Forum Rules & Guidelines

Hi All, I'd like to welcome the large number of new members to PomsInoz.com over the past few months (now approaching 50,000 registered members), and would like to take this opportunity to remind all members of the forum rules, which have recently been revised and refined. As a community we have a great opportunity to share all aspects of the experience of migrating to and living in Australia. The rules should be common sense however I would urge you to familiarise yourself with them to ensure you do not get penalised. 

Forum Etiquette

• Thank you goes a long way - If someone has taken the time to discuss, and share their experiences with you then please be appreciative of that and thank them accordingly. This applies especially to the migration agents who give their time on the site for free.
• We don't walk in their shoes - If someone is offering to share their experiences please do not belittle them, or make personal comments, or judgements, about their situation. It is not helpful to anyone, and only detracts from the discussion at hand.
• Communicating on message boards is different from face-to-face communication. Only the words are seen, not your facial expressions or tone of voice. Please pay careful attention to how you use your words. Remember that the words you enter in a burst of passion or indignant anger will be there for you and everyone else to see, sometimes long after those intense feelings have passed. That's not meant to discourage spontaneity, but just a friendly reminder of the long-term existence and effects of what you post. You may, from time to time, find yourself in disagreement with someone else's opinion. At times like these, please keep in mind it's safer and more polite to take issue with the comments rather than the person

Forum Rules

1. If you believe that someone has violated our User Guidelines or you have spotted content that may otherwise require attention, please click the 'Report Post' option above the post where the violation is located. If the thread has numerous violations in it, you need not report each post; simply report one post and note that you spotted other violations in the thread, as well, in your report before you submit. Include a brief description of what you believe is wrong. After you send your report, forget that the post(s) exists. Do not post "I have reported your post" - do not further reference the post in the thread in any way. If you feel that the report post feature is not appropriate for reporting a certain type of violation, please feel free to send a private message to a staff member or contact me.
2. PomsInoz.com is not the appropriate medium for personal or private vendettas. This forum should not be used to attempt to resolve personal problems or to 'name & shame' fellow members, migration agents, service providers or anyone else and posts that fall into this category may be deleted by moderators where it is considered necessary. Please email the company directly to attempt to resolve these issues in the first instance.
3. Out of respect for the Original Poster, please try to keep postings on-topic, do not steer the thread in another direction without good reason. If required please start a new topic within a relevant forum. If posters do not adhere to these guidelines then they may find that their post is edited or deleted. For any deliberate or continued breech of the rules, moderators may issue infractions or warnings.
4. Please use the most descriptive title possible when creating a new thread, ensuring you search the forums first to ensure posts are not duplicated. Duplicate posts / threads may be deleted or merged.
5. Be respectful to your fellow members, moderators and administrators, this is a friendly and great environment; we wish to keep it that way so please treat others as you would like to be treated and please respect other members rights to express an opinion which may differ to your own. Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
6. Moderators may, if felt appropriate move your post if it becomes more relevant / pertinent to another part of the forum.
7. Please remember that moderators are volunteer helpers that are here to ensure the forum runs smoothly. Please respect this if they have to contact you/edit/remove or add additional comments to your threads or posts.
8. Should you have any issues with a moderator, then you should,in the first instance,attempt to resolve the issue via off-forum correspondence (email/PM) with the moderator concerned, however, please do this in a polite manner and note that personally abusing moderators will not be tolerated in these circumstances, alternatively you may prefer to resolve the matter by contacting the site administrator.
9. Discussions about moderator or administrator actions are welcome in email or local private messages, but must not be placed in the public forums or on the visitor message board, any such threads will be removed by admin/mods and infractions may be issued. Abusing moderators will NOT be tolerated under any circumstances.
10. Please keep your language clean and decent. This include personal inflammatory language as well as obscenities.
11. You agree not to hold PomsInoz.com or its members liable for anything stated within the forums and that messages posted at this site are the sole opinion and responsibility of the poster.
12. Postings that are deliberately designed with the intention of driving traffic to a member's site, affiliated sites or other social networking sites/forums will be removed or edited, as the moderator(s) feels appropriate. Before posting these type of links please contact the administrator if in doubt.
13. Trolling will not be tolerated. (For the purposes of this forum, a 'troll' is defined as someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages on the forum, or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
14. Members found to be accessing the forum via an anonymizing proxy without prior authorisation from the administrator, will have their account suspended sine die.
15. Members are only permitted one account. Any member who deliberately sets up a secondary false account to troll will be banned. If you have forgotton your username and wish to create a new account, or you require a secondary account for another family member, please contact admin in the first instance.
16. Members are not to post obscene, vulgar, racist, offensive, or illegal posts, links, or images. Any Posts / visitor messages / Private messages / avatars / Photos containing such content will be removed and could lead to a warning or a ban if necessary.
17. Abuse of the Private Message system will not be tolerated under any circumstances. This includes sending unsolicited commercial mail via the PM system and sending abusive messages via the PM system. It is also strictly forbidden to reproduce/publicise contents of Private Messages on the open forum without the explicit permission of the sender.
18. Banned members: When a ban expires, members will be placed in a probationary usergroup for a period of 3 months. *The probationary usergroup does not have full access to all site functionality* After the 3 months has expired, the member, at the administrators discretion, will be returned to the regular member usergroup.
19. Advertising of goods for sale is allowed, however, this is limited to the forum entitled "For Sale / Wanted".
20. Advertising of private "lease breaks" is allowed. These are to be placed in the Rental & Real Estate section. (We may require proof/confirmation from the agent that the advertised property is a 'lease break')
21. As this is an English speaking community, we require that posted content be in the English language, so that it can be well received and properly monitored
22. We know that people will have to leave our community (of their own free will or otherwise) from time to time and to that end, we do not delete accounts, posts or other content posted on our community. All content is granted to us with perpetual electronic publishing rights because any content posted on this community becomes a part of the community, even if you no longer are. You may request an item to be removed at any time, but we will decide when and if to remove content from our community. If you wish to no longer be identified with our community, we will be glad to close your account and alter your profile information to remove all identifying characteristics. After account closure, you will no longer be able to participate in this community and this action is not reversible. Once you have notified us that you wish to close your account, your account will be closed following 14 continuous days on inactivity. N.B: Logging in to your account again during the 14 day period will undo a pending deletion request.
23. Leaving announcements are permitted at the discretion of the forum administrators on the proviso that the poster is an 'established' member of the PIO community (based on length of membership / posts made). Leaving threads must not violate our user guidelines. No negative or disrespectful remarks about other members, the staff or administrative decisions are permitted. Plain, respectful, farewell messages are the order of the day. Leaving threads will remain open for 48 hours to ensure members have ample time to leave goodbye messages.
    N.B: If members choose to return, 'second' leaving threads will not be permitted.

