LFGSS Website Rules (including Classifieds Rules)

Why Have Rules?

The London Fixed-gear and Single-speed forums have grown tremendously since being established in March 2007, and we thank all of you for being a part of it.

In order to keep providing this communication service and to prevent problems as we continue to grow, please follow these simple rules regarding the use of the services provided.

If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to contact us using the contact us form linked to from every page (it's in the bottom right hand corner).

For the purpose of clarity, in the following rules:

• the phrase "we" and "us" mean "the owner and administrator".
  
• the phrase "own" and "owner" refers to the named owner of the domain names, server, and other assets.
  

The following rules cover 90% of the policy of London Fixed-gear and Single-speed.

• Advertising, spamming, trolling and flaming is not allowed. This includes visible methods such as manually creating signatures for your posts or less visible methods such as using the forum email and private messaging system for these purposes. We ban people who do this.
  
• Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
  
• We do not allow posts that violate the London Fixed-gear and Single-speed community standards. This include posts that link to hardcore or abuse pornography, other material considered illegal within the United Kingdom or USA or simply considered NSFW (Not Safe For [viewing at] Work) and also includes consistently posting content that is extremely dumb or pig-ignorant.
  
• You may not register an account for purposes of deceptive behaviour. Aliases are acceptable providing there is no implication that you are the person you are caricaturing.
  
• You may not use the account of another user knowingly without their explicit permission.
  
• You may not SHOUT in thread titles or otherwise draw attention to your egotistical and sorry-arse thread. Even if it's important, urgent, etc.
  
  

While these rules cover the majority of incidents that occur, they cannot anticipate all circumstances. Consequently we reserve the right to take any actions we deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not disrupted or abused in any way and to maintain the overall coolness of the place.

We reserve the right to remove offensive posts without notice, restrict the permissions of a user or their ability to access the forum and to ban anyone who violates the forum rules as defined in this post. Any threads/ posts/ users that breach any of the above may be deleted or modified without notice.

The administrator and any moderators shall be the sole arbitrator of what does and what does not violate community standards.

The more general right to refuse access, ban a user, block an IP address, or otherwise restrict the functionality of London Fixed-gear and Single-speed services in any way is reserved by the administrator.

The decisions of the administrator are final. As such, it's generally never a wise idea to piss him off.

During registration you are asked to choose a user name to be identified by, the general rules on community standards apply to the user name you choose and additionally you cannot:

• Claim to be someone that you are not
  
• Have a domain name as your user name
  
• Have an email address as your user name
  
  

You will be required to select a new user name should any of the above appear to be true.

An email address is a required field during registration, it will be used to activate your account (and you will be sent an activation email to complete the registration process), to receive password reminders and also to receive any thread notifications you subscribe to. You may opt out of administrative emails, cancel thread subscriptions and prevent others from emailing you to avoid receiving emails altogether.

Each person is allowed to register as many accounts as they wish. However we will treat your first account registered as the primary account, and secondary accounts may be merged into the primary account or deleted during largescale maintenance. The email address of an account will be used to identify aliases during such maintenance.

Any accounts registered must not be used deceitfully. By this we mean that you may not pretend to be someone other than you are for deceptive purposes. Further, any famous people registered must be clearly seen to be a caricature and not an attempt to pass yourself off as that person. Finally it is not acceptable to pass off aliases as real people, and to that extent you must avoid posting in the New Members thread or other places where you may pass the alias off as being real. Generally, aliases must be at least vaguely recognisable as an alias.

Aliases are permitted to enable you to post anonymously or about sensitive personal subjects. However it is important that you accept that aliases are NOT anonymous, and that the administrator may have full awareness of your primary account.

Any action carried out under the General Rules will be applied to your aliases. When the action expires on the primary account, we may leave in place bans on secondary accounts as a precaution against further breaches of the forum rules.

The administrator reserves the right to disclose the identity of those behind aliases.

We do not allow people to post threads, to send private messages, or email any user here where doing so advertises or solicits any products or services.

Advertising will be tolerated only where it is directly of interest to the London Fixed-gear and Single-speed forum community and is posted by an active user of the forum whose non-promotional contributions heavily out number their promotional posts/threads.

We explicitly discourage and do not allows users to engage in pyramid schemes, referral schemes, or other schemes in which a key motive of the person posting the promotional message isn't to recommend a product based on it's merit, but for some personal gain. Examples of such schemes include the web-site sportpursuit.com who use their customers to spam discussion sites.

We allow all users to upload custom avatars up to 64 pixels wide by 64 pixels high.

