ECF's job is to provide the world's best resource on electronic cigarettes. We do that by encouraging discussion, and by providing a place for new design, campaigning, legal, medical and assorted reference resources.
ECF was the first e-cigarette forum, and is the largest by a huge margin, with hundreds of forums. It is far too large to be one community and it has devolved into hundreds of smaller communities - it is like a large city with many communities within it, each with its own flavor; and it has issues that only giant forums running on several servers will ever experience, due to the scale. Many of the smaller groups (and vendor's forums) are in effect 'owned' by the people who run them. That is to say, they decide what goes, and how they are moderated. ECF does not moderate them, their 'owners' do. Since it is the largest e-cigarette website, again by a very wide margin, with hundreds of thousands of pages, many things that apply to smaller sites do not apply here.
To make this clearer: large parts of ECF are not moderated by ECF. If you have a complaint about an issue then you might need to contact an ECF mod and speak with them about it.
ECF's general policy is to preserve an atmosphere where anyone can go to find information, ask questions, or debate issues, in a calm and respectable environment. There is no place here for insults or heated language - that is not ECF's function and would detract from our main job.
The ECF Moderators will try to help members, assist them to stay within the rules, and issue penalties if the rules are broken, in an ascending order of severity according to the offense. It is not our intention to do anything other than keep people within the rules. Once people go too far in a discussion and start to make things personal, it is beginning to get out of hand, and you can expect a Moderator to intervene. This normally results from someone reporting a post using the triangle Report button on each post.
The natural tendency of people in an internet environment is to push the envelope - whether they mean to or not - as there is no feedback, and no comeback. That is to say, they do things they would never do face-to-face as it would be obvious they are going too far, and because there might be consequences. Our mods just keep a lid on things, and without them we would be buried under a torrent of spam and trolling. With 4,000 posts a day it is very hard to keep things under control and occasionally a firm hand is needed. If you feel that our moderation is too strict then you probably need to go elsewhere for your hot disputes, and just come to ECF briefly for the rich resources it offers.
Also please remember that ECF does not moderate the many micro-communities here, which mostly have their own Moderators. They may, for example, close threads that have nothing to do with their core topic - and this is within their rights. Please consider whether your discussion is better placed in The Lounge (or even in The Outside). If your thread is closed, in one of the Groups or Supplier Forums, you might consider asking an ECF Moderator to move it to a more appropriate forum and re-open it. The local Moderators cannot do this as they can only work within their own boards, they cannot transfer posts or similar.
ECF was the first e-cigarette forum, and is the largest by a huge margin, with hundreds of forums. It is far too large to be one community and it has devolved into hundreds of smaller communities - it is like a large city with many communities within it, each with its own flavor; and it has issues that only giant forums running on several servers will ever experience, due to the scale. Many of the smaller groups (and vendor's forums) are in effect 'owned' by the people who run them. That is to say, they decide what goes, and how they are moderated. ECF does not moderate them, their 'owners' do. Since it is the largest e-cigarette website, again by a very wide margin, with hundreds of thousands of pages, many things that apply to smaller sites do not apply here.
To make this clearer: large parts of ECF are not moderated by ECF. If you have a complaint about an issue then you might need to contact an ECF mod and speak with them about it.
ECF's general policy is to preserve an atmosphere where anyone can go to find information, ask questions, or debate issues, in a calm and respectable environment. There is no place here for insults or heated language - that is not ECF's function and would detract from our main job.
The ECF Moderators will try to help members, assist them to stay within the rules, and issue penalties if the rules are broken, in an ascending order of severity according to the offense. It is not our intention to do anything other than keep people within the rules. Once people go too far in a discussion and start to make things personal, it is beginning to get out of hand, and you can expect a Moderator to intervene. This normally results from someone reporting a post using the triangle Report button on each post.
The natural tendency of people in an internet environment is to push the envelope - whether they mean to or not - as there is no feedback, and no comeback. That is to say, they do things they would never do face-to-face as it would be obvious they are going too far, and because there might be consequences. Our mods just keep a lid on things, and without them we would be buried under a torrent of spam and trolling. With 4,000 posts a day it is very hard to keep things under control and occasionally a firm hand is needed. If you feel that our moderation is too strict then you probably need to go elsewhere for your hot disputes, and just come to ECF briefly for the rich resources it offers.
Also please remember that ECF does not moderate the many micro-communities here, which mostly have their own Moderators. They may, for example, close threads that have nothing to do with their core topic - and this is within their rights. Please consider whether your discussion is better placed in The Lounge (or even in The Outside). If your thread is closed, in one of the Groups or Supplier Forums, you might consider asking an ECF Moderator to move it to a more appropriate forum and re-open it. The local Moderators cannot do this as they can only work within their own boards, they cannot transfer posts or similar.
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