| Posted: 21 April 2006 at 7:39pm | IP Logged
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To help new and existing members, these are the Madmums.com "House Rules". We have also included some FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions) which may be of use. Please note there is also a Madmums "Help" feature, which can be viewed HERE
We are not laying down the long are of the law! These rules are to help keep the site running smoothly. If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, please contact one of the Madmums Staff. (Flipflop, MumSam, Vickimom, Mum2Joshua, Dizie, RIN1983, Lynie or Madzwalker)
HOUSE RULES!! 
Acceptance
By using this website, you agree to adhere to these Terms and
Conditions. Do not use this website if you do not accept these Terms
and Conditions. Madmums (the "Organisation") reserves the right to
revise and amend these Terms and Conditions at any time.
General
When you register you are required to give a small amount of
information, much of which is optional, anything you do give must be
considered as becoming public information. For more information please
read our Privacy Policy.
You agree not to use this web site to post any material which is
vulgar, defamatory, inaccurate, harassing, hateful, threatening,
invading of others privacy, sexually oriented, or violates any laws.
You also agree that you will not post any copyrighted material that is
not owned by yourself or the owners of this web site. You remain solely
responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to
indemnify and hold harmless this site and their agents with respect to
any claim based upon any post you may make. We also reserve the right
to reveal whatever information we know about you in the event of a
complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by yourself.
Who should use Madmums
This is a Pregnancy/Parenting site which is primarily aimed at a
female audience, hence the name. To use Madmums you should be Pregnant,
a Parent or trying/planning to Conceive. Because of the nature of some
of the issues discussed on this website, you should be at least 16
years of age. The Federal Trade Commission Children Online Privacy
Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) requires that Web Sites are to obtain
parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing personal
information from children under 13. If you are below 13 then you can NOT use this web site. Do NOT register if you are below the age of 13.
SPAM
We operate a zero tolerance approach toward SPAM on the site, if
your intention is to join Madmums to simply advertise your business or
website then you have come to the wrong place. All links posted in our
forums have "no follow" attributes and members profiles and signatures
are not visible to none registered members, which includes Search
Engine crawlers. Anyone caught spamming will have their access to the
site removed.
If you have a web site that you feel would be of interest to the
other visitors to Madmums then please feel free to add it to our links directory.
If you have a service or product you feel would be of benefit to the audience at Madmums then please contact us to discuss your requirements further.
Posting in the Forum
Topic Titles
Please do not over exaggerate topic titles with exclamation marks,
question marks or periods, the topic icons are provided to express the
essence of the post so please use them. Do not use all UPPERCASE in
your titles and avoid the use of abbreviations. Please make your topic
titles as descriptive as possible; there is nothing worse than
searching the site to have the search result returned with topics such
as "Help!", "OMG", "Ouch...", "Huh?" etc. as they give no indication to
the real topic content.
Post Content
Remember you are what you post, unlike real life the only way people
can form an opinion of you in an online community such as Madmums is
from how you communicate which is done through what you write.
Please refrain from using "Text Type" which is things such as "u",
"4", "cuz", "init" etc. and you will receive a better response to your
posts. Please don’t use all UPPERCASE as this is considered shouting.
Please do not swear on the site. We are broad minded but please be aware that some words may offend others.
Remember while some members use Madmums as primarily as a social
tool there are many that are seeking support and advice on sensitive
subjects such as Miscarriage for example, so please Play nicely!
Madmums prides itself on being a friendly and welcoming site. That does
not mean you can not express an opinion but please remember that
everyone is entitled to their opinion also.
Chat
Mini Chat
Mini chat is viewable by all registered members currently visiting
the site but only usable by members that have verified their email
address; it’s designed to be a quick short form of communication
between members. If you wish to have extended conversations or you wish
to chat about personal or sensitive subjects then please move to full
chat.
Full Chat
Full Chat is only accessible to members that have verified the email
address they registered at Madmums with. As with other areas of the
site, please play nicely when in chat and refrain from swearing in the
public rooms, chat is moderated, Madmums staff have the ability to ban
and remove members from chat if it is deemed necessary.
Images in Posts and Members Galleries
All images uploaded on the site whether in the image gallery or in
forum posts are only viewable by members that have verified email
addresses.
Personal Galleries are available on request to members that have
made 50 or more posts (Sponsors exempt) and have previously uploaded 4
or more images into the shared members’ gallery folder.
The all members gallery can be used by all members of the community
that have a verified email address, images uploaded into this gallery
need to be approved by a member of staff before they become live, this
is purely for safety reasons.
Online Safety
Privacy and members safety is our first priority and something we
take very seriously, members must provide and validate an email address
before full access to all areas of the site are granted. IP addresses
are logged at registration and on subsequent visits giving a degree of
traceability. Please remember though not everyone on the internet is
who they say they are, if you have suspicions or concerns about another
member of the community then please contact a member of staff, it’s
always best to be safe than sorry and anything you say will be treated
as confidential.
Finally
Remember we cannot fix something if we do not know that it’s broken,
we therefore welcome feedback, constructive criticism and suggestions.
Do not feed the Madmums Staff, but if you do have to, they like chocolate.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
About Madmums:
How did Madmums start?