You may use animated avatars, but any animated avatars that degrade the experience of those surfing London Fixed-gear and Single-speed may be removed at the discretion of the administrator or moderators. Very few animated avatars will fall into this, but those that flash violently (making it hard to concentrate on the real content on the page) or are CPU intensive (slowing the computer of the person reading the page) will be in this group.

The general rules on community standards continue to apply here.

The London Fixed-gear and Single-speed server, hosting services, domains and website (including but not limited to the forum) are owned, operated and administered by David Kitchen.

No liability or responsibility for any content communicated by the services provided is expressed, accepted nor implied in the provision of these services by the owner and administrator. Please see the section on ownership of content for clarification of content ownership.

Whilst London Fixed-gear and Single-speed is privately owned, the resources used by London Fixed-gear and Single-speed including, but not limited to, bandwidth & server rental is funded by revenue streams including but not limited to: donations, advertising, sponsorship, sales of merchandise and payments for services provided.

Monetary contributions do not guarantee access to London Fixed-gear and Single-speed, server uptime levels or any privileges on the London Fixed-gear and Single-speed forum or server whatsoever. No obligation will exist on the part of London Fixed-gear and Single-speed to return any contributions in whole or in part for any foreseen or unforeseen circumstances.

Any advertising that appears on the site (past, present or in the future) does not imply that London Fixed-gear and Single-speed endorses the products/ services advertised, nor will London Fixed-gear and Single-speed be liable for any loss suffered due to these adverts.

The staff of London Fixed-gear and Single-speed accept no personal liability should London Fixed-gear and Single-speed fail to deliver on any agreed services, and in the event London Fixed-gear and Single-speed ceases to exist due to insolvency, no responsibility will be accepted for the continued delivery of any service nor for finding a replacement service.

Subject to prior agreement with the administrator, anyone may manufacture London Fixed-gear and Single-speed merchandise for sale subject to the terms of that agreement. You may not use the name without prior agreement (though I seriously doubt usage will be declined, it's about seeing how it's used rather than controlling it).

The administrator sees London Fixed-gear and Single-speed affiliated merchandise both as a funding and advertising tool, and therefore any agreement for the sale of London Fixed-gear and Single-speed merchandise will be made with these two aims in mind. A contribution of profits towards the ongoing running of the forum is usually expected but often waived for non-profit making causes... if in doubt, talk to us, we're pretty easy about such shit.

London Fixed-gear and Single-speed and the administrator do not endorse London Fixed-gear and Single-speed affiliated merchandise as fit-for-purpose, safe or in any other way, and neither London Fixed-gear and Single-speed nor the administrator will be held liable for non-delivery, non-performance or any other problems (including consequential losses) associated with London Fixed-gear and Single-speed affiliated merchandise.

Simply put, we do not accept liability or responsibility of any kind for your use of this website or any related service.

If your understanding is different from this, then you are wrong.

To reduce our liability of having to care about little runts, London Fixed-gear and Single-speed has the following restrictions of use for minors.

Below the age 13, registration on and use of the forum is prohibited, regardless of what laws apply locally.

Aged 13 to 15, use of the forum is permitted, but disclosure of any personal information that allows you to be contacted outside of the public arena is prohibited. This means that you are not allowed to post your private email address, that you cannot publish your messenger details, and you absolutely cannot disclose your phone number. Further, private messages and the comments system may be denied to prevent disclosure of information via those channels. All other forum rules still apply.

Aged 16 and over, use of the forum is according to the other London Fixed-gear and Single-speed forum rules.

It should be noted that all social events that do not explicitly include an acceptable age limit shall implicitly be on the understanding that all attendees are of legal drinking age according to the laws of the location that the social event occurs.

The above rules are designed to specifically exclude minors, and to accept that the services provided by London Fixed-gear and Single-speed are aimed at and predominantly used by adults.

All posts are owned by the person who posted them.

As we are unable to review each post due to the sheer volume of posts made, the owner and administrator of London Fixed-gear and Single-speed disclaim all liability arising from the content of the forums.

As all posts and content is owned by the person that posted them, we will provide you with the ability to edit your content for so long as you remain a member of the forum (you can lose this ability if you get yourself banned or probationed, in which case the content is still owned by you, but we will continue to make that content available based upon the following license).

As a result of the above policy, you accept (through usage of the services provided) that all of your contributions (not limited to posts, comments, & tags) are made under a Creative Commons license that permits re-production with attribution for your content. The license is this one:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/

Additionally you grant us (the owner and administrator or London Fixed-gear and Single-speed) permission to use the content in any way within the domain of the services provided without limitation of commercial use (scenario: we would not have to share donations meant to fund the server with hippy just because he posts a lot).

Finally, you accept that if you slander or post libellous material, then this is your liability and not that of the owner or administrator and that you take responsibility for whatever content you post.

