Forum Rules

The forum is intended to be a friendly place where all mountain bikers, both experienced and not so experienced riders can visit and chat, joke, debate, ask questions and generally hang out.

Generally the visitors to the forum are adults but there are no age restrictions. That freedom demands a level of self moderation from its users. Please remember that bad language and discussion of certain topics can and does cause offence. Essentially if you post anything that is intended to cause offence then expect to have it deleted and possible have your account suspended.

In short, think twice about posting anything that you wouldn’t be prepared to say face to face and take note that we are far more likely to look at posts without genuine email addresses or anonymous postings with a higher level of suspicion.
Please have respect for other forum users and refrain from bad language and abusive postings.

What topics are suitable for discussion?

We have two discussion forums and classified ad forum.

Topics on the Bike forum should be restricted to discussion about bikes. A non exhaustive list of allowed topics include, bikes, components, rides, biking holidays, travel, mags…. Without stating the bleeding obvious we will assume you get the idea..

Topics on the Chat Forum can be about anything that doesn’t belong on the Bike Forum. Politics, general chat, current affairs, latest movies, big brother, the price of fish.. Again, we think you get the idea.

The forum can be used for getting rides and friends together, but is not a personal message board. Please don’t clog it up with personal messages that can be sent by email.
If you think a post is a deliberate troll, abusive, offensive or otherwise a bit naughty then don’t hesitate to email us at moderator@singletrackworld.com and we’ll have a look. We can’t guarantee we’ll agree with you but at least we’ll be aware of any infringements to other members’ sensibilities.

If you notice that a post has been moderated and after reading this page you are still unclear as to why, then please email us directly and we will try to explain our decision. DO NOT post your request for a reason on the forum as we have found that this just provokes needless argument.

Rules

In addition to the above guidelines we have a limited number of hard and fast rules that you should familiarise yourself with before posting on any of our forums.

1. No posts of a sexual nature, including images of a sexual nature or intended to provoke a sexual response.
2. No Trade or business advertising - except bona fide retailers may respond to genuine enquiries from potential customers.
3. No posts which, in the Moderators opinion, are likely to cause offence to either an individual, or group, whatever their sexual inclination or ethnicity.
4. No posts, including links to other sites that are deemed to be of a sexual or distasteful nature, incite racial or sexist behaviour or are in any way discriminatory and/or offensive towards individuals or minority groups (That includes singlespeeders!)
5. No abusive or foul language - There is a swear filter on the site that will capture what we consider to be the most offensive vocabulary but any attempt to evade this swear filter will result in that post or thread being deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned.
6. No posts containing images larger than 500 pixels in width or height.
7. No posts which in the opinion of the moderators are solely intended to, or are likely to provoke or abuse any individual or group.
8. No impersonation of any other poster, or use of another poster’s identity, including letting a banned user post via your account.

The consequences of infringing these rules and guidelines are entirely at our discretion but will generally start with a 48 hour suspension from posting on the forum for which we may or may not give warnings or notify the user of their ban.

Negative use of the forum

It is our aim that the forum should have an overall positive effect on the mountain bikers that use it. Experience has shown us that certain individuals like to contribute simply to cause trouble. Technically these people are known as Trolls but like all negative elements in society they learn the rules and are quite cunning in their ability to stay just within the letter or the law and yet still manage to cause irritation to other users. So, to try and combat these negative forum users we reserve the right to suspend the accounts or remove the posts of anyone we consider to be a predominantly negative contributor to the forum.

For example…

• If you resort to abuse of other forum users we will consider that a negative use of our forum.
• If you post irrelevant posts to the topic in discussion we will consider this negative use of the forum.
• If in our opinion your contributions to the forum are predominantly off topic we will consider this negative use of the forum.

In all these cases and in others we have not mentioned, we reserve the right to ban you for an unspecified time from the forum.

Any attempt to circumvent any suspension by re-registering or using the account of another forum user could result in a lifetime ban from the forum.

Basically, if you respect the forum and your fellow mountain bikers who make use of it then you have nothing to fear.

Tags

Ok, to sort out the tags, which we all love, and to make sure they stay within the bounds of a) being vaguely useful for searching etc. and b) stay within limits of taste and decency, here are the rules..

1. Tags must be no longer than three words - any longer and they will be deleted
2. Tags must follow the same rules of the forum ie.. no swearing or personal abuse.
3. Tags must be relevant to the thread. They will be deleted if we think they are not.
4. Tags of contributors names will be deleted. Calm that ego.

Sanctions we may impose on rule breakers.

• We may just give you a warning via the topic you have posted on.
• We may contact you directly by email and ask you to behave
• We may suspend your account. This suspension will be for a limited period of time.
• For serious or persistent rule breakers we may ban you from posting to our website for an unlimited period of time.

Our policy on Ad Blocking

The ads in a very real sense do allow you to use this site for free. If the ads were not there earning us money for the time we spend keeping this site running then we simply would not bother with a website at all or we would severely strip it back to just being a promotion site for the mag. It simply would not be economically viable without the ads there.

Now, in light of that but also taking the pragmatic decision that the technology to block ads is out there and there is nothing we can do to prevent people from using it, we have decided that any threads posted on our forum that publicise or promote the removing of ads from this website are actually counterproductive to not just us but you as well. No ads… no site.

So…

We ASK that you don’t act to remove the ads.. But it is just a request. But we WILL remove threads that promote the removal of the ads on our site and we WILL ban permanently any repeat offenders.

Nothing is free. The price you pay to use this site is the ads that are displayed on it.

So in summary. Install ad blockers if you want. but don’t discuss it on our forum. But please consider the importance of the ads to the future of this free to use website before you take any action to prevent the ads on this site from displaying in your browser.

The Kylie/A&A Clause

There has developed a tradition on STW of ‘Friday Kylie’. Each Friday pictures of the diminutive southern hemispheric Kylie Minogue are often posted purely for harmless end of week fun.

This has recently spawned into A&A (Aesthetic & Athletic) to celebrate the male/female form in sport.

As long as no one is offended by this ‘tradition’ we see no problem with letting it continue as long as all other guidelines and rules are strictly adhered to.

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Also read: Classified Rules and Forum Help