Australian-Media.com.au Forum Rules

The Australian-Media.com.au Forums were created for the purpose of discussing all areas of the Australian media industry.

We believe in allowing our members to discuss whatever is on their mind in an open and free environment, without having to worry about being targeted by the moderating team for petty issues.

However, there are certain things that we do consider inappropriate for our forums. For this reason, we have put together the following rules which must be followed by all members who use our forums.

The Rules

1. All posts are property of the person who posted the message. Australian-Media.com.au will not accept liability for the actions of our members. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and we are not responsible for the contents of any message.

2. No spam or advertising posts are allowed. Accounts used to post spam and/or advertise any product and/or service will be removed immediately without notice.

3. Swearing is allowed on our forums when not used excessively. Swearing aimed directly at another member in a non-joking manner is not permitted.

4. We do not tolerate comments that are racist or degrading towards any person and/or group. The only exception to this rule are for jokes posted in the Comedy Lounge. A member of the AM Team will remove your joke if we believe it to be offensive to a particular person and/or group.

5. Pornography, warez, or any other illegal material may NOT be linked or uploaded in any shape or form. As our site is hosted in Australia, you must not post links to any site known to be on the ACMA list of banned websites. Members who knowingly post such links may have their account terminated without warning. The only exception to the pornography rule is in the Comedy Lounge where mild and humorous images may be allowed. Excessively explicit pornographic images are not permitted under any circumstances.

6. Any decisions made by a member of the AM Team are not to be disputed by users in the public forums. All complaints directed at a member of the AM Team must first be sent to the team member in question via private message and/or email. If the problem is with a moderator and it can not be resolved with that moderator, then you can send your complaint to an Administrator. All decisions made by an Administrator are final.

7. Signatures may contain images, but must be kept as small as possible. If your signature is found to be too large, then a member of the AM Team will ask you to make it smaller. Failure to comply with such a request will result in the removal of your entire signature.

8. Post in the correct forum. Take your time to look at other topics and see where your topic should go. If your topic is placed in the wrong forum, it may be moved, removed or merged in to an existing topic by a member of the AM Team.

9. You may have one user account on the forum at any one time. If you wish to change your username, please send a private message to an Administrator with the requested change. We will merge or delete multiple accounts if we discover them.

10. It is our policy not to censor opinions or suggestions on our forums. However, we will take action against posts that could cause unrest on the forums beyond a civil and polite disagreement or any posts that put us at risk of a lawsuit.

11. We reserve the right to edit and/or delete any posts that we feel are inappropriate or disruptive to our forum.

12. You must not make personal attacks on any other member, or members of the AM Team in any way (eg: posts, private messages and/or email). Threats will be taken seriously and will be reported to the appropriate authorities in extreme cases.

13. We reserve the right to suspend, ban, and/or delete any user who violates our rules or disrupts our forums. We are fair and provide warning in most cases. Any consequences are determined on a case-by-case basis.

14. Users are permitted to post image, audio and video files on our forums, however all uploads and/or linked files must comply with rule #5 (above).

15. Inappropriate comments about the appearance of any member of the media (such as presenters, reporters, etc) are not permitted. (See below for more information on Rule 15).

16. The AM Team will immediately remove all material that we consider to be inappropriate. If you find any material on Australian-Media.com.au that you find offensive or inappropriate, then please contact a member of the AM Team who will investigate your complaint.

"Rule 15"

Rule 15 (above) has been the rule which has attracted the most attention over the years.

When Australian-Media.com.au launched in 2005, we allowed our members to express their personal feelings about presenters and/or reporters in the public forums. We also had an image gallery set up where members could post images of their favourite media personalities.

Eventually we decided to remove the image gallery. At the same time, we introduced "Rule 15" which banned our members from posting anything about the appearance of any member of the media. We made this decision because we know some members of the media do visit our site, and we felt that it was inappropriate to have our members discussing their appearance right in front of them.

We understand that some people find some of the presenters and/or reporters to be attractive. You are entitled to think what you want about them - you see and/or hear them often on the television and/or radio and you may start to like them. However, you must accept that you have no chance of getting with them and move on. Discussing your personal feelings about a member of the media on our forum is not what our site is about, so keep those feelings to yourself.

We do not find comments such as "oh he/she is looking hot tonight" or "I would love to do such and such with him/her" to be acceptable.

Rule 15 does not stop anyone from posting "he/she had a crap night tonight", "he/she made too many mistakes" or "he/she is doing a pathetic job", etc. As long as you state your reasons then we have no problem with those types of critical feedback.

Any posts which violate Rule 15 will be edited or removed by a member of the AM Team.

Note: Actresses, actors and/or models are not covered by Rule 15 and members are free to discuss those people freely.

More Information

If you require further information or have any questions about our rules, please do not hesitate to contact us.