Aside from technical error, there are no acceptable reasons for posting a new thread multiple times. This specifically applies to posting a thread in many forums.

You should always pick the single best forum in which to place your thread. Once detected, at best duplicate threads will be merged with the other duplicates and placed in the most appropriate forum (from the administrators perspective) or at worst the threads will be considered spam and all of the applicable threads will be deleted and the user who posted them may be banned for spamming.

The same rules apply to posts duplicated across many threads.

Simply put... don't duplicate stuff.

The first X number of posts by a user will be automatically submitted to 1 or more third party spam filters. Any posts that are marked as spam by these third party filters will not be visible until a staff member approves them. No agreement is made or implied in the approving of messages marked as spam, a post or thread could be approved in minutes, hours, days or years.

The Classifieds forum is provided to enable members of the community to carry out transactions with other members of the community.

It is provided to give you a "wild west" alternative to eBay and auction sites in which you can choose to accept the risk of the transaction in exchange for dealing face-to-face with another member of the community.

We accept absolutely no liability for any transaction carried out as a result of the use of the communication services provided, including any loss or harm that comes to you or your possessions or any grievance with any other forum member. Your use of the provided communication service is entirely at your own risk, and as per the liability rule we are having nothing to do with it.

Basic rules for classifieds:

1. You must post the classified advert in the Classifieds forum.
   
2. You must use a thread prefix if one is applicable. If more than one is applicable you must select the one that you most wish to happen. I.e. select "For Sale" even if you are also willing to trade but would prefer to sell. Valid prefixes: "For Sale", "Wanted", "Trade".
   
3. No cross-posting adverts you've put on other sites. If you have an item for sale anywhere other than here, like ebay, bikeradar, ctc, retrobike, etc. then you cannot post it here. However, if you have posted it on one of those other sites, other people who have discovered it are allowed to post it in the eBay/Craigslist finds thread. You must not do this yourself.
   
4. If you include photographs (recommended) then they must be photos of the item you have for sale and not a stock photograph.
   
5. No bumping on anything (for sale or trade)! Exceptions: a) If you included a price as per the advisory, you can bump your own advert to drop the price. b) If you hadn't added enough information (such as photos) and now want to you may state you've done so. Otherwise all comments against adverts should be meaningful.
   
6. No fishing expeditions. You are either selling something or you're not. Either it's in the classifieds or it's deleted.
   
7. PayPal transactions must include buyer protection (sellers are not allowed to demand that money be sent as a "Gift" as this deprives the buyer of any form of protection on their payment).
   
8. The rule on not SHOUTING or applying other formatting to draw unequal attention to your advert is not permitted.
   
9. After an item the original advertiser must not remove the historical record by editing the advert in any way (no deleting), nor prevented the buyer from leaving comments in the future (no locking a conversation).
   
   

Charity Sales:

• Charity Auctions may be advertised on LFGSS as long as at least 50% of the final sale price goes to charity. However the auction itself MUST be run on an auction platform like eBay. You are not permitted to run an auction within a thread on this forum, only to advertise it and this is an exception to rule #3 above as you are permitted to cross-post where a charity benefits from it.
  
• Charity Raffles and Lotteries that will be run online may not be run on LFGSS nor advertised on LFGSS unless you can provide evidence to @Velocio that you have a licence to run an online raffle or lottery. Raffles and lotteries are regulated under UK law.
  
• Charity Raffles and Lotteries that will be run entirely offline where all tickets sold will be sold at an event with the draw taking place at an event, may be advertised on LFGSS and do not require any licence.
  
  

If you are selling helmets:

• No helmet can be declared as any of: NoS, never worn, unused even if boxed.
  
• You must show clear photos of the shell to demonstrate it has never been in an accident and cannot offer for sale any helmet with signs of damage.
  
• You must show clear photos of the straps and rear tightening mechanism as this is the best indication that it is authentic.
  
  

Advisory (not rules):

1. Update the thread (or close it) when your item has sold and say how much it has sold for.
   
2. Put a price in the first post, with ONO (Or Nearest Offer) if you're willing to negotiate.
   
   

The first post of any thread in the Classifieds forum will automatically show additional information about the person that created the thread. This is provided solely to help you form an opinion of trust and does not imply any endorsement by the London Fixed-gear and Single-speed forum of the person in question.

tl:dr Summary of the rules.

The providers of this service ("we") are not responsible for the content of any messages posted.

Messages posted express the views of their author only.

Use of the site means that you agree to license all of your content under a Creative Commons license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/ ).

You agree to not use this service to post any material which is defamatory, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violates any laws.

We reserve the rights to remove or modify any messages posted for any reason.

Classifieds are intended to be intra-community.