By registering or participating on the Flickering Torches website you accept and agree to the following terms and conditions. All of the rules are just common sense items. We strongly doubt you'll find anything surprising unless you are here with a hidden agenda, a chip on your shoulder or just lack common sense about how to behave yourself in social situations. Our goal is to provide a high quality discussion environment for our members and guests. These terms are in place to prevent disruption and maintain a safe and friendly discussion service. We didn't think up these rules all on our own. They are a synthesis of rules used by dozens of successful forums and we give a hat tip to our fellow forum administrators for the hard work they've done before us. Thank you!

Flickering Torches is a privately owned web site and as such we reserve the right to remove any post that we deem to be inappropriate, offensive or intentionally disruptive, or to take any action necessary against any member whose behavior we deem to be inappropriate, offensive or intentionally disruptive. Action taken is done on a case by case basis and is dependent on the nature and severity of the violations, but can include anything up to the banning of the account and IP address. All registered users MUST BE AT LEAST 18 YEARS OF AGE. There are NO COPPA REGISTRATIONS permitted on this website. The discussions require more life experience than that of our young friends. Thank you for your understanding.

By using the forum service you agree to the following:

Abusive behavior: Do not be rude, insulting, offensive, snide, obnoxious or abusive towards other members.

Access: If your access or posting rights have been revoked, do not register more accounts in order to circumvent this restriction or have another member post or deliver messages on your behalf. Accounts we find that belong to previously banned members will also be banned.

Account Info: Never give your username or password to anyone else or allow others to use your account.

Accuracy: Do not post material that is knowingly or intentionally false, inaccurate or misleading.

Advertising: Do not advertise or promote other web sites, books, products, media releases or services without express permission from a member of staff. The site is not a free advertising platform. Registering an account solely for the purpose of posting promotional material will result in the suspension of your account. The only exception is the Shameless Self Promotion section.

Appeal: If you disagree with action taken against your account by a member of staff you can appeal the decision by contacting either the member of staff who took said action or an administrator privately via e-mail or through our private message system. Please do not use the forum to criticize or complain about moderator actions, to discuss member bans or to start a petition or protest against any action that has been taken.

Compliance: You agree to cooperate with the requests of our site staff should you be asked to stop doing something that they deem to be disruptive, inappropriate or in violation of the terms of service.

Copyrighted material: If you quote text from another web site then please properly credit the source. Credit must be given where credit is due. Not doing so constitutes plagiarism and harms the value of your post and also your credibility and integrity. Always include a source link with quoted material. Members are asked to copy only as much as is necessary when quoting copyrighted material from other web sites, do not copy and paste entire articles or web pages. Any copying must fall within the federal Fair Use guidelines.

Cross-posting: Do not start multiple identical threads in multiple forum sections or post multiple identical replies in multiple threads. Posting something once in one place is sufficient.

Defamation: Do not use this site or its services to attack, promote hatred towards or otherwise defame other web sites, forums, groups or individuals; any posts or threads of this nature are liable to be removed without notice. Links to web sites hosting or promoting hatred or defamatory attacks aimed at either this site, its staff or its members are also liable to be removed.

Display name: Please choose a sensible display name. Display names should contain only alphanumeric characters and must not contain profanity, racism, sexual references, hatred or relate to illegal activities such as taking drugs. Do not use your display name to display any web site or e-mail address, or to impersonate, harass or offend other members.

Drive-by posting: Do not respond to threads or gallery pictures with short one-off responses such as "Fake!" or "Photoshopped!" If you think something is fake then explain why you think that. Elaborate on your response.

Flamebaiting: Do not intentionally instigate "flame wars" or bait others in to making personal attacks.

Forum gangs: The formation or promotion of gangs or gang-like organizations are disallowed, as are organized attempts to harass other members, disrupt discussions or enforce a certain viewpoint in any way that prevents fair and unbiased discussion.

Forum warfare: Do not initiate or participate in "wars" with other members. Collective or individual attempts to attack, accuse, discredit or force a certain viewpoint on other members are disallowed. A "war" can constitute a prolonged series of disruptive confrontations between specific members or groups of members with similar beliefs or views, usually with either side accusing the other of being the aggressor and attacking, criticizing and baiting each other on a regular basis. Action will be taken against members who instigate or participate in this type of activity.

Garbage posting: Do not deliberately make posts of little worth or that contain nonsense, this includes making numerous short non-constructive posts designed to quickly inflate your post count or to annoy other members.

Harassment: Do not harass, defame, threaten, bully or victimize other members, this includes but is not limited to sending harassing private messages or harassing members via posts, threads or profile comments.

Hidden agendas: Do not use the site to promote an agenda. This often involves the starting of forum threads or making posts which appear to be legitimate in nature but which are aimed at surreptitiously promoting some political view, religious belief or to attack or criticize other members, beliefs or views in an underhand manner which detracts from unbiased and fair discussion.

Illegal material: Do not post material that is in violation of any law or which describes or advocates illegal activities such as taking, growing, buying or selling illegal drugs, the sale or promotion of illegal weapons, hacking, trespassing, downloading pirated software, movies or music, participation in criminal offenses or plans to engage in criminal acts. The only exception to the prohibition on drugs is posting about the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which is acceptable in the General Discussion section.

