New and improved. Revised, condensed and with extra vitamins for your health.

1. Stay on topic: Each forum is clearly labeled for a specific USC sport. Please choose the appropriate forum for your topic. If you want to post about another school’s athletics, professional sports or anything else not related to a listed Gamecock sport, there is an “Anything Under The Sun” category. This would be a good place for “favorite steakhouse” and best Chuck Norris jokes. If you notice a thread in your favorite forum that is not relevant, please email us at feedback@thestate.com and we can move it to the appropriate place. If you want to post about a Gamecock sport that is not listed, email us at the above address and request a forum for it.

2. Flames: The bane of all discussion boards, flame posts are hostile, insulting posts intended to rile up other members, assert superiority or defend a position in a way that does not move a thread discussion forward. Because of the nature of a sports forum, it is difficult to walk the line between back-and-forth banter typical of these discussions and true flame posts. Frankly, after you read the following statements on this subject, we would enjoy your opinion of how to deal with this problem. We cannot guarantee we will follow your advice, of course. But we recognize that the experience of our users matters. You can send your ideas/observations to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Back to the announcement:

What is clear is that responding to possible flame posts with a flame post yourself is NEVER the appropriate response. If we feel the original post is in fact not a flame, but yours is, you are the one who is going to suffer the consequences, and then you likely will harbor ill will toward us because you will think we are biased. In fact, we are just trying to enforce our guidelines.

So what should you do? There are report links at the bottom of every forum page. Rather than responding in a thread to a post you think is inappropriate (and seeing your own post reported to us and deleted, and your account possibly suspended), please IGNORE the post and REPORT it to us using the report link (it sends your message to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). When reporting a problem post, please include the screen name of the offending member and the title of the thread in which the post appears.

For purposes of the GoGamecocks.com forums, we will consider flaming to include bullying, disdainful posts about another person’s or group’s opinions and “thread hijacking” – meaning posting another topic in an established thread to further some personal agenda. We will not buy the argument that a post that is negative about USC is automatically a flame and should be deleted. If it is a legitimate topic of discussion, it is OK for the forum. However, we do reserve the right to delete accounts responsible for repetitive posts of this nature that are clearly devisive.

Finally, we recognize that many situations could be gray areas and we will be making judgment calls. Again, we do reserve the right, as owners of the site and the discussion board, to delete any post for any reason. But if you find your post deleted, our ultimate purpose is not to anger you. It is to maintain the forums as an enjoyable place for our members. Don’t take it personally.

3. Quoted material: Please keep in mind when responding to others’ posts: If we decide a post is inappropriate, we will delete it AND delete your post if you quote it. It makes no sense to delete an inappropriate post if we just leave copies of it in other posts. We would be on shaky legal ground if we were to edit posts, so we can’t just snip out the offending material and leave the rest. We must simply delete the whole thing. We ask that you not respond to inappropriate posts, but report them. But certainly don’t quote questionable posts if you don’t want your own contribution deleted along with the rest.

4. Copyrighted material: We will delete posts that appear to be “cut-and-paste” copies of copyrighted material. That includes articles from other fan sites and media sites. If the material is not copyrighted, do yourself a favor and include the source and why it is not copyrighted in the introduction of the post. You may quote a SMALL excerpt of an article with credit to the source, but it is always better to just summarize it in your own words (and credit the source in this summation). You may include a link to the source if it is a Web site.

5. Member moderation: Member moderation is our way of giving forum management responsibilities to a select group of trusted members. Moderators can delete posts; can move threads from the wrong forum to the right one; and can merge threads on similar topics. Moderators cannot access user accounts or personal info. While they cannot ban or delete members, they do play a pivotal role in those decisions.

Bashing or personally insulting a member moderator for actually moderating is grounds for suspension and possible banishment. If a thread is deleted and you start it again, that, too, is grounds for punishment.

If you’ve got a problem with a moderator doing his job, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and let us know. The admins and the moderators will delete any threads that attack member moderation.

5. A reminder of our Terms of Service: All messages posted at this site express the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the owners and administrators of this site.

By registering at this site you agree not to post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, or that violate any laws.  We will permanently ban all users who do so.

We reserve the right to remove, edit, or move any messages for any reason.

Forum post statuses are as follows:

1-100 “Just Hatched”

101-250 “Little Rooster”

251-500 “Junior Gamecock”

500-1000 “Fighting Gamecock”

1001-2000 “Big Spur” (a reference to Sir Big Spur)

2001-4999 “Odyssey Gamecock” (referring to the “2001 Space Odyssey” theme)

5000-9999 “Legendary Gamecock”

10,000+ “Lifetime Gamecock”

Thank you for your participation in our forums. We appreciate your contributions.