The South PacificBoard

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Spamming on the RMB is not allowed at all, under any circumstances. Spamming is probably best described as a post that is meaningless and/or unnecessary— for example, a post that repeats the same thing multiple times, multiple posts of the same thing, or a series of posts that have no apparent meaning. It does not matter what your intent is— if your post(s) fits the above definition, it is considered spam and will be dealt with accordingly.

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We understand that many of you come from backgrounds where English is not your main language, as players come from all around the world. However, to avoid confusion among people who don't speak your language, we sincerely ask that you post in English only, for ease of communication.

Remember, there are tools like Google Translate to help you. If you speak in another language, please add a translation to English in the same post. Posts with English translations will not be suppressed. For the avoidance of doubt, English means Modern English and not backwards English.

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Asking for endorsements on the RMB is not allowed at all, under any circumstances. Ever. Permissions are only made if the requester is a member of the Council on Regional Security or the Delegate seeking to increase endorsement counts for the purposes of promoting regional security. If you want to receive and give more endorsements, get involved in the Southern World Assembly Initiative, TSP’s endorsement program.

Similarly, recruiting, or telling people to move to another region, is also not allowed. You may not ask people to join your region on the RMB, whether you are also a South Pacifican citizen yourself or not.

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It's all legal! As long as it complies with the rules. Specifically; remember to keep your roleplays appropriate (as stated in rule IX). The LC has reached a general conclusion on what is appropriate, and if your roleplay does not fit within those boundaries, it will be stopped. So, excessive display of affection, sexually-suggesting roleplay, and the like, are not allowed at all.

Similarly, do not clog the RMB with your roleplay. If you feel it has been going on for a while, either take it to a roleplay region, or cease it all together. Otherwise, it may be interfered with. When the board is dominated by roleplay, it becomes hard for everyone else to communicate with each-other, thanks to the overabundance of posts completely unrelated to what they are doing.

But other than those things, feel free to roleplay to your heart's content!

Roleplaying on the South Pacific’s main RMB is permitted for 5 posts on the topic before it must be taken elsewhere. If you wish to roleplay freely, there are two regions run by the South Pacific whose Regional Message Boards you can post on to roleplay freely: Knowhere and Psomewhere.

Organizing, recruiting, and making announcements about roleplays taking place in The South Pacific, Knowhere, or Psomewhere is permitted for 5 posts on the topic before it must be taken off the main TSP RMB.

A chain of posts connected by quotes of the previous poster is considered a single topic for the purposes of this rule, unless it is clear that the portion of the previous post being responded to is the beginning of a new subject (e.g. if a quoted post is both the second response to one subject and the first response to another, and it is quoted in its entirety but it is clear the quoter intends to respond to only the latter subject, the quoting post will not be suppressed for violating the RP limit). Note that you may not avoid violating the RP limit by simply not quoting the person you are responding to, even if you are still discussing the same subject matter— see Rule XI, “when you are responding to someone's post, please quote their post”. A post clearly dealing with the same subject as a current topic will be considered part of that topic.

Note also that a topic does not “reset” if it has not been discussed in a while or if new posters join the conversation. A switch of roleplay topic after 5 posts does count as a “reset”, but to be considered a switch of topic, the change must be considerable— going from roleplaying eating a snack to roleplaying taking a post-snack nap does not count (as it clearly still takes place in the same “world”), while going from roleplaying eating a snack to roleplaying as a news announcer does count.

Knowhere is the place for roleplays involving interactions between nations, and other more serious styles. Psomewhere is for “silly plotless roleplaying”, often involving players acting as characters. Any nation in The South Pacific can post in these regions without having to move to them or leave The South Pacific.

Details: Double posting, or posting two posts in a row, is considered illegal, as are any other number of posts more than one in a row.

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It is not permitted to post or otherwise share another player's personally-identifying information (i.e. social media accounts, IP addresses, postal addresses, E-mail addresses, telephone numbers, etc.), and neither is it permitted to post or share information that may not be identifying but is nonetheless of a personal nature (i.e. medical history, relationship status, etc.). The only exception is if the player in question has shared that information themselves and does not mind its dissemination (this sharing or statement of permission must be publically viewable).

Making a claim of serious out-of-character misconduct (e.g. bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, etc.) against someone else, without providing evidence to moderation/administration, is considered malicious harassment, and will be dealt with accordingly. This rule applies to the TSP forum and discord as well.

