team Law sees fit;
3. Therefore, Team Law may without notice edit any post or remove any post from our Forum System for any reason.
4. Team Law allows registered users to post content on the Forum System, which content may be the opinion of the registered user but that does not imply that any content on our Forum System is the opinion of Team Law;
5. Therefore, content posted on the Forum System is so posted at the sole responsibility of the party that posted it and Team Law accepts no responsibility for such content other than its copyright including all rights to such copyright.
6. Though Team Law reserve such copyrights over all materials posted on its websites and the Forum System, Team Law is not responsible for the content of its Forum System users’ posts.  Thus, any copyright violations made by any Forum System user shall remain the sole responsibility of that user.  Thus, it is wise to secure permission before posting any copyrighted materials on the Forum System.
7. Users abusing copyright rules will be warned, may lose their privileges and/or may be prosecuted. #
   
   

1. Arguing with team members after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning.
2. Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact Admin by phone for a live review, e.g. if warned by a moderator you may contact Admin. If Admin feels you were treated harshly, Admin may remove a warning. All of Admin’s decisions are final.
3. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban will lead to that ban being made permanent. Circumvention includes re-registering under a non-banned username, changing IP addresses to evade an IP ban, registering a new email account of evade an email ban. Circumvention includes posting as an anonymous user.
4. If a user ever contacts anyone from our Open Forum system personally (via any method) and posts insulting, indecent or vulgar material, such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.
5. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While Team Law may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.