FORUM RULES: The Great American Guide... Disagree Without being Disagreeable.

[gdoane]

Abuse of Honored Guests:

The guests of these forums enjoy the welcome of Sean Hannity and Premiere Radio Network and are to be treated as you would treat other guests at any other sort of venue consisting of mixed company. Calling our honored guests names, intentionally abusing them personally or otherwise making them feel unwelcome can result in your own welcome being withdrawn and you may be banned.

Abusive Posting:

Personal attacks, wishing death on innocents, racism, antisemitism, and trolling are all prohibited and can result in a ban.

Altering Quotations:

The quotation feature of these forums are a tool, and not a toy to misrepresent what other users have said. Do not alter the wording or make it appear as though another guest had said something which they did not. This purposeful disrespect and misrepresentation, this fraud, is a form of abuse and will not be allowed. It may result in a ban.

Antisemitism/racism:

This creates a hostile environment contrary to the purposes of civil discourse and a welcoming forum environment. It is an instaban offense and will not be tolerated on the Forums.

Ban Bypass:

A user who has been banned, is banned. They do not just lose the username, the welcome is gone by any other name as well. A ban bypass is an instaban. Banned users may not post anywhere but on the Moderator Forum and only for specific purposes.

Banned User Procedure:

A user who has been banned may create a temporary account to apologize, to appeal the decision or to clarify why he committed the act for consideration by the moderators, and specifically the Forum Moderator who called the ban. Generally speaking, once a Forum Moderator has taken action, He/She has "the ball" and will be handling related matters. The temp account can ONLY be used to post in the mod board and ONLY on topic of their ban.

Call Out Threads:

This is a form of abuse and we don't allow intentional abuse of honored guests. Starting a topic for the purposes of picking a fight with another guest is not allowed. These forums are for civil discussions, not brawling around the forums and flaming other guests. This can result in actions such as deleting the topic, locking the topic, and banning.

Changing Screen Names:

This is generally disallowed. There are exceptions, for example in cases of confused identity or inadvertent disclosure of personal information during the creation of the account. The reasons for this are the problems inherent with our honored guests needing to remember a list of "AKA" and the abuse that comes with Multiple Screen Names such as puppeteering (posting in agreement with yourself) and playing both sides of a debate to make yourself look good.

Flooding:

Flooding is a form of spamming, it's the practice of bumping other topics out of view in favor of changing the board to either increase your own visibility or decrease the visibility of another guest or topic. It can be cross-posting identical topics in different Forums or multiple posts in any one forum with identical or nearly identical content. It may result in actions from topics being deleted to the account responsible banned.

Hateful posting:

No lynch mobs. Do not use the forums to spread hate, Antisemitism/racism, suggest that innocents should die or that an innocent deserved to die, or otherwise fill our welcoming forums with hatred and malice. This makes our forums unattractive to our honored guests and will not be tolerated.

Impersonations:

Copying a guest's avatar, and/ or closely approximating their screen name for the purposes of being mistaken for them or mocking them as you destroy their reputation falls clearly into the realm of abuse of honored guests, and that amount of malice and aforethought rises to the level of an instaban..

Instaban:

This is a no-questions-asked, no-quarter-given ban. It's an offense so blatant, so egregious, and so obvious that any regular member who has been a member for long can spot it coming a mile away. An example is a profanity bypass with the F-bomb. It's a ban where a warning is simply not an option which will be considered.

Multiple Screen Names:

Honored guests are allowed to have one account apiece. Multiple accounts are typically abused for puppeteering (posting as another user to bolster your own argument with a straw man ally), or for holding an account in reserve to commit a ban bypass, or for playing "good cop bad cop" style of debating and seemingly "ganging up" on other posters. This is not allowed and such accounts are forfeit.

Obscenity:

Posting pictures of obscene gestures, linking to obscene web sites, posting obscene or graphic descriptions of a decidedly adult nature, and violating the standards of decent behavior found in the Sean Hannity show falls under obscenity. In short, if the FCC could fine Sean Hannity for it, then you could be banned for it.

Picture Policy:

Image size limits exist to maintain a user-friendly format in consideration of the nearly half of all Great Netizens in rural areas who are limited to the use of dial-up connections for internet access.

In posts: 600 x 600 pixels and 125 kb file size
Signature image: 400x150, 25KB file size
Avatars: 80x80, 19KB file size

Image file sizes are "total image bytes per post" if more than one image is posted in a post. One image only in sig line.