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Trolling is defined as starting quarrels or upsetting people by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the intent of provoking other nations into displaying emotional responses. Baiting is similar to trolling, and is defined as posting with the aim of angering someone indirectly, directed at a specific person. Flaming is defined as posting insults or other verbal and often personal attacks on other nations. Erudite slams while maintaining a veneer of politeness can also be considered flaming. All three of these are banned under all circumstances.

This is an extension of a simple policy of respect. What may seem like good natured fun to you could be trolling to someone else, and if they tell you to stop, do so.
We can and will warn, suppress, and even ban you, as well as record the incident. In severe cases the NationStates Moderators will be contacted, and puppets will not hide your IP address from them.

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TSP is a part of NationStates, and as such, you must follow the rules of the game as a whole at all times. Breaking the game rules will land you in trouble with both the regional officers and NationStates site moderation. See the link below for the list of rules and a quick FAQ page for more details on the game rules.
NationStates Rules
Nationstates FAQ

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Excessive swearing, explicit, suggestive, or excessively violent messages, sexual references, and other such things will be suppressed on sight, and the NationStates site moderators can and will be called to get involved in serious cases. Excessive displays of personal affection (e.g. suggestive roleplayed snuggling, nuzzling, kissing, licking and so on) is also considered inappropriate and will be suppressed accordingly.

Mild swearing may be tolerated, mild sexuality may be at the very most hinted, but explicit or excessive versions of either or both will result in moderation intervention, both from the Local Council and potentially from NationStates site moderators. Derogatory terms are disallowed, and all swearing must abide by all other rules, particularly those about respecting others.

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It is illegal to edit what someone else has written when quoting it in order to make it seem like they expressed a view which they didn’t. Quote-editing should be avoided even for comic effect.

When you are responding to someone's post, please quote their post (by pressing the "quote" button), as it makes it less confusing and will alert them to your post.

When quoting an offensive post, delete the content of the post and replace it with "-snip-". Doing so makes the administrators’ jobs much easier.

When quoting long posts, please cut the post down to the particular parts you are responding to, or replace the extraneous material with "-snip-".

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The [spoiler] tag is your friend. When making or quoting a very long post, or one which not everyone might want to read, please add spoilers, so as to avoid taking up a large amount of the page.

If you are giving a spoiler of a recently released book or film, put it in a spoiler tag, to give people who haven't read/watched it a chance. As a general rule of thumb, give a month for films post-release (as release dates may be different in different areas) and two months for book releases.

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Remember, there are other, real people behind the nations on the RMB. Everyone here is a human being with emotions and the right to be respected.

While dissent with regional officers (Local Council, Delegate, CRS, and Ministers) is perfectly acceptable, remember that they are people too, and worthy of basic human decency. The regional officers should be respected at all times just as any other member of the region should.

When debating, always remember to attack the argument rather than the person making it. If you find yourself getting heated, try to take a step back. Personal insults, insults to intelligence, etc. will not be tolerated. The only form of debate banned on the RMB is that over a particular suppression. For more information, see the Help Section at the end of this document.

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A picture is not worth a thousand words. While posting images is generally acceptable in the RMB, they cannot be the sole contents of a post. This includes both computer generated images like the yellow faces and text-based images, like the following:

(:

(0w0)

(?-?)

>:

[;

Attempts to circumvent this rule on a technicality, such as the utilisation of a single word in addition to the image, will still result in the suppression of the post at the discretion of the Local Council.

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Single word posts are too short, full stop. If you find yourself wondering if a post is too short, it likely is. This rule does not mean you have to post several paragraphs of content every time you want to post. Single sentence posts are still allowed under this rule.

However, at the discretion of the Local Council, posts deemed to be insubstantial and not contributing to the regional discourse will be suppressed. An excellent way to avoid this is to add thought to your posts.

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Actions do not speak louder than words. Roleplaying on the RMB is a privilege, and posts that simply read as actions being performed are not allowed in the RMB, particularly if said actions consist on only a few words.

If you intend to roleplay in the RMB, you must add thought and substance to your posts. You have been given permission to roleplay in the RMB: you have not been given permission to roleplay poorly. Roleplaying posts deemed to not fit the standard of the RMB will be suppressed at the discretion of the Local Council. Roleplayers who consistently roleplay without the quality expected of the main RMB will be asked to relocate their posting to either Knowhere or Psomewhere.