Language: As this is an English speaking site we ask that our members post only in English. Quoting foreign language material requires an accompanying translation. Mobile phone shorthand and other unintelligible or barely intelligible scripts are disallowed as they are barriers to the free flow of conversation in a forum.

Medical advice: Do not use the site to request medical assistance from members. Seek the advice of your preferred health practitioner instead. Discussions pertaining to medical topics, discoveries and research are acceptable so long as they avoid recommending treatments to specific members. Similarly, promoting or recommending any potentially harmful health or medical modalities are disallowed.

Multiple usernames: Do not register more than one account. If you have forgotten your password please use the password recovery system to retrieve it. If you have forgotten your login username or are otherwise unable to access your account please contact us via e-mail for assistance. If you want to change your account's display name you can do so from the "User Control Panel" page. Registering another account and then posting under it in order to either back up your own arguments, attack other members or otherwise take on more than one identity is known as creating a "sock puppet" and if caught you risk having both accounts disabled. If there is some legitimate reason why you feel you MUST have a second account, ask the forum administrator for consideration.

Offensive material: Do not post crude sexual references or material, excessive violence, sexually explicit content, images or links containing pornography. Gore, images of death or other overly graphic material, if presented as part of a legitimate academic discussion, are acceptable in the Forensic Science section AND NO WHERE ELSE, subject to the discretion of the forum administrator.

Preaching: Do not promote or push religious beliefs on to others. Using the site to preach to, convert other members or to advertise a belief system is disallowed.

Private content: Do not post the content of private messages, e-mails or the personal contact details of other members. This also applies to the contact details, e-mails etc. of non-members and to other offline correspondences. The content of private correspondences sent by site visitors or members of staff via private messenger or through e-mail are copyrighted to the sender and should not be reproduced, published or distributed outside of this web site through any means without prior written permission from the copyright holder.

Profanity: Do not use profanity, crude, vulgar language or attempt to intentionally bypass the profanity filter.

Protest: You agree not to attack, harass, threaten or become abusive towards any member of staff. Members who become offensive or participate in harassing, threatening or retaliatory action against the site or a member of staff will be subject to further action. All our moderators are volunteers who give up their own free time to keep the forum a safe and friendly place, please treat them with the respect that they deserve.

Quoting: Do not quote everything that has come beforehand in a thread only to add a short response, this not only clutters up the board but makes threads harder to follow and tends to be frowned upon by other visitors. Quote tags should only be used as necessary to remove any ambiguity over what you are responding to.

Racism or hatred: Do not post racist or hate-driven material or views which express hatred towards or discriminate against any specific race, religion, country, gender, individual or group.

Recruitment: Do not recruit site visitors in to joining other web sites, forums or groups, request participation in surveys, petitions, contests, protests, political campaigns, fund raisers or money making schemes.

Role-playing: Do not use the forum to role play as a fictitious character or supernatural entity. Be yourself.

Shouting: Do not write in all uppercase letters, writing in this manner is considered "shouting" and makes posts difficult to read as well as looking unsightly and being annoying to other visitors.

Suggestive behavior: Do not post sexually suggestive comments, innuendo or engage in inappropriate sexually oriented personal exchanges or harassment; purely personal correspondences should always be kept private. First and foremost this site is intended for discussion on topical subjects, the services provided should not be used as a means with which to seek out or pursue intimate relationships; bringing up personal relationships, disputes or engaging in competitive, possessive, disruptive or inappropriate behavior in that regard is disallowed.

Thread bumping: Don't "bump threads" by posting a short response to a thread such as the word "bump", for the sole purpose of returning that thread to the top of the thread index page. Legitimate replies excepted.

Thread derailment: Do not derail or "hijack" threads with posts that are either off-topic or designed to draw attention away from what is being discussed. If you'd like to discuss something different either start a new thread or find another existing thread which better suits the area you wish to discuss.

Trolling: Trolling is strictly disallowed. We define a "troll" as someone whose purpose on the site is to create as much disruption as possible, offend as many people as possible or otherwise cause disruption intentionally for personal amusement. Behavior that can be defined as "trolling" generally involves the posting of knowingly false or offensive comments or views designed to provoke, bait and annoy other members.

Signature advertising: You can mention what you do in your signature, but keep it low-key. A crass commercial message in your signature won't sell anything for you and will get your profile edited by the forum administrator or banned if it becomes a habitual offense.

Signature and avatar: Please be sensible when it comes to what you put in your profile. Signatures and avatars should not contain excessively gory, violent, sexually oriented, illegal, overly distracting or offensive content. Signatures should not be used to attack, denigrate or belittle other members or to bash or mock religious beliefs or views. We reserve the right to remove any signature that we deem to be unsuitable, inappropriate or disruptive.

Spelling and grammar: Do not criticize other members on their spelling, grammar or punctuation. When writing a post it is always a good idea to check your own spelling and grammar before submitting it, make sure that what you've written is clear, makes sense and can be easily understood by others.

Flickering Torches reserves the right to add to, modify and/or apply these terms and conditions at any time without prior notice. In all cases, the decision of the forum administrator is final.