Social Network Terms and Conditions

Registration - The National Skills Academy

By accessing “excellencefound.co.uk” (hereinafter “we”, “us”, “our”, “excellencefound.co.uk”, “http://www.excellencefound.co.uk/”), you agree to be legally bound by the following terms. If you do not agree to be legally bound by all of the following terms then please do not access and/or use “excellencefound.co.uk”. We may change these at any time and we’ll do our utmost in informing you, though it would be prudent to review this regularly yourself as your continued usage of “excellencefound.co.uk” after changes mean you agree to be legally bound by these terms as they are updated and/or amended.

You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any laws be it of your country, the country where “excellencefound.co.uk” is hosted or International Law. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned, with notification of your Internet Service Provider if deemed required by us. The IP address of all posts are recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. You agree that “excellencefound.co.uk” have the right to remove, edit, move, close or put on moderation queue any topic at any time should we see fit based on the site wide rules as well as forum specific rules (published within the specific forums). Please note that currently any very first post is automatically placed in the moderation queue and will be approved/disapproved according to the site wide rules.

As a user you agree to any information you have entered to being stored in a database. While this information will not be disclosed to any third party without your consent, neither “excellencefound.co.uk” nor The National Skills Academy shall be held responsible for any hacking attempt that may lead to the data being compromised. 

Community rules 

This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at NSA. Please read it and become familiar with it, it's terms are retroactive and agreed by team and group members. 


1.    Forum rules 

1. Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below).
2. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.
3. Members are asked to not act as “back seat moderators”. If members note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of a member of the Moderator Team. Please use the “post report” feature to report posts. Do not respond to such topics yourself. Members who constantly “act” as moderators may be warned.
4. Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.
5. Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc. Users linking to or asking for information on illegal access to software etc. or re-printing material without permission will receive a warning and their post will be removed.
6. Members should post in a way which is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large, small or coloured text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Users consistently abusing this will be warned.
7. Members should use an appropriate, descriptive subject when posting a new topic. Examples of bad subjects include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "I've got an error!", etc. 
8. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, solicitation etc. Recruiting members for your own projects (moderators, designers, professional MOD work, etc.) is not permitted and is also considered spam. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and 3rd party linking for more information.
9. Members are asked to not disclose to any 3rd party, board, or list any vulnerabilities in forum software before first notifying the developers. You should submit all finds to our security tracker. Time should be allowed for us, at least 3 working days wherever possible, to respond.
10. The moderating, support and other teams reserve the right to edit, remove or put on moderation queue any post at any time. The determination of what is construed as indecent, vulgar, spam, etc. as noted in these points is up to Team Members and not users.
11. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revocation of private messaging.

1. Signatures may contain up to five lines of text (of small or normal size) and/or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 60px high, 468px wide and 6KiB (6144 Bytes) in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 30px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to three lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text. Animated images are not allowed.
2. Text sizes should be between 75% and 100% (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as the main content of posts as described above.
3. Users abusing these rules will be warned.

3.   Avatars 

1. Users are permitted to utilise a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 120 pixels square, contain no animation, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimicking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 12KiB (12288 Bytes) in filesize and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed).
2. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, and so forth.
3. Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges.

4.   Policing

1. This forum operates a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.
2. Arguing with team members after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a temporary ban will be put in place as above.
3. Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact the relevant team leader, e.g. if warned by a moderator you should contact the Moderator team leader. If they feel you were treated badly they remove a warning.
4. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban or other moderator action will lead to a permanent ban of your account(s). Circumvention includes re-registering or using an already registered account under a non-banned username. Other examples include changing IP addresses, using a new email account or other action that can be taken to evade moderator action to hide your identity as the owner of the sanctioned account.
5. An exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact team members personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.
6. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While we may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.