Images may be deleted or removed without notice and all rules about profanity filter bypasses, obscenity and the like apply to images.

Do not post images of graphic violence, obscene gestures, pornography or otherwise abusive content. We've also decided that instead of the 5th grade rule, we're going to employ more of a PG-13 rule.
About hot linking images: Beware, if you hot link to web space you do not own, and the owner of the web space changes the content of the link, then you will be held as responsible for the content as if you had done so yourself.

Personal Information:

Do not post personal telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, street addresses, or mailing addresses of anyone but yourself or by expressed permission of the person whose information you are posting. If the information is posted with the intent to harass or intimidate, flood their mailbox or solicit harassment in any way, then it's an instaban and the information will be removed.

Profanity Filter Bypass:

The Sean Hannity Forum uses a Profanity Filter because there are words which are not allowed on these forums in order to maintain our civil mixed-company welcome to our Honored Guests. Any attempt to bypass these filters and get these words on the forums in violation of the wishes of the Host is breaking house rules. The words aren't supposed to be on the premises. If you're not willing to let the Profanity Filter Check them at the door then that's a violation. The F-bomb is an instaban.

Retreads:

This term refers to previously banned users who attempt to slip by a ban by assuming a different screen name and resume posting as if he had gotten welcomed again. This is in violation of the Ban Bypass and is outside of the banned user procedure.

Signature Line:

This is also subject to every rule. It is not to be used to taunt other guests, it is not to be used to display contempt.

Spamming:

This web site and the Sean Hannity Show are in the business of selling advertisements, and it simply wouldn't do to give away the store. Our honored guests are to use their accounts for personal, non-commercial interests and discussions. Any other use requires prior approval and permission which may be requested on the Moderator Forum.

Trolling:

A troll is a person that never offers anything of value or substance to the boards. The troll has no intention of taking part in discussions, save to try and ruin them for others. Trolls may be banned with impunity.

[gdoane]

This is a general guide, put together from reviewing precedents made by our moderators. It is not capable of covering every case, and management reserves the right to manage. Our honored guests are very welcome here but sadly, any place that has a good thing going will attract a few troublemakers who wish to spoil things for others. We have a good thing going and we occasionally have a few ants at the picnic. This list has been reviewed, rewritten, and approved for use as a guideline. Forum lawyers looking for loopholes are reminded that this is a guide to past decisions made and management decisions rest on a case-by-case basis.

[gdoane]

Although this is an exhaustive list of the do's and don't around here, the MODS reserve the right to take disciplinary action against a user here anytime we feel it is necessary. All of our decisions are based on what is best for the board. We take a great deal of care to protect the image and the name of Sean Hannity.

[goodlife]

I told you guys a while back that I would speak to MOD about the rule on Nazi's and a few other issues. I've done that and after a few mod meetings and discussions, we've come up with a few clarifications.

1. Here are Mod's exact words regarding the Nazi issue:

Quote:
Feminazi was coined by Rush. It is used to describe a radical feminist. I don't have a problem with using it here. Right now, Mark Levin is using Islamo-Nazi. Again, I have no problem using it. Where I had issues years ago was the gratuitous reference to an individial as a Nazi, or a comparison to Hitler, in a cheap attempt to discredit the poster. I don't think any of our posters have ever done anything close to what Hitler did...and to make constant use of his name in that regard almost trivializes the holocaust.


Valid discussions and comparisons of the nazi idealogy, principles, etc. will be allowed but cheap shots and ad hominem attacks are still off limits.

2. If something is discussed on Sean's show...it can be discussed here.

3. We've also decided that instead of the 5th grade rule, we're going to employ more of a PG-13 rule. The word filters and the rules regarding filter bypasses, f bombs, and images with f-bombs are still in place.

4. The term "bloody" as in "bloody hell" is not a violation.

5. If the word filters filter a word, and the context in which that word is used is not an attack on another poster, that is not a TOS violation. The posters have done what we've told them to do...and that is to let the filters do their job.

The entire Mod staff works very hard at keeping these forums an enjoyable place for all. We have put our heads together and discussed the issues above and are all on the same page with this. I hope that everyone will appreciate and cooperate with these clarifications/rule changes.

