PRRR Forum Policies

[PRRR]

Forum users,

Although we have in the past allowed and contributed to the forum to be run in a friendly and rather lax environment as the old saying goes "Times they are a changin' ". as a self funded venture, PRRR (with the financial backing of ourselves and The Water Bowl) is here to help homeless, sick, injured and otherwise uncared for Rats. As such any monies that PRRR receives should go towards the Rescue, Rehabilitation and Re-homing of Rats. As most of you are aware, The Water Bowl (TWB)pays for the hosting service of PRRR. However, with the cost of running PRRR website and this forum being 98% of the cost of Web Hosting and Traffic, it has got to the stage where almost every month, our Hosting account is very close to its limit. Basically what this means is that what TWB pays for is 10Gb of internet traffic. PRRR uses about 8Gb or more per month. at a cost of $280.00 per year, this service is not cheap. The next plan above what we use currently is 20Gb of traffic and equates to $500.00 per year. Unfortunately, TWB is not in a financial position to be able to afford an increase of that level. And since we would rather spend the money PRRR receives on Rats and Rat care, PRRR is unable to provide those funds to running a forum.

Basically what this means is that we need to tighten the forum policies in order to achieve the following results.

1. Decrease traffic and bandwidth usage of the forum.
2. Increase the amount of relevant (Rat related) information contained on the forum.
3. Decrease the clutter level of posting so that NEW users do NOT have to wade through a lot of meaningless posts in order to determine the intended content of the topics contained on the forum.
4. Decrease the number of photos and images being posted directly on the forum and promote the use of external image hosting web sites. (eg, DropShots, Flicker etc)
5. Decrease the amount of general chatter on the forum.

Due to the popularity of the forum, which is a wonderful thing for rats and rat slaves in WA, we are close to exceeding our bandwidth every month.
As such we request that you keep posts to the following criteria.

1. Posts must be relevant to the topic header.
2. Posts must contain relevant information with regards the topic header.
3. Posts are NOT to be used as a chat room.
4. Topics are NOT to be hijacked. See point 1.

Due to the fact that the Off Topic thread has become a place to post very irrelevant information and has become almost a post count point accumulation area, ALL posts in the Off Topic threads will no longer contribute to posts counts. ie If you post in Off Topic, your post count will remain the same. If the practice of Posting for the sake of increasing post counts continues, we will either remove rankings and post counts altogether or limit the topics that post counts are accumulated in.

Private messages also use large amounts of bandwidth, although Private messages are private, we can track the amount of space and bandwidth they use. As such should the bandwidth usage continue we will be looking into restricting PM usage.

We have the option of installing software that will enable us to run a chat room. However, this uses bandwidth (although possibly not as much as posting and reading the forum) and as such we would need to monitor the costs associated with such a chat room and charge accordingly. As such we suggest you use Facebook, MSN etc for general chatter.

As far as posting goes, the Moderators of PRRR will have the ability and the permission to delete or modify ANY post they feel is NOT relevant or contradictory to the intended use of the PRRR forum. As this is becoming an issue, we are looking at promoting a few members to Moderator status (please do not contact us about this matter as WE will decide those appropriate for the task). We in no way want to scare any of our members away but feel that it is the only solution to an ongoing problem (which is bandwidth limits). One or 2 OT posts in a thread may be ignored if it is not just silly dribble and has a valid point, continued HIJACKING of peoples posts may be considered rude. It has been noted a lot lately that threads are being hijacked that should NEVER go off topic, for example:

Welcome threads - This is where our new members are welcomed into our community. Posting welcome and then changing the subject to who is doing who's job etc is NOT acceptable. We want people to feel like we are an open community of friendly people NOT and over clicky group. New people, that do not know us do not feel comfortable if they feel that the current members of the forum are all clicky. These threads are for saying HI, nothing more.
Rainbow Room - These threads are of a delicate nature and each passing of a fur baby needs to be respected by staying on topic, NO EXCUSES!!

News & Events - This is where we post all of the updates about whats happening with PRRR. This info needs to be easy to find and read for new members.
The forums listed here are just a few BUT what we have also noticed is that many of our members that joined us in the beginning have also dropped off since all the hijacking started. We do not want to loose any of our old or new members so there needs to be a happy medium.

We appreciated having you ALL here to support us and generally discuss Rat related topics. We feel that the time has come where PRRR is becoming a well know place for Rat information and discussion. As such we would think that
the time has come to better present ourselves as having a vested interest in Rats and Rat care. As such we appreciate your time in reading this and hope you support our feelings and understand where we are coming from.

Please do not reply to this thread as it is basically a broadcast Not For Comment thread.

Again thank you for your time and understanding

Aimee & Quentin