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football Edit

Message board guidelines

Everyone is welcome on our message boards: UNC fans, supporters of other teams, ABC'ers, curious lurkers, etc. Our premium boards, Four Corners and The Bell Tower, are specifically intended for Carolina fans who are premium subscribers to our site. Non-subscribers are welcome to read the list of topics on the premium boards but will not be able to read or post threads.
While our boards are an open public forum, the site is supported by Rivals.com and run by Landmark Communications, and the administrators of TarHeelIllustrated.com will do whatever is necessary to protect the business interests of each of those parties.
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We strive to have easy-to-access, flexible boards on which discussion is open, intelligent and honest. However, because not all of our visitors participate with the intention of willingly sticking to that ideal, we have a few rules we will enforce vigorously. Check out these guidelines, then go have fun on the boards.
1. No personal attacks. This goes for UNC coaches, athletes, administrators, faculty and staff, as well as other posters. If you feel the need to crudely insult someone (i.e. "X coach/player/etc. sucks!" or "Dude, you are an [expletive]"), bite your tongue. Such posts will be immediately deleted by administrators. If, in the heat of an argument with another poster, you feel the need to fling curses or insults, take it outside. Everyone has e-mail, so use it. This ain't third grade.
2. No flaming. "Flaming" is defined as posting statements solely designed to anger or rile up the board majority, which here would be Carolina fans. If you are an opposing fan who wants to tell everyone how much you hate the Tar Heels, fine. But if you do it in such a way that you demonstrate that you are not on the board to discuss, but instead to flame, your post will be deleted and you will be blacklisted. For instance, "Carolina licks monkey butts" or "The Tar Heels are (expletive)" will get you banned quickly. We're here to have fun, and that type of behavior is no fun.
3. Please do not copy premium content from our site and post it on other boards, or take premium content from other sites and post it on our boards. We compete hard with the other UNC sites, but we like for it to be a clean fight. Copying is not cool. Links to other free sites are permitted.
4. Keep it clean. Most of us are adults here, but don't force your language or risqué photos or graphics on other unsuspecting posters. In other words, no skin and no cussin'. If you must post your favorite dirty jokes or photos of your favorite swimsuit model, please use our off-topic board, Out Of The Blue.
5. Being critical (within reason) is OK. We like to hear your opinions, but if you criticize, be prepared to bring facts to support your critical opinions, or the other posters will likely gang up on you and pummel you into submission. The exchange of rational ideas is always welcome, even radical stuff, but saying "We should fire so-and-so because he stinks" will probably just get you pounded.
6. Be careful when discussing recruits. We talk a lot about recruiting on our boards, especially the premium board. Please remember that the recruits themselves read our boards. Any criticism of prep players is strongly discouraged and may be deleted unless the poster has ironclad proof to back up his criticism.
7. Don't duplicate posts. When starting a thread, please look at other threads to make sure your topic isn't already being discussed. That way it will help prevent duplicate threads from being started.
8. Topics should be about UNC, with limited comments on other institutions. We would like to ask the board to keep the topics on opponents to a minimum. We're not saying you can't talk about opponents because you can especially when a game is coming up against that team. However, this is a UNC board and the majority of the topics need to be about the Tar Heels. If you would like to discuss an opponent (unless it directly involves UNC), please use the team-specific message board on the Rivals.com network.
For other handy guidelines, please refer to our Privacy Policy, our Terms of Service and our Copyright Infringement pages.
Our policy for blacklisting
The following transgressions will get you banned from our boards:
1. Flaming repeatedly. We will warn almost everybody once via e-mail, and if you respond with more flaming, you are gone.
2. Cursing. If you're a regular who gets fired up and curses once in a blue moon, we're not going to ban you for that. Dog-cussers are banned with no warning.
3. Flooding. If you are attention-starved and you post on every thread on the board for no reason other than to see your name all over your computer screen, we will politely ask you via e-mail to knock it off. If you become a persistent pain in the neck, you're toast.
4. Hacking. If you intentionally endeavor to screw up our site, you will be banned and we will take steps to pursue legal action against you. TarHeelIllustrated.com and our message boards are an important part of our business, and if you interfere with our ability to run our business, we will do everything in our power to prosecute you.
5. Registering under a false e-mail address. If you sign up for a username with a non-existent e-mail address, we will have to assume you are visiting our site with bad intentions.
6. Fan of another school posting on the premium boards. Just like many other Rivals.com sites, fans from opposing schools are not permitted to post on the premium message boards. If you do, you will be banned and your subscriptions costs will not be refunded.
7. Repeatedly violating any of the guidelines above. The guidelines are in place and are used by our moderators to delete or lock threads. If you repeatedly break the guidelines above to a point where the moderators have to spend an excessive amount of time dealing with you, it will result in the blacklisting of your account.
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