Thank you from all of us,
The Hannity Forums Moderating Staff

[Lee Kington]

This is not a 'rule' but addresses a functionality issue that is often asked about in TTTM.

Many complain about not getting results when searching the board. Usually they receive a blank page / page cannot be displayed.

If the term being searched for is common you need to limit the search extensively by time, choose threads instead of posts, even select title instead of complete posts, etc.

There are millions of posts on the board. If you search for “border”, or “GOP”, or any number of common terms and do so unrestricted the number of returns will be huge.... and the system overloads. What good would a search be that gives you a list of 70,000 posts? You would still have to do a lot of manual hunting.

Here is a video I made of a search that demonstrates the technique used in most 'failed' searches verses technique that implements tools of the search function to enable a successful search.

The first attempt as you will see is a failed search.

Then I demonstrate setting some parameters / limiters for the search.

The second attempt is successful with those in place.

The video is about 2.5 Mb so if you are on dial-up it might take a few minutes to load.

VIDEO LINK

[Lee Kington]

Many instances of oversized image violations could be avoided by using the Manage Attachment function provided by our system. This video demostrates usage of that function. It is 3.4 MB so it may take a minute to load.

Attachment Video

Hope this is of help to someone.

[Lee Kington]

This video demonstrates how to upload a signature image and the tags (code) required to make it function. The second part of the video demonstrates how to make a sig image a clickable link. I run a fairly high resolution screen, hence, I suggest viewing the video in Windows Media Player set at "full screen".

Sig Image Video

The video is a bit over 7mb so it may take a minuter or two to load and play.
On some systems the IE security update that came out on 6/16 will prevent the media player from opening and you will receive a "page cannot be displayed". In this case... right click on the link and select 'save as'. After it has downloaded you can play it from your system.

Note: Currently the system indicates an image size of 400 x 100 pixels. The system, however, will accept a 400 x 150 pixel image.

If you are not loading the image from your system but rather loading from a website you may have a problem. Some websites block file downloads (which is what is really occuring if you try to load the image from their site). If an error occurs.... save the image to your system and upload from your system as demonstrated in the video. When you 'save' an image from a site you are saving the information stored in your cache. So you can save an image to your system and upload from there.

[goodlife]

Let there be no more confusion or questions.

NO...it's not ok to call another board member
asshat
asswipe
idiot
moron
stupid
retarded
racist
liar
libtard
conservatard
ass monkey


This is by no means an exhaustive list....one should get the general idea from reading this. If I see board members calling each other these names the posts will be deleted. If I see it repeatedly by the same posters, they will be given timeouts.
It's just that simple.

[Moderator]

I have removed a discussion about a political candidate for office which expresses a concern that this individual could be assassinated. The Hannity message board will not be a place where this discussion will be allowed. The person who posted this message has been banned from the board.

We have a forum where free discussion is allowed on almost any discussion. But entering into this type of discussion is a no win proposition for a board like this. What are posters supposed to say about the question? It makes no sense that a user here would even bring the subject up in a public forum.

One of our forum rules posted at the top of the Ask the Moderator section states: "No lynch mobs. Do not use the forums to spread hate, Antisemitism/racism, suggest that innocents should die or that an innocent deserved to die, or otherwise fill our welcoming forums with hatred and malice. This makes our forums unattractive to our honored guests and will not be tolerated."

The Hannity message board is run by volunteer moderators who work tirelessly to police the thousands of posts made on this board on a daily basis. I have instructed those moderators to keep a watchful eye on posts that might be considered incendiary. This is a hot political season, with emotions running high on both sides. This is a great forum to discuss the merits of the political candidacies. Discussion of the possibility that one of them might be assassinated will not be tolerated.
__________________

[Rick]

Oliver North as one of Sean's closest friends has been added to the list of protected individuals. He is to be afforded the same considerations and respect as anyone else on the affiliates list.

[DaGooseMon]

Traditionally, we have not permitted the 'family' of a candidate to be attacked on these boards. That has been the case in every election. We did not allow Chelsea to be a debate pawn nor attacked until she was old enough to and indeed was campaigning for her mother. We did not allow the Bush twins too be attacked. Many, many, bans over the years came from attacking the "children" of the candidates.

That will continue at our discretion, on a case by case basis.

There is a line we won't be crossing people. You know where it is. If you are asking yourself "is this over the line" while your typing your post, chances are, it is. And you should rephrase.

