General Rules and Sanctions:

• Members who send messages to forums are supposed to read and accept METU Forum Service Terms of Use. These rules can be updated anytime; therefore, forum members should follow any probable updates.
• Members should remind that forum service is used by many users and is open to public. Messages can be read by any member registered to the forum service.
• Members who violate these rules are firstly warned, and their messages are edited or deleted if necessary. If the warnings are not taken into consideration, those violating members are banned on using the forum service for a period of one month. At the end of this period, banned members can start using the service again; but if the violation is repeated, they are dismissed from forum service.
• If members want to quit from a private forum, they should not send their requests to the forum itself; such requests should be sent to the administrator of the forum instead.
• Technical problems or testing messages should not be sent to the forums. For these purposes, "Test Forum" should be used.

Forum Topics:

• Topics discussed in forums can not be contrary to METU Information Technology Resources Use Policy and laws of the Republic of Turkey . Forums can not be used for advertising or commercial purposes.
• Before a new topic is posted, whether the topic is posted previously should be determined first, using the "Search" tool. If it is posted previously, it should not be posted again, the existing topic should be used for discussions.
• Topics should be posted under appropriate categories.

Message Contents:

• Contents of the messages sent to the forums can not be contrary to METU Information Technology Resources Use Policy and laws of the Republic of Turkey .
• Contents of the messages sent to the forums can not be contrary to individual rights. Those messages including immoral attitudes such as disrespectfulness, humiliation, despise, threat and insult are forbidden. In case a message to be sent may be interpreted as including such attitudes, it should not be sent. In forums, personal discussions are not allowed, such discussions may be handled only through private messaging tool.
• Irrelevant topics should not be sent to the forums; discussions should be made in accordance with the subject.

Registration and Member Profiles:

• Avatars and signatures can not include political or immoral elements and advertisements. The same rule applies to member name selection.
• Signatures with big sizes which may corrupt the appearance of forums and signatures which include banners or links to external sites can not be used.
• People can only subscribe to METU forum service if they own a valid e-mail address with metu.edu.tr extension. Those registered members, who change their registered e-mail address with another lacking the metu.edu.tr extension or with an invalid address, are warned to correct their e-mail address. Forum subscription of members who do not correct their e-mail address within a given term is cancelled.
• After a member's e-mail address used to register to forum service is closed, his/her forum subscription is also cancelled.