Recommendations

Please try and avoid placing your email address in any posts you make. There are automated programs (spambots) that trawl the internet, harvesting email address's which are then used to send unsolicited spam. As an alternative to using your email address, we recommend you use the forum's Private Messaging system when asking other members to contact you. When you receive a PM, you will be notified by email.

Business Rules

1. Before advertising any business or service on PomsInOz.com, contact the administrator. Any posts deemed to be advertising material without the consent of the administrator may be deleted.
2. Signatures are a great way of promoting your online business and we encourage their use on the board and within profiles. However, please keep signatures to a maximum of two lines, do not include large images, large text or banners. The only exception to the two line rule is for migration agents who are permitted three lines, due to the requirement to display their Migration Agent Registration Number. One external link to a business website is allowed.
3. Signatures must also be clear of font colouring and styling. Examples of which may include bold or itallic styling.
4. You may NOT post your company name / company logo as your avatar.
5. Service providers using this function purely to promote their own wares without adding value to the community are likely to be removed and/or edited. Please seek prior permission from the administrator prior to advertising your service (See point 1 above).
6. Business Members (& their employees) are prohibited from starting threads with the sole purpose of promoting their business, product or service.

Facebook Links

Please remember that it is considered bad internet etiquette to promote other forums whilst being on poms in oz. This is especially the case with FaceBook Links.

FaceBook posts and links are not allowed on the forum for various reasons. Not only is it bad internet etiquette, but members who decide to take others from PIO to post on FB are being very selfish and are not contributing to the forums that have helped them to find friends and answer questions in the first place, a lot of these FB groups would have no members in the first place if it wasn't for pomsinoz.

As with all internet forums PIO survival depends on members using and posting on the forums provided, if enough members stop posting on here and post on FB, then you could loose PIO and or its associated sites. Please if you are a new member and are approached by someone to leave PIO and join a FB group let admin or one of the mods know.

Promoting FB links on PIO can result in warnings, infractions and possible suspension of accounts.

From time to time, you may need to contact the forum administrators or moderators.

If you believe that someone has violated our User Guidelines or you have spotted content that may otherwise require attention, please click the 'report post' option above the offending post. If the thread has numerous violations in it, you need not report each post; simply report one post and note that you spotted other violations in the thread, as well, in your report before you submit. Include a brief description of what you believe is wrong.

When a post is reported, ALL moderators and administrators receive a reported post notification.

If you feel that the report post feature is not appropriate for reporting a certain type of violation or you would like to contact us regarding another issue, problem, suggestion etc, then please feel free to send a private message to a moderator or contact admin.

How do I know who's an administrator / moderator?

Click the 'Browse' menu option, then 'Staff' from the submenu which will take you to this page:

https://www.pomsinoz.com/staff/

This will then display a page where you will be able to contact a moderator or administrator.

How the 'Warnings' system works:

Warnings

Warnings are generally issued for the following reasons:

1) Breach of forum rules governing moderator action. The default behavior for this is 2 points which will expire after 60 days.

2) Spamming. The default behavior for this is 15 points which will never expire.

3) Unauthorised advertising. The default behavior for this is 1 points which will expire after 30 days.

4) Inappropriate language. The default behavior for this is 1 points which will expire after 30 days.

5) Abusive behaviour. The default behavior for this is 2 points which will expire after 60 days.

N.B. The above are 'default' settings and moderators or admin may vary them if deemed appropriate/necessary.

When a member reaches a certain number of points, restrictions will apply to their account as detailed below.

N.B. Once issued with a warning, a member must 'acknowledge' the issued warnings before they can post again. The member will see a message on every page: Viewing the warning details will have a button allowing the member to acknowledge the warning.