Title: 23 Forum Rules: Please read before posting

User: Swami Gaurangapada Date: 2004-12-16 07:31:28

 

Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krishna! Pranams :shock: and Blessings :lol:!

 

We are starting this new Swami Gaurangapada Sanga Forum at http://forum.gaurangapada.com for publicly replying to queries from devotees and spiritual interested people. The old forum http://forums.gaurangadharma.org will be replaced by this new forum at http://forum.gaurangapada.com. So please do not post on the old forum, though you can read all the previous posts there and also at the Old Forum Archives at http://forumarchives1.gaurangapada.com.

 

The Vani or Spiritual Instructions of the Spiritual Master are more important than Vapu or his physical proximity. The real Sanga or Association of the Spiritual Master is through his Vani or Instructions which remain immortal in this world according to Shrila Bhaktivinoda Thakura. This Swami Gaurangapada Sanga Forum is our humble and free Vani service to provide Sanga or association to all devotees, disciples and people who require guidance from us in spiritual life. Those who are not interested in receiving any guidance from us do not have to participate in this forum in any way and are requested to join and participate in other general online spiritual discussion forums on the net which are free from Vaishnava aparadha if they so desire.

 

We hope the new RSS feed feature of this new forum at http://feeds.feedburner.com/sgforum, which can be added and accessed in any RSS reader, will enable thousands of people to read the posts of this forum on their desktop in their RSS readers without having to visit the forum on a day to day basis. Updating your forum RSS feed few times a day should be sufficient to receive all the daily forum posts in your RSS reader rather than updating and receiving the same feed without any change every hour or so. For more information about our RSS Channels and feeds, please go to http://www.gaurangapada.com/pafiledb/pafiledb.php?cat=17.

 

An online discussion forum is a very effective means for spiritual preaching but it is also vulnerable to be highly misused as we have seen time and again. We see that so many discussion forums on the internet were started due to good intentions but have now ended up becoming breeding grounds of personal attacks and unpalatable postings. So on one hand, we do not want to loose such an important opportunity to freely help other spiritual aspirants all over the world by solving their doubts and queries and spiritually enlighten them but on the other hand we do not want to make that forum into another breeding ground of offenses as happening in many places on the internet. We would rather see less posts and less members on this forum with quality than simply huge quantity of controversial, personal agenda and attacking posts and members, which only results in disturbance in the Sanga or Society of devotees.

 

Thus we have made the following Forum Rules which should be known to all people who want to post or read this New Forum including all members and non-members. We request all to kindly take the trouble of reading these Forum Rules before applying for membership to this forum or before reading the posts on this forum to prevent any misunderstanding in the future. We will assume that all participants have read the following Forum Rules and we will not repeat them again:

 

FORUM RULES

 

(1) Everyone can read all the posts and topics on the forum but questions to Swami Gaurangapada can be asked by forum members only.

 

(2) Forum members are requested to post their general philosophical queries directly on the forum so that all others can benefit by the replies of Swami Gaurangapada. Ofcourse, they can always be sent by email to Swami Gaurangapada also at any time.

 

(3) Non-members of the forum can ask their queries through the form at http://forum.gaurangapada.com/helpdesk.php and replies to general philosophical questions may be posted on the forum or in the Newsletters.

 

(4) Membership of and posting in this forum is moderated as per the discretion of Swami Gaurangapada and will be only for real devotees (no aliases or anonymous members allowed).

 

(5) When you register to become a member of the forum, please put your real life name (or your real spritual initiated name if you have) as your username. This is compulsory and any unknown aliases or username applications for forum membership will be rejected without any explanation or intimation. In very rare cases, if someone wants an exception to this rule, then they can write to us directly explaining the reasons why you want to remain anonymous and we will consider the situation. Spiritual enquiry is a very serious subject matter because it for advancement and upliftment in our lives and it is not for fun or "pulling legs" or for mental gratification or for word jugglery. So we have decided to not allow enquires by those who do not have the courage and integrity to post from their real names. Swami Gaurangapada has replied to thousands of anonymous spiritual enquiries in the past but will not do so any longer.

 

(6) If you are new or not known to us, please fill in your real name as the username and apply for forum membership through the Register link. After applying for membership, please send us some details about yourself including your name, address, phone no, email, attached photograph and a small biography at support@gaurangapada.com. Please note a photograph of yours is mandatory and your membership will not be activated till we receive it along with all the other details by email. These details will only be seen by Swami Gaurangapada and will not be shared with anyone else ever. If you do not send this email to us after applying for forum membership, we will try to send you only one email reminding you about it and if we do not receive a response from you, your application for forum membership will be cancelled. This procedure is for new people or devotees who are not known to us.

 

(7) Swami Gaurangapada may reject any application for membership without any explanation if he feels that a particular person is not suitable for membership to this forum. If one does not like this policy, one need not apply for membership. One can still read the forum posts. And also one can become member of so many open spiritual forums on the internet. We will try to communicate by email to the person whose application for membership has been rejected but an explanation may not be offered.

 

(8) All posts on the forum are moderated directly by Swami Gaurangapada and it is totally up to his discretion which posts will be posted or rejected or posted after editing. No explanation will be provided for rejection or editing of posts as Swami Gaurangapada simply does not have time to do so. Swami Gaurangapada may edit some posts without explanation to the member who has posted and then post them if he feels that some text in the post is not suitable for this forum. We are sorry for the inconvenience which may be caused but if one does not like this policy of moderation, they one need not become a member of this forum. One can still read all the posts. We would rather see less posts and members on this forum with quality than simply huge quantity of controversial, personal agenda and attacking posts and members, which only results in disturbance in the Sanga or Society of devotees.

