Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum FAQ

1. All areas of DallasMetropolis.com are private property. Interaction in the forum should be considered a privilege which may be revoked at any time as deemed necessary;

2. Copywritten material posted to the forum must credit the owner(s). When posting newspaper articles, internet articles, journals, papers, etc., please remember to cite source, author, and hyperlink as available. Best practice is to paraphrase key parts of an article and link to the remainder;

3. Spamming is not allowed (i.e. repeating posts or threads) and will result in an immediate and permanent ban;

4. Personal and business advertisement is allowed only through the inclusion of website link in the member profile. Marketing and/or advertising any commercial product, service and/or application by creating thread topics or repetitive mentions is prohibited. With site administration approval, community service/improvement promotions may be presented;

5. Incendiary comments which disrupt or inhibit the amicable flow of conversations are not tolerated;

6. Etiquette requires each participant to be a good virtual citizen, considerate of forum visitors - active or inactive participants. Inappropriate behaviors/comments include, but are not limited to: vulgarity, abusive/excessive profane language, support or praise of illegal subject matter and/or activities, personal attacks, trolling, flaming, overt negativity, baiting, racial slurs, pornography, sexual innuendo, racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious bashing, or open support of terrorism, and homophobia;

7. Deliberately misleading other participants is unacceptable. Information such as in thread titles, articles posted, and data cited must be accurate and appropriate. Opinion may not be presented as fact. It is essential that new development discussions only include verifiable information. Threads intentionally given a misleading or ambiguous title will be closed. Threads which feature nothing but a website link will be closed;

8. Comments within each thread should relate to the initial topic. The dynamic flow of online discussions frequently require flexible topic boundaries to be productive. Participants should be mindful of the thread topic and avoid wild tangents;

9. Civic pride is one of the greatest assets of any community until degraded into petty ridicule of other communities. DallasMetropolis.com will not be host to the mischievous degradation of any community. City by city comparisons are inevitable and often can provide insights to possible civic improvements. All forum members must be sensitive that these comparisons do not become an unproductive competition trying to tarnish another community. Refrain from using "versus" verbage in thread titles.
Likewise, pursuing a similarly divisive approach with any topic will not be permitted. A healthy debate is always welcome, but decorum is a requirement;

10. These rules cover the foundation for a productive and informative discussion forum. A complete disregard of these guidelines by any individual can result in a permanent ban from the forum and all other DallasMetropolis.com features. The extent of any offense will be taken into consideration by forum administration. A minor offense will result in a warning, condisering the infraction may not have been intentional. However, should any participant warrant more than two warnings, it will be assumed this participant only has malicious intent and will result in a permanent ban from the site. Any serious infraction of the conditions of interaction will result in an immediate and permanent ban;

11. Limit of one username per member/participant is imperative. Additionally, inactive members will be retired (inactive account) after 12 months;

12. When registering a user name, participants create a user profile. The software supporting the forum provides a user control panel with various options to personalize individual profiles. Additional features allow each user to create topic activity notification, manage/schedule an event calendar, buddy lists etc.;

13. A private message center is included for use within the domain. Most basic features of traditional e-mail are available. Up to 200 total messages may be saved;

14. A community calendar is available for all users to view. The calendar includes events and activities covering the Dallas and Fort Worth metro area, as well as forum community happenings. Only registered members are able post events to the calendar;

15. The same conditions of interaction which apply to public comments also apply to private messages and calender listings. Under no circumstances should the use of the messaging or calendar features be used for inappropriate purposes;

16. Users are able to attach a variety of file types to the DallasMetropolis.com server. Listed below are the acceptable file types and corresponding maximum MB file sizes:
.gif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .psd file types are limited to 150K
.doc, .kmz, .pdf, .txt, .xls, .zip file types are limited to 50K or 100K;

17. Signature size is limited to no more than 200 characters or 4 lines at standard font size - whichever is smaller. Font sizes over 3 are not allowed. Images are limited to pixel dimensions of 468x120 in width/height and 20K or less in file size. Do not use the attachment feature to attach an image file at the end of every post instead of using the signature feature in your user control panel.

At this time, this site still allows non-ISP email registrations. However, you must ensure your email program's spam filter allows the automated forum mailer that contains the user activation code to be received. Without the receipt of this email and its directions within on activating the account, the forum software will not allow you to interact and post in the forum. This typically refers to any free mail host such as: Yahoo!, GMail, Hotmail, Lycos, and dozens more. AOL is another major reference. Other ISP accounts and email programs (especially in conjunction with filters from software like Norton/McAffee/etcetera) may also automatically delete the auto-mailer, but, the aforementioned are the usual suspects. If you have any problems, send an email to the site or any staff.