General forum guidelines and rules

The Utah Wildlife Network (UWN) exists as a meeting ground for those interested in Utah outdoor recreation. It is supported exclusively by ads and donations, but is free to everyone.

The UWN staff reserves the right to determine what is or what is not acceptable on these forums, and may change the following rules and/or delete or modify posts or terminate user accounts at any time and without notice. Use of these forums constitutes an agreement by the user to these terms. We reserve the right to change these forum rules without notice and decide when material or a member's online behavior crosses the line. We record the IP addresses of all posters to aid in enforcing these rules.

Let's keep this place family-friendly. Children visit this forum and, for better or worse, our conduct sets an example that can either foster or hinder a life-long interest in the outdoors. We also want parents to feel confident that this forum is safe for their children to visit. Please keep this in mind and conduct yourselves accordingly.

What may be posted?

Generally, these forums are for discussions from every point of view about fishing, hunting, enjoying the outdoors and sharing information with other outdoor enthusiasts. If you have a comment or a question for others, you've come to the right place.

What should should not be posted?

• Forum members should not post combative, argumentative, abusive, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, off-topic, or sexually-oriented material or make posts that encourage or condone criminal activity. In addition, we do not want posts that are derisive of religious, ethnic or racial groups.
• Please do not post rants, insults, abusive language, personal attacks or ongoing obnoxious behavior.
• No copyrighted material unless the copyright belongs to the poster. (Brief excerpts are okay as long as credit is given.)
• Duplicate messages should not be posted in multiple topics of the forum.
• Messages that are not pertinent to the topic — for example, messages about hunting posted in the fishing section. We reserve the right to move these posts to the proper forum without notice.
• Do not post direct advertising or solicitations — especially outside the "Trading Post" forum. However, commercial services and products may be incidentally mentioned in the course of discussions. Also, post signatures may make reference to products or businesses. We reserve the right to sell advertising or allow advertising-like posts that we deem to be in our interest or of general interest to UWN forum members.
• No spamming the forum with frivolous or nonsensical posts.
• Please do not make posts about politics, sexual orientation or religion that have little to do with the outdoors or wildlife. Experience tells us that these threads too often become heated, offensive and detrimental to the forum.
• Some forum members post fishing or hunting reports without mentioning locations. Please assume that this was intentional, and do not attempt to fill in the blanks when making followup posts in the thread. If you feel comfortable posting details in your own reports, feel free to do so. In addition, please do not hassle forum members who do choose to include locations and details in their reports. Each forum member makes his or her own decision about how specific to be — please respect it.
• Please do not attempt to bypass the word filters with such things as alternate spellings and euphemisms.
• The forum moderators volunteer their time to help make this a better place. Do not publicly dispute their decisions. If you have concerns, please discuss it with them in private messages.

We reserve the right to remove posts that we deem to be inappropriate. We reserve the right to move posts that we feel are better located in other parts of the forum. We generally do not modify posts, and do so only to fix mistakes, remove copyright violations or to remove clearly offensive materials.

Utah Wildlife Network forum responsibilities

Neither UWN nor its owners assume any responsibility for what forum members post. The posts and opinions expressed by forum members are solely the opinions of those forum members; they do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the UWN or its owners. Consequently, your participation in the UWN forums constitutes an acknowledgement on your part that you are engaging in a free exchange of information and opinions between other forum members and that you hold harmless UWN from any disputes arising from posts made by forum members. All disagreements between forum members arising from participation on this forum are exclusively between the forum member participants.

If you feel that another forum member has made disparaging or libelous remarks against you, please let us know. We will work with you, but it will be our determination as to what remedies we take — if any.

May I have more than one account or user name?

No.

What happens when a forum member breaks the rules?

We endeavor to be fair and lenient in enforcing the forum guidelines. However, we are serious about maintaining the forums as a friendly place to visit and share information about the outdoors and wildlife. We will take the following actions when too many forum guidelines are violated:

• Warning: Forum members who repeatedly or deliberately break the rules will receive a formal warning about their behavior. This warning may be either in the form of a private message or posted on the forums.
• Suspension: Forum members who ignore these warnings may find their posting privileges suspended for a period of time. The length of the suspension will be determined by the moderators and may last from one to 30 days.

• Probation: Forum members recently released from suspension will automatically be placed on probation for three months. During this time, the moderators may immediately impose additional temporary suspensions for continued rule violations.

• Banishment: Sometimes it is necessary to permanently ban forum members from participation in the forums. We immediately ban spammers. Posting pornographic or patently offensive material will result in immediate banishment. We will immediately ban those who deliberately break the forum rules with the intention of disrupting or sabotaging the forums. We may also ban incorrigible forum members who have faced repeated suspensions or warnings.

A forum member may appeal if he or she feels the rules were applied unfairly; the forum member may contact any of the UWN staff to make a case or send an e-mail to the forum administrator account at utahwildlifeadmin@utahwildlife.net. The UWN staff will deliberate the appeal as a group and make a decision.

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