The following rules are for everyone's benefit. While we don't censor the forums, we want to keep them full of quality postings, and don't want to waste people's time with postings of NO VALUE.

You must agree to these conditions to become a member.

1. Illegal Postings: Postings that are illegal, such as Child Pornography (images), drug dealing or other illegal activities, images or information are not allowed. You accept full responsibility for what you post as we cannot be held liable for the activities of others on our sites. We will cooperate with the authorities should they investigate your illegal activities on our sites. Remember, Big Brother is watching everything on the Internet!
2. Duplicate/Repetitive Postings: Duplicate postings with identical or similar text are not allowed. Click only ONCE on the submit button, and your posting will appear. A new page will load showing your posting.  This is your confirmation that it has been posted! Do not resubmit a posting that has been verified!!! Duplicate postings will be removed.
3. Multiple Personalities: Although we allow you to register multiple personalities, you may not use more than one personality in a single thread.
4. Flaming/Trolling/Stalking: Flames are posts intended to insult and provoke. Repeated posts directed with hostility at a particular person or group of people on this site will be cause for banning. Any individual who chronically trolls, who regularly posts arguments, flames or personal attacks for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion will be banned. Please note: This does not rule out hate speech in general, just posts directed at our members. You are free to speak your mind on ANY subject not covered by these guidelines. Stalking another member for any purpose is not allowed. Stalking is defined as targeting another member and following them around the forums and confronting them in various ways (sexual advances, threatening, arguing, disrespecting, soliciting, etc.) in numerous threads or PMs.
5. Obscene/Pornographic/Violent postings: Unless these contribute something useful to the discussions, they will be deleted.
6. Off Topic Postings/Thread Titles: Often people post remarks that have nothing to do with the subject of the forum or thread. Occasionally threads are deliberately taken off topic to advance an opposing agenda or disrupt the discussion. These posts will be moved or deleted at the discretion of the moderator, and the user may be banned. We urge all members wishing to discuss a new topic to start a new thread in the appropriate forum. In addition we request that all threads in public forums have a title that accurately reflect the subject of the thread. Thus titles like "guess what?" or "hummmm..." are unacceptable and may be deleted at the moderator's discretion. If you want your thread to be viewed by the most people, you should always have the subject in the title.
7. Spamming: Those who come here and post numerous links to other commercial websites, forums, chatrooms or communities, without actually contributing any content to this website will be banned without notice. It's fine to post an occasional interesting link to another website, in the context of a thread's subject, but to only do that or to do it repeatedly is not allowed. If you have your own website, you can put the URL in your profile and a link will be posted to your site in every post you make so there is no reason to add it to your posts, signature or PMs.
8. Banning: People who violate these forum guidelines repeatedly are subject to banning. Once someone has been banned from the site, we don't not allow complaints about it. Once banned, we are done with that individual, and no amount of complaining from other members will help. We don't need to justify our bans. This only causes more work for the moderators. Which is usually the reason for the person being banned in the first place. So those who complain about a banishment, are subject to being banned themselves.
9. Status: When you first signup to the HipForums you are our guest and as long as you respect our rules you will become a full member after your 20th post. Until then you have more restrictions than our members, in that some forums are only available to full members. Those who have chosen to join our community and support what we stand for will be granted full membership and privileges. Those who disrespect our rules will be banned at our discretion, regardless of their status on this site.
10. Respect: The Hip Forums has an excellent staff of experienced, volunteer moderators who work very hard to keep the site free from spam and trolls. In order to do their job efficiently and effectively they require RESPECT from our members for the difficult and often thankless tasks they must perform daily. They've dedicated countless hours to keeping the forums running smoothly and an attractive place to hangout for so many people. So we won't tolerate ANY disrespect for our mods and admins, and those who do will be dealt with as trolls. If you have a problem with a mod, we suggest you first contact them thru PM and try to work out the issue. If you cannot, you can report the mod to an admin for further consideration of the problem. In no case will a public attack on our staff be tolerated.

P.S. Please read our Privacy and Copyright statement!  What you post in these forums may be published by us in other formats!