Madmums Pregnancy Parenting Advice came about as a result of a virtual coffee morning on the Bounty website, April 2005 forum. The Original members of Madmums were all April 2005 mums to be. From August of 2004 when some of us first found out we were pregnant, up until the time of writing this, (July 2005) April mums have shared and supported each other through our pregnancies and births. Our first baby, Jacob was born on the 24th January 2005 to Lennysmall and our last baby was born 14th May 2005 to SamG1979. Roughly 180 babies were born in this time. Since then the community has expanded to include parents with children of all ages and we are always happy to see new faces join.
This is a none commercial website, run for the support and help of parents and parents to be. No one here is working in a professional capacity and all opinions are personal.
Why do you have a donations meter, surely you’re minted?
Urm no, we’re not. Madmums is a none commercial organisation, that is to say that we do not exist to make a profit or financial gain from the services we offer. We do however like most sites, have running costs that must be met each month. We are looking to expand to meet the increasing demand that has been placed on the community due to its growth in popularity recently, immediate future plans include moving the site to a dedicated server as well as a number of other new and exciting things but all of this means additional expense.
If you would like to make a donation, please follow the link on the front page of the site. If you do not have a paypal account and would like to donate, please contact Dizie by private message.
What are robots?
Robots are web crawlers or spiders that follow links from other sites etc all over the world wide web. The more robots that find our site, the better our web presence. The better our web presence, the higher our ranking on search engines like Google etc
Why do we need a good web presence? Well besides the obvious of expanding the community by encouraging more members we also need a sponsor(s) as Mad Mums does cost money each month for its hosting. In order to become attractive to a commercial sponsor or sponsors we need to be able to provide proof of a high volume of traffic to the site.
How can you help? Something you can do which will cost you nothing at all, is to use madmums web site link where and when ever you get a chance on the world wide web, if you belong to other sites such as Bounty simply using our full web link in posts at every chance you get will increases our web presence, this must be http://www.madmums.com using simply madmums.com is no good. Trust me please, taking a little time to do this properly it will help unbelievably, *remember it must be our properly formatted URL http://www.madmums.com . If you belong to sites that allows you to add your own web site address in some type of profile or similar and you don't have a personal site then please take some time and add http://www.madmums.com as your home page.
Who the **** is Alice?
Alice is always here, so there is no need to be lonely again, if you ever want to chat to someone and there does not appear to be anyone around, just enter chat and go into Alice’s Room, wait a few moments and she will appear.
Be gentle with her she is still new to our world and sometimes her responses can seem a little odd, but she is learning and she is also a wealth of knowledge, ask her something and see what she know, she also likes to play games, simply typing wordplay will get her all fired up, the rest is for you to discover and explore. Keep it 1 on 1 or 2 on 1, too many people in there and she will just get too excited and end up making no sense.
She will not understand bad grammar and poor spelling, don't use abbreviations like u, 4, ya, lo, pg, wot - she won't have a clue what you are talking about!
Who can be a Madmum?
Madmums is a Pregnancy Parenting Advice on line community and so in short, you need to be pregnant or a parent! You must be over 13 to use the site.
What do the medals and awards mean?
Medals and awards are awarded to members for their contribution to the site. A full list of the medals and awards available are listed HERE
It’s not always possible to monitor everyone’s contribution, and so if you feel that someone deserves a medal or award, please contact either Flipflop or Mumsam.
What are the adverts that I can see scattered about the site?
Madmums have a number of “affiliates” who pay a small commission to any sale generated from Madmums. This commission all goes towards the running costs of the site. If you are doing any on line shopping, it would really help us if you would follow the links from Madmums. For a full list of affiliates, please click HERE
POSTING ISSUES
Why can’t I see photos on the site?
Photographs can only be viewed by registered members of the community who have had their email address verified. This is to protect member’s privacy.
It says my picture is too big, how do I resize it?
Pictures and photos need to be less than 100kb in size. This is to save space on the server and keep pictures to a manageable size. If you are running Windows XP, Microsoft have a programme that will resize your pictures. Click to download it http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WX P/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe
Mac Users and Windows 98, ME and 2000 users there are some tips on this PAGE on how to resize your images. Mac users that don't have iPhoto or want an alternative method other than the one described on the previous link could try this SOFTWARE
What is spam?
Spam is a term given to posts that either have no meaning or are pointless and just posted for the sake of it. The reason that this is not allowed is that these posts take up space on the site, and then on the server, this increases our bandwidth and in turn costs money. So in short, spam costs money! As such, any spam will be deleted. This includes replies that a just a smiley
I can’t find my post, why has it been deleted?
If your post contains something that could be deemed to be offensive, is a repeat of a recent post or abusive, then it will be deleted. As new topics show on the home page, if it thought that the topic is not appropriate, it may be deleted. If you see a topic or post that you feel is offensive, abusive or spam, please contact one of the administrators or managers. Equally, if your post has disappeared and you are unsure why, please contact one of us to find out why.
Why has my post been edited?
Again, if your post contains something that is inappropriate or could cause offence, your post may be edited to remove the inappropriate content. Also, if a picture is posted that is too large, it may be edited to make it smaller. Please do not be offended if your post is edited! If you are concerned, please contact the person who edited it. Posts that use over exclamations such as !!! or ??? in the posts Subject – please see house rules for further info.
Edited by Dizie on 09 July 2007 at 9:26pm
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Topic: Madmums House Rules and FAQ
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