I am writing this because it has come to my attention that many members are upset with the warnings they have been receiving throughout the past month. I would like it if you could take a few moments time to listen to what I have to say.

As a super moderator of eWebTalk it is my duty to oversee all forum activities, members and of course posts to make sure that all members are adhering to the guidelines set by eWebTalk Administration. While I do give suggestions for rules I would like to see added I do not officially set them into motion.

If any member of eWT has a dispute pertaining to a rule I ask you to please contact administration (in a private manner) as the matter does not concern moderators. All we do is enforce these rules. On the other hand if you have a dispute with a warning that you have been issued, you must contact the administrator or moderator that warned you (in a private manner). It is against the rules to refute the administrators and moderators decisions however, if done in private we will most likely discuss the matter with you (to a certain degree) and explain our actions.

As you should know eWT uses a warning system which the staff uses when a member violates one of the regulations set in the rules. I am going to take a few moments to explain how the system works.

This system assigns points to the member's account when they are warned. At the time of the warning, if the member's point total exceeds the allowed amount of points before ban the user will be banned. At this time 20 points is the limit. Once you reach that you will be issued a ban for a certain amount of days.

Dependant upon how many violations a member has already broken, how long ago the last violation was, how long the member has been a member or how active/helpful the member is he/she may be issued an alert which is a warning without points. It doesn't matter how "small" the violation is moderators will always issues some either an alert or warning because this will alert the member that they need to be more careful as to what they post. This also helps us keep track of how many times each member has already broken a violation and how many alerts/warns each member has. If we simply send a private message or do nothing then the other staff members are left out not knowing that the user has already broken this violation at least once before.

You can view our rules here: http://www.ewebtalk.com/Rules.php
As you see there are several different violation sections. Each of the sections having their own abreviations. These sections are as follows:

• General Behavior Regulations (GBR)
• Spam Regulations (SPA)
• eTool Regulations (ETA)
• Signature Regulations (SPR)
• Avatar Regulations (AAR)
• Posting Regulations (POR)
• Advertisement Regulations (AVR)

Each section has a list of violations which can be broken and according to which section a member's violation falls under a certain number of points will be assigned to the member's account.

Below is a sample copy of a warning private message (I am going to break down each part):

• [Warn Type Description] - This will display a description of the warning type the admin/mod has used in this warning.
• [Warn Type] - This will display the section (from rules) in which this violation is listed under.
• [Warn Type ABRV] - This will display the 3 letter abreviation for this warning type.
• [#] - This will display a number field which is used in several places of the warning private message to display points for this warning, days these points will remain in your account, your total warning points, the maximum number of points (when banned) and the number of days which you will be banned for.
• [Posted Message] - This will display the exact post which you were warned for. Often the post which you are warned for will be deleted or moved to a location which will be inaccessible by you, preventing you from seeing your post. Thus will will have to revert to viewing your post in this part of the warning message that is sent to you.
• [Warning Comment] - This will display and comments that have been entered by the admin/mod that warned you.

I receive many disputes from members because they fail to read the warning message that is sent to them. They just see the warning private message and think "OMG, I better ask why why why" then send me a message asking what post they were warned for or what rule they violated. Ummm... Hello?

Please, I urge all members to thoroughly read the warning private message before asking questions.

I'm going to stick this as this is an excellent break down. Thank you Nullified for bringing this up

When ever a member is sent either an alert or a warning, it is viewable by administrators as well as the moderation team. Myself and CEO regularly go through these alerts to make sure and be aware of what is happening. Alerts could be considered an official PM in a sense, it is not something to be completely alarmed about just be more cautious as to what you did wrong, and if you have any problems, PM the person who issued it, and CC it to an administrator. In most cases, we respect our moderators' actions and judgements as they are there for the well being of the community. No one is picking on anyone

EDIT: It's already stuck..good