ABOUT ATS: Avatar and Signature Guidelines

Over the past few weeks, we've seen avatars and signatures evolve from brief personal statements to grand sweeping mantras of vast cinematic statement.

While we certainly want to encourage our fine members to express themselves with creativity and humor, there should be some limits. After all, in many cases, some threads contain more material in the signatures than in the actual content of the posts themselves.

Going forward, here are the standards:


Avatars:

GIF and JPEG file formats only with a maximum dimension of 160 pixels wide, by 320 pixels tall. File sizes are not to exceed 75k, and animated GIF's are allowed. (physical size can extend up to 400 pixels tall for images under 50k in file size)

No profanity. No 3rd party advertising for any website(s).

No images that are similar to, or mimic any official ATS staff, FSME, reward, or other images used by ATS to designate special status without prior permission from me, SkepticOverlord, or Springer.


Signatures:

A maximum of five lines of text, with any graphic image counting as one line (only one image is allowed).

No advertising of your personal or other websites until you have been a contributing member for at least 6 months. All URLs must be approved by an ATS Administrator or Site Owner prior to display.

GIF and JPEG file formats for any image with a maximum dimension of 600 pixels wide by 70 pixels tall. File size is not to exceed 50k, and animated GIF's are allowed.

No profanity. No 3rd party advertising other than links and copy to your own personal website(s). The content of your personal website may be reviewed, however, and based on how it compares to the standards and Terms of ATS, you may be asked to removed the link to your personal website.

No wording that is similar to, or mimics any official ATS staff, FSME, reward, or other images used by ATS to designate special status without prior permission from me, SkepticOverlord, or Springer.


Erotic, Suggestive, Violent or Illegal Content

ATS and BTS is a diverse community with a mission to help people understand important issues from current events and history. Due to an evolution from women in bathing suits to women wearing less while in suggestive poses that often detracts from the mission, the following content guidelines apply to the content of both avatars and signatures:
1) No photos of persons wearing less than shirt-and-shorts.
2) No artwork (non-photo) of persons wearing less than bathing attire.
3) No persons, or links to persons in a sexually suggestive pose.
5) No persons engaged in what would be considered an obscene gesture.
6) No persons pointing weapons at the viewer of the image.
7) No images or links to images containing blood or gore.
8) No images or links to content containing people involved in an illegal act.
9) No images or links to images containing illegal objects.
10) No images that are taunting in nature toward any person or group of persons.
11) Other content, which at the discretion of forum staff, is designed to be vulgar, obscene, or offensive to the majority of ATS and BTS visitors and members.


Noncompliance:

If you receive a warning from a moderator to alter your signature to comply with the guidelines above, you'll have 24 hours to make the changes. If you don't make the alterations within the reasonable timeframe, the noncompliant material will be deleted from your profile for you.

Repeated noncompliance may result in being banned from ATS.




Copyrighted Imagery:

Many of our members select images that may have certain copyright restrictions. Thus far, Internet case law related to the use of such images or artwork as avatars by individuals is somewhat of a "gray area" as it straddles the boundaries of personal fair use. However, to respect the possibilities of potential intellectual property conflict, your avatars will only be visible to logged-in members of AboveTopSecret.com. Additionally, if we receive a request from a copyright holder to remove your avatar, we expect that you will cooperate when we remove your avatar.



Use this thread to post your comments about this information:
www.abovetopsecret.com...


[Edited on 3-12-2006 by SkepticOverlord]

*Bump*