 

(9) If a query from a member has impersonal philosophy or mayavadi inclination or critical and blasphemous in any way to the path of pure bhakti and Vaishnavas, the query will be rejected or edited to remove all the objectionable elements, without any explanation. If the post is too much unfavorable to the forum, the member will be warned by email not to post that kind of posts again. If the member still persists in submitting objectionable posts, then the member will be deleted from the forum, and informed by email if possible. Swami Gaurangapada does not have time to heavily moderate or edit posts regularly and thus members whose posts need to heavily edited or moderated repeatedly even after one time intimation to them will have to become non-members of the forum and read the posts online. No explanations will be offered for such an action. We will assume that all members have read the following rules of the forum before applying for forum membership. Members submitting posts with obscene language or personal or anger attacks or strong argumentative mentalities will also loose their forum membership immediately without explanation.

 

(10) Avatars facility is not provided for the members as it consumes bandwidth while loading and it takes away the attention from the main subject matter of the posts.

 

(11) Members can subscribe to the forum or watch the forum for new topics by going to the Category view of Ask Swami Gaurangapada and clicking the corresponding link at the top: "Subscribe to this forum" or "Watch this forum for new topics".

 

(12) Anyone (members or non-members) can receive all the posts of the forum on their desktop within minutes that they are posted by adding the Forum RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/sgforum into their RSS Reader and thus one does not even have to visit the forum to read the posts. Please keep your feed update frequency in the RSS Reader to twice of thrice or four times a day or you can manually update the forum feed when you want to read the new posts. We hope this new RSS feature will enable thousands of people to read the posts on the forum without having to visit the forum daily.

 

(13) There is presently only one category in this forum: "Ask Swami Gaurangapada". Members can post here their queries directly to Swami Gaurangapada. Swami Gaurangapada's response time should be within 72 hours to the queries on this forum as in email responses but due to the ever-increasing volumes of questions and emails received by Swami Gaurangapada along with his hectic epublishing services and his daily bhajana, sometimes due to heavy load, replies from Swami Gaurangapada may take up to one week. Some announcements or general news may also be posted by Swami Gaurangapada in the Ask Swami Gaurangapada category from time to time if required.

 

(14) This forum is not for general posting of very long articles and general spiritual nectar, but some short articles can be posted in the "Ask Swami Gaurangapada" category if they are relevant to the topic under discussion and if someone wants Swami Gaurangapada to explain or comment on those articles.

 

(15) Devotee members can also contribute their views from the scriptures in the topics about queries from others to Swami Gaurangapada but they should write it themselves and quote relevant extracts from the scriptures not just post very long general articles. We have http://blogger.com and various others as a free facility to open your own blog website and you can post as many beautiful and long spiritual articles there for the whole world to read but this forum is specifically not meant for posting very long articles. Very long articles also make it difficult for the readers to read the topic as they have to scroll down so much to read other posts. That is why such long articles will be subject to moderation in this forum.

 

(16) The moderation and approval of the posts by Swami Gaurangapada should also be done within 24-72 hours but the posting members should be patient in this regard. In rare heavy workload situations, the approval itself may take upto one week or more in very rare cases but will be immediately followed by the reply from Swami Gaurangapada.

 

(17) Private messaging are other features have been disabled to prevent misuse. The email addresses of the members who register will also not be visible to any member or non-member of this forum. So the privacy of the registered members is protected in all ways.

 

(18) If some member or non-member tries to contact other members to try to cause disturbances in the society of devotees and trying to disrupt the smooth running of this forum, it should immediately be brought to the notice of Swami Gaurangapada and if it is proved then the member will be deleted from the forum without any notice and other actions may be taken in that regard.

 

(19) This forum can be suspended by Swami Gaurangapada at any time for some time periods if the epublishing projects workload increases or for reasons of misuse and if Swami Gaurangapada finds that he is not able to give required attention to the posts and queries on the forum. Information will be given if a forum suspension is required for some period of time to ease the epublishing workload.

 

(20) Henceforward, the old forum http://forums.gaurangadharma.org will be replaced by this new forum at http://forum.gaurangapada.com. So please do not try to post on the old forum, though you can read all the posts there.

 

(21) The Monthly Forum View is our new addition wtih a monthly calendar view of all the topics in the forum according to date. The url is http://forum.gaurangapada.com/calendar.php. If you move your mouse over the topic name you will see the first few sentences of the topic and the other topic details like Replies, Author etc. It will be quite convenient for those who like monthly views of forums, blogs etc. for quick access. You can change the month and year from the drop down boxes above and you can instantly access all the topics for that selected month. We would like to request all members that when they post a new topic they should click the the "Today" link in the Calendar event menu at the bottom of the posting form so that today's date will appear in the Calendar event boxes and the topic will become visible on the monthly calendar page. Please ignore and close if a second page opens while doing this.

 

(22) Also we are making available a form for non-members who are readers or interested in this forum and want to submit some queries to be answered or discussed on this forum or to be answered by myself or for those non-members who want to share some spiritual article for posting on this forum which they feel will be very good for devotees. Even the forum members can use this forum by selecting the option in the drop down menu, to submit their feedback or queries directly to us.

The form is located at http://forum.gaurangapada.com/helpdesk.php and the links to both the above pages are on the top menu for ready access from any page on the forum.

 

(23)  or  (any word within square brackets) in the Topic Subject does not mean that the topic is closed. All topics are open for further discussion and contribution unlimitedly by the forum members.

 

We hope that the sincere and spiritual serious devotees and people will register for membership of this forum or regularly read the spiritual nourishing posts on this forum and take advantage of it.

 

If you have any furthur queries about this new Forum, please let us know.