Forum Etiquette

Dear Members,

Welcome to Indusladies.com, a global online community of Indian Ladies. The friendly atmosphere of this community is unique and special; and to maintain it that way, we ask that you follow these simple guidelines. It’s our Bhagavat Gita!

We strongly encourage you to read these guidelines in full.It will take 10 minutes to read; and it is the best investment of time you will make in this forum. You can come back to this forum etiquette by using the easy URL www.indusladies.com/fe

1. Activation Instructions

If you have activated your registration, you can skip to next section.

1. You will be able to participate in the discussions by posting your message and use the private message system only if you have registered and activated your account. Without activation you will also not have access to several time saving and personalization features.
2. Once you complete filling and submitting the registration page, you will be sent an activation email. You MUST click on that activation email to activate and complete your registration.
3. If you haven’t received an activation email, click here to resend one (Before doing so, please check your junk or bulk mail folder for the activation email). If you have used a wrong email address during activation, go here to change your email address first; after that, go here to resend the activation email.

2. Member Status Guidelines

1. The lifeline of this forum is participation. As such, we have a way of categorizing members based on their participation level. However, we strongly recommend that you don’t make posts with the intention of raising post count. Others will quickly notice that you are doing this.
2. The hierarchy of status are:
   • >0 Posts – New Member
   • >50 Posts – Junior Member
   • >250 Posts – Senior Member
   • >500 Posts – Silver Member
   • >1000 Posts – Gold Member
   • >2500 Posts – Platinum Member
   • >5000 Posts – IL Hall of Fame Member
3. Posts made in “Games” and “Forwarded Messages and Jokes” forum do not count towards member statuses.

3. Participation Guidelines

• Expected Civility
  • Even though we all come from the same country, please remember that not everyone thinks what you think, believes what you believe or sees what you see. So, be courteous and friendly in your interactions with members who may not entirely agree with your point of view.
  • While debating matters, please do so in a respectful and impersonal manner. Indulging in personal diatribe will result in moderation of your comments. If you find anybody making adverse references to you personally, please do not respond. This will only make matters worse. Instead, report the post and move on. It will be taken care of by a moderator as soon as possible.
  • The internet has no tone of voice. Use smileys to compensate for that (in moderation of course!). Putting a little winking face after your comment can certainly enable your comments be understood in the proper perspective.
• What to do
  • Your primary purpose should be to make your message easy to read and understand. “What” you say and “How” you say it are equally important.
  • Keep all your messages short and crisp. What makes our community special is the conversation and dialogue, not lengthy one-sided recitals. Splitting your message into few paragraphs with not more than 3-4 lines per paragraph makes it very readable.
  • Punctuations (full-stops, commas, colons etc), spelling and grammar all play an important role in forming meaningful and readable sentences.
  • When referring to other threads within Indusladies.com, please extend the courtesy of providing a link to that thread.
  • In your contributions, please respect copyright laws and license agreements. Please do not take content from elsewhere and pass them off as your own. When posting IL content in other websites, you MUST credit our site and provide a link to Indusladies.com.
• What NOT to do
  • Do not spam the forum with solicitations for personal “friendships”. Your username will be immediately deleted. Similarly, do not spam the forum for commercial reasons. Please read our advertisement options in the sections below.
  • Do not use chat-style abbreviations (using "u", "ur", "r" etc).
  • Avoid 1X1 conversations in the public forum. Use private messages instead.
  • Do not quote a message when it is clear as to what you are responding to. It is not courteous to quote entire posts. You would unnecessarily increase page length and make browsing the site harder. While quoting, edit out whatever isn't directly applicable to your reply. Do not quote a post if your post immediately follows it. Do not quote a post if you are just thanking them for their participation in a thread.
  • Do not use more than 3 colors in your posts. It distracts reader’s attention from the content of your post. Similarly, do not use a font size bigger than 3.
  • Do not use profane or explicitly sexual words.
  • Do not use ALL capital letters in your posts. In the online world, it is considered as yelling and will offend other members.
  • Do not underline your text. Most members will mistake it to be a link.

4. New Thread Guidelines

• Please search (see attachment in this post) before you start a new thread. As our site already has thousands of threads, you might find that a similar topic is already under discussion in another thread. You can just build off that thread instead of starting a whole new conversation. This will also ensure that everything related to a topic is in one thread as opposed to being scattered around 5 different threads.
• Post your message in the right sub-forum so that it gets noticed by the right people who will respond to it. Posting in the wrong forum is the primary reason a message might not get a response. If your thread is in the wrong forum, it will be moved to the right sub-forum by our moderators. If your thread seems missing, please go here to learn how to find your thread.
• Keep discussions on topic. If you would like to discuss something that is related to but different from the thread starter’s intention, start a new thread. Try to get threads back on track when you feel they’ve strayed too far off topic.
• When starting a thread, always include a relevant title. The title should give a good indication of the content of the thread and also should have the right search keywords.
  • Don’t start threads with bare titles like “Need Help”, “Information”, “Hi” etc.
  • Instead of starting a thread titled “Tailor”, say “Need Good Ladies Tailor in Noida”.
• Do not post the same thread in multiple sub-forums to get increased attention. Choose the sub-forum that best fits the topic of your thread. If you would like to promote your thread, add a link to it in your signature.
• If your topic doesn’t seem to fit into any other category, please post it in the “Miscellaneous” section and inform a moderator. We will move it to the appropriate forum.

