Forum Rules Updated (4/2/2011)
 

The Trisphee forum rules have been updated. All users are expected to read and understand them. (Link)

Trisphee seems to be developing a bad reputation for drama. This will no longer be tolerated. We want Trisphee to be a happy, fun, safe place to be. Instructions given by moderators are expected to be obeyed and disobedience will result in further disciplinary action.

We have also had problems recently with PayPal chargebacks. Chargebacks cost us a LOT of money to process. They are, therefore, prohibited, and anyone who files a chargeback or refund request through PayPal will be immediately and permanently banned, and you will forfeit all of your items and runes. If you have a complaint about unauthorized use of your PayPal account, please contact an administrator or e-mail admin@trisphee.com and we will be happy to work with you directly.

The rules concerning spam, necroposting, etc. have been clarified. This doesn't change our policy but it should make the intent more apparent.

The rules concerning account sharing have been made more strict: It is now prohibited to share accounts without prior administrative approval. Keep your password to yourself; if you let someone else use your account, you both may receive disciplinary action.

Also note that the rules for post formatting have been revised. Most users won't be affected, but we have clarified the intent of the rules for formatting, signatures, and post flobs.

Please direct any questions to a moderator or post them in this thread.

Thank you for letting us know.

I will make sure to read everything carefully and twice if necessarily.

The "no bumping" rule has always been there; its intent is just clarified with the new verbiage. A thread should remain active because of activity, not because it's being artificially kept to the top. Think for a moment: If your OOC thread is about to fall off the front page, that means there are that many other threads that have been active while yours has been idle.

If the thread IS idle, you are permitted to multi-post, by the way, so your objection is somewhat irrelevant. You don't need to get your friends to bump if you have something to say. In fact, creating a duplicate thread would itself be a violation of the rules if you KNOW that thread is there -- it's better to revive your existing thread. If you have enough content to re-make it, you have enough content to make a post in it.

I will take shops under consideration. This may be a valid case, at least until we get a proper marketplace.

I might also consider a bump button but I'll have to think about that for a while.

You can always bring your thread back whenever it fall off the first page or after a period of time. Just don't use the word bump.

Well, it's best to have some serious content -- for instance, in a "looking for RP partners" thread you might include some new idea (for looking for new RP) or a recap of recent events (for ongoing RP needing new members). Give people clicking your thread something to read. That's the real point of the rule. It would suck to have the top ten threads in a section all just say "hey I'm still here" as their latest posts.

Coda, in a search thread no one pays attention to anything after the first post/couple posts. All they need is the information about what the person is looking for. If it's near the top of the forum they're still looking. If it's not, it's typically assumed they aren't. That's why they do try to stay at least on the first page.

Hmm. I'll think about it and talk to the rest of the staff. The rule as written WILL stand as a general rule, but we may make exceptions for certain sections, just as we've relaxed the "spam" rules for the games sections.

Well, the reason I'm not so certain is because the whole concept of artificially reviving threads is, itself, a problem in my eyes. I'm open to reconsidering it for sections where it's a necessary part of normal operation, but it's not something that will be allowed in general.

Not "would be" -- "is." It's just not conducive to good discussion or fair use of the forum. We don't like it, and we know it's a common practice on many avatar sites and we don't want to see it spread here. Since forums are all we have, we want the forums to be an interesting place to be, and bumping doesn't serve to make anything interesting; in fact, it defeats the natural "sorting order of interestingness" that a forum left to its own devices will exhibit.

Um... that's a good question; I'm talking about bumping too. Reviving a thread is perfectly OK as long as you have something relevant to add. Multi-posting to revive a thread is even permitted. And I already said that I'm going to add exceptions to the bump rule for the sections where that's the standard course of behavior. We're discussing the specific details of the exception in the staff right now.

The spirit of the rule APPLIES to the discussion sections. The exceptions are where that same line of thinking doesn't pan out. What we don't want to see is someone in Central Square begging for people to post in a thread nobody cares about.

-=What you're allergic to cats?...=-

-=It's alright, I'm allergic to you...=-

Maybe I won't make a hangout after all now. v.v

i have read it ^_^

now the heart of my sister is broken..coz she is only 11 years old.. glad i just turn 17 last january 30 wew

Thank you for these. :)

stupid question: what's a chargeback on Paypal?

Ah, that's not a stupid question at all, and I'm glad you asked.

When you're dealing with a payment processing center, such as PayPal or a credit card company, a "chargeback" is something that happens when the customer disputes a charge. The processing company will perform a chargeback against the seller -- that is, it makes a "charge" "back" to cancel the payment and force a refund. This usually comes with a hefty fee attached to it as a penalty for abusing the service, since a seller isn't supposed to be charging the buyer money for something that wasn't agreed upon.

Now, many times, a disgruntled customer will buy something, get the product, and then dispute the charge. The credit card company processes a chargeback, the customer gets the money back, and the customer KEEPS the product. The chargeback process is intended to handle payments that were never authorized in the first place (or to handle a vendor that's ignoring their own dispute policies) and disputing a charge that you did indeed authorize is illegal -- it's fraud.

Processing companies have an appeals process in place for a seller that's had a fraudulent chargeback made against them, but it's a lengthy process. The last time we had to deal with a chargeback through PayPal, it was... I believe it was over three months before we got our money back because PayPal had to do an investigation to show that the donator had actually authorized the payment and that we had actually delivered what we promised to deliver (which is to say, nothing; there's a reason that these are technically donations). During this time, we were down a LOT of money because someone had disputed something like $200 worth of runes, but we had already invested that donation in server costs and payments for artwork, so we lost $200 plus the chargeback fees out of Trisphee's bank account -- money that Trisphee didn't HAVE to lose. We had to put some of our own money into paying the server bills for the next month while we were waiting for the appeal. We did ultimately WIN the appeal and get our money back, but that was a rough period of time.

Trisphee will never charge your PayPal account unless you specifically ask us to do so, and money sent to us is a donation -- you're giving us a gift and you're not technically getting anything in return, so it's invalid to complain that we didn't deliver a promised product. (The runes are a courtesy, a form of thanks, and they're technically still property of Trisphee.) The staff is full of real live human beings and we're happy to work with you if something bad happens -- for example, if someone else uses your PayPal account to donate and you didn't give permission for it. We can and will deal with these kinds of problems personally, and doing so doesn't invoke any fees except for a small processing fee. So if someone were to complain to PayPal instead of working with us, we stand to lose a lot of money, so we're going to strip the offender's account of the runes and items (because they took their money back) and then ban them (because they cost us money by not following the rules).

I hope this wasn't too wall-of-texty!

Now I must find a simple definition to it since I'm slow on finance stuff oTL

I hope this simplifies it all: Chargeback

That article basically says the same thing as my first paragraph. *nods*

ok, cause I was in confusion so I tried to find a simpler definition of it

Yeah, the short version for anyone tl;dr'ing through this thread: A chargeback is a forced refund done through the payment processor (PayPal in our case) without the seller's permission.

Hard to think that my precious Trisphee has had Drama lately. I guess one of the benefits of not being on as much as I would like.
But aside from the trouble that causes you and the staff, I am sure the Mods aren't too thrilled about that either.

Thank you for updating the rules and I hope it makes things easier, I know how hard you guys work on this site. That's why it's awesome!

Oh, I wouldn't call this "recently". Notice the date in the topic -- this stuff happened back in March.