We fully expect both sides to be respectful towards the minor children of all the candidates. We're not a bunch of children here, and it's going to be a long political season if we continue with the ugliness we've seen in the past several days. Remember the first rule of this board. "Disagree without being disagreeable." I know you guys can do it. I disagree with almost all of you, and yet manage to get along with you while doing it. We appreciate your efforts in keeping this place civil, and will continue to count on your support in helping us doing so.



Reminder: There is no excuse for NOT knowing the rules. Always a good idea to check for new Stickies when entering a forum. Make it a habit.




*NOTE* Disciplinary actions may include, but are not limited to a full ban, a time out, loss of access to a particluar forum, and removal of posts. This, as with all other rulings, fall completely within the discretion of the Moderators duly appointed here at Hannity.com. They are not suject to debate, but perhaps forgiveness. Perhaps...



Adding Fire Watch's clarification:

Attack threads aimed at relatives of politicians for the purpose of smearing the politician are classless , stupid, and not up to the standards of this board.

Discussion of the newsworthy incident is a completely different issue.

Attacking relatives of politicians to smear politicians = not ok

Discussing newsworthy events like adults = ok

[DaGooseMon]

You need to provide a synopsis if you post links.

You need to provide commentary for people to discuss. We are not here to provide information, but to engage in discussion.

These are discussion boards. Members who cannot access certain websites, multimedia, are on slow dial-up connections, on bandwidth limited accounts, etc. cannot discuss an unseen video or articles. Failure to provide a reasonable synopsis is grounds for removal of the link and / or post.

[DaGooseMon]

http://forums.hannity.com/faq.php?fa...ll_posse_rules


The Ten Rules of the Troll Posse

1. Collection and presentation of evidence: Do not send the Moderator on a field trip. Bring everything you've got to the mod forum to make your case. State your case concisely and precisely.

2. Links are good. Links and quotes are better. If there's a questionable picture, post the link to the pic, but not the pic. Otherwise the Mod will have to edit your post to take it out. Don't make Mod work harder. You wouldn't like Mod when he works harder.

3. Do not threaten banning. That's a "my-dad-can-beat-your-dad" threat and you have no control over the moderator's actions. To paraphrase FOX NEWS, "You Report, He Decides".

4. Check the moderator forum for prior complaints. If he's really a troll, then he's likely ticked off someone else and you can file an amicus (friend of the court) brief bringing more evidence to the table.

5. If there's a possibility that constructive criticism can defuse the situation, then do it. Set yourself up as the white hat because if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem.

6. Make certain that there's not a board in your own eye while reporting the speck in anothers. Throwing stones in a glass house is a pretty bad idea and if you're reporting a flamewar while you're holding the torch yourself then that's not going to go over very well.

7. Few things are insta-bans. These include (but are not limited to) bypassing the language filters, personal threats, obscene/pornographic pictures, anti-semitism, multiple usernames, contempt for ABC Radio Network Hosts (Sean Hannity) or Affiliates and racial slurs. If you see this, report it but do not threaten a ban. Threats aren't useful and they're not going to change the outcome.

8. Don't whine. For pity's sake, half of the people in every argument loses the argument. The odds are that you'll lose sometimes. If you make the case and the charges don't stick, that's fine. Half the people banned come back and do better the second time anyway.

9. Never let them see you sweat. Angry people make poor posts, so don't post angry. The steady pace wins the race. If you're seeing red then get your hands off of the keyboard until you've collected yourself. These forums do politics. Passions run high, but common sense will prevail.

10. Don't make a soap opera out of it. If you want drama queens or a fat lady singing then you need something else because there are no happy endings in politics. If you're looking for a happy ending in this neverending story then good luck! Check with Diogenes and see if he'll lend you his lantern from his search for one honest man.

[goodlife]

Sean's show has moved from ABC Radio to Premiere Radio Network.
Therefore, we've made a few small changes.
We've removed the WABC Radio forum.
We've also removed the CoA Rule...HOWEVER - Sean's friends are still on the protected list. Each situation will be ruled on a case by case basis.

Live streaming of the show is no longer avaialable except to Insider members but you can still listen on local radio station live streams.

[Lee Kington]

I want to attack, and I want to attack soon. Please compile the list of who I cannot attack immediately.

It is easier to give you a list of who you CAN attack. Here it is:

1) ManOfFaith