5. Avatars, Signatures & Attachments Guidelines

• Links to external sites are not allowed in your signature.
• You can provide links to your contributions (thread, blogs etc) within IL and promote them in your signature.
• You can have a custom avatar once you are a junior member (i.e. post count is above 50). Your avatar cannot have an URL in it.
• Attachments can be up to 2MB in size.
• Pictures should be less than 4000 x 4000 pixels

6. Privacy Guidelines

• Please do not post any personally identifiable information (like email IDs, telephone numbers, address etc) in the public forum. Even though our forum is very safe, it is still a public forum and non-members can read any content you post.
• Even if you don't mind having your email ID displayed in public, we mind. Following you, other members will also start sharing email IDs publicly without fully realizing the impact of those actions.
• If needed, share personal information through private messages. Even then, be cautious as to whom you share information with.
• If a member shared something with you in confidence through private messages, please do not bring it into the public forum without the concerned member's permission.

7. Private Message Guidelines

• Soliciting members through private messages is strictly prohibited. If you receive a solicitation through private messages, please forward it to “admin” username and we will take care of it. Do not ignore such private messages. We can nip those practices in the bud before the sender approaches multiple members in our site.
• Whenever you receive a private message, the system will send you email intimation. You should log-in to access your private message.

8. Link Guidelines

• If you think that a link is relevant and useful to a discussion, please go ahead and post that link. You or a person known to you CANNOT individually gain (directly or indirectly) in any way from posting that link.
• If you have a personal website or blog, you can add a link to it in our link directory here. In return, we expect that you provide a link to our site from your blog or website.
• You are not allowed to add a link in your signature to an external website. However you can provide links to your contributions (thread, blogs etc) within IL and promote them.
• If we doubt as to whether a link is a SPAM, we look at the posting history of the member. If this is one of her initial posts, we most likely consider it a SPAM and delete it. You gain more legitimacy in our community, by making posts that are consistent with our policies.
• If you post a link violating this policy, we would remove that link immediately. Due to the fact that we don’t have a huge team to manage this website, we are not able to send you a note or private message when we delete your link. We appreciate your understanding in this regard.
• If you see an instance where our linking policy is violated, please report that post by clicking onicon at the top right of the violating post.

9. Advertisement

• Do not use Indusladies.com to self-promote. If it benefits you, it is self-promotion.
• If you would like to advertise in our site, please contact induslady@indusladies.com

10. Your invitation to leave

• We leave no stones unturned to make every one feel at home in Indusladies.com. However, there might be a few who feel out of place at indusladies.com and want to leave. We do appreciate such a feeling but would request that you leave the site quietly.
• All posts made by you will remain in the forums even after you leave the site.
• “Goodbye” threads will be immediately deleted.

11. Infraction Guidelines

• “Infraction” is a system to monitor and manage members that do not follow this forum etiquette.
• For every substantial violation of the forum etiquette, members will receive penalization points. Points and validity dates are given below.
  • Insulted Other Member(s) (15 pts, 30 days)
  • Inappropriate Language (15 pts, 30 days)
  • Posting competitor site info (15 pts, 30 days)
  • Spammed Advertisements (30 pts, 30 days)
  • Soliciting Friendship (30 pts, 30 days)
  • Sexually Offensive Post (50 pts, never)
• As a member accumulates certain amount of penalization points, their forum privileges will be progressively removed as follows.
  • 20 points – member can’t access private messages
  • 30 points – member can’t access private messages and can’t post messages in the forum.
  • 50 points – member will loose all privileges and will not be able to access the forum.

12. Moderation

• The site has seven moderators, two administrators and a very extensive system of moderation to ensure that the above forum etiquette is enforced, if not voluntarily followed by the members.
• Decisions taken by the moderators are final and binding on any issue. However, all of us make mistakes on occasions and in case you do have any problems with a moderation action or feel that you have been treated unfairly, please contact the moderator in question by PM and the issue will be taken up.
• Please do not bring up the issue, challenge or mock at moderators in public. Creating topics in the forum expressly to disagree with moderators' actions will be deleted. We are willing to discuss with you any situation, as long as you approach the discussion in a mature way.

13. Over and beyond

• If you see a post that violates the above etiquette, please don’t turn the other way. Please report the post by clicking on the icon. Collective vigilance is critical to keep our community welcoming.
• Go the extra mile to make this a vibrant and interactive community. Nominate good posts for “finest posts” contest, rate threads, participate in contests and encourage participation through appreciative posts.
• Help spread the word about Indusladies.com. Tell your friends, forward interesting discussions to them, add a link to Indusladies.com in your personal email signature etc. Every small bit helps.

14. In conclusion

If you have made it this far, thank you so much for reading. It’s critical that all our members imbibe the forum etiquette to maintain the high standards of civility of this site. We are confident that you will be an awesome member! Once again, Welcome to Indusladies.com!

Indusladies Moderators