Community Guidelines

Our community defines who we are and the industry we serve. We want everyone to have a voice, providing they contribute healthy conversations and support the community through constructive feedback.

Our Community Guidelines underpin how we expect everyone with an FSElite account to act so that everyone knows what our expectations are.

Last updated 17th May 2021.

In Summary

  • We welcome engaging and thoughtful conversations and contributions on FSElite.
  • Our moderation team works to promote a healthy community and will use our guidelines to make decisions over the quality of conversations.
  • Warnings and bans can be issued should our guidelines be breached.
  • Those who feel wronged can appeal decisions by contacting us.

General Guidelines

In general, we want everyone to be an engaging and thoughtful member of the community. If you have something of value to contribute, we welcome; if you are here to troll or disrupt, head elsewhere. 

Everyone is entitled to their thoughts and opinions, but there’s a right way and wrong way to express them. There is no freedom of speech here at FSElite, but you are welcome to contribute in a way that is in line with our guidelines.

Be Civil: Whatever you may have to say can be said in a manner that is civil.

Be Helpful: If you have something critical to say, then do so in a way that is constructive and helpful. 

Stay On-Topic: Keep the conversation flowing by staying on-topic. You wouldn’t interject midway through a real-life conversation about something different so don’t do that here.

Remember the Human: There’s a human on the other side of the comment. Consider that before you post something and consider how your text is received. 

Ask for Help: If you need support from someone, then ask. Use our tools to help ensure you have the best experience. This includes reporting or flagging issues from troublesome conversations.

Engaging In Conversations

We’re moving away from the era of ‘comments’ and instead of putting the focus on conversations. Conversations should be organic, insightful and fun. Our new comment system allows conversations to happen.

Conversations can only happen if the community allows them. 

To help, our new conversation tool now comes with the following features:

  • Upload images / gifs
  • Use of emojis
  • Embed content such as YouTube videos
  • Reply to comments
  • Get notified of replies to your conversation
  • Conversations load in real-time
  • See who’s replying in the conversation in real-time

Just as in real-life, conversations naturally come to an end and so they will on our website. After 21 days, the conversation will stop, unless our moderation team feel it is beneficial to keep it open.

By using this tool correctly, you can further enhance your experience with FSElite.

Our conversation tool is only available to FSElite account holders – no longer will we permit guest accounts to communicate on our platform.

Our Moderation Guidelines

To ensure that conversations remain healthy, we have a set of guidelines that our moderation team use. Each moderator will determine the quality of conversation and take action where they feel it may fall below the standards we and our community expects.

Here is how you can ensure you keep the quality of conversation high and ensure our moderators have a good time engaging with our community.

Your Obligations

Spam: Regardless of the source, any and all spam will be deleted. Promoting your website, project, YouTube channel, or pasting entire articles from other websites, will be considered spam and will be removed promptly.

Personal attacks: We’re all members of the same community, so it is important that we treat each other with respect to help foster a healthy hobby environment for everyone. Do not under any circumstance attack or insult another FSElite user/commenter, developer, or any human being on our website. This includes referring to people as trolls, fanboys, sheep, etc. Derogatory insults will not be tolerated and will result in an immediate ban from both the comment section and FSElite.net.

Piracy: Any discussion or encouragement of piracy is strictly forbidden on FSElite. However, it’s important to note that FSElite will allow the discussion of piracy providing it’s the subject at hand or has relevance to the comment in question. Links to illegal downloads, instructions on how to steal, or any other illegal activity, will result in your comment being removed and a permanent ban being placed on your account.

FSElite, nor the users, should act as ‘arm-chair police’. If there are piracy concerns, you should contact the developer in the appropriate manner.

Racism, Sexism, and other forms of discrimination: Zero-tolerance. See ya later.

Trolling: Off-topic comments that derail the conversation and have no relevance to the article will be removed.

Offensive Names/Usernames: Usernames that contain language or terms that could be construed as offensive will be deactivated. Users will be requested to change their names before reactivation. We also will ask users to change usernames that could be interpreting other established members of the flight simulation community. If you are requested to change your username, you will have seven days to do so or else your account will be deleted.

Multiple accounts and throwaway emails: Multiple accounts and throwaway emails are not allowed on the site. Any users caught with multiple accounts will be asked to choose one account to use going forward. Throwaway emails signal that you are not here for a good reason. Any users using a throwaway email will be contacted and asked to use a suitable email for comment. Impersonating individuals in the community, no matter who they are is strictly forbidden and result in the account being removed and potentially a ban.

Complaining about coverage: Comments containing accusations of bias, complaints about the frequency of articles regarding a developer or add-on, and complaints on whether or not something is newsworthy, will be removed to help foster healthy and constructive conversations in our comment section. The same applies to any FSElite originals published. If you have feedback, use our tools so we can help you directly.

Site bashing: As we mentioned before, we’re all members of the same amazing community. Site bashing, whether it’s FSElite or any other website, is forbidden.

Abuse of the flag system: Any users caught abusing the comment flagging system will result in an account deactivation for a period of time deemed appropriate by FSElite.

Our Obligations

Our team of moderators will be fair and, where possible, provide feedback for any warnings or bans. Due to the volume of conversations, we are unable to provide feedback for each deleted comment.

Our policy is that we do not edit conversations. Any that violate our guidelines will be removed. If you notice your contribution is missing due to deletion, you may be able to try again providing it meets our standards.

Our moderation team has the final say in all matters. FSElite does not provide you with freedom of speech – the terms you agree to are under these guidelines.

Warnings and Bans

To promote a healthy environment for all, we may have to occasionally warn or ban members of the community. Our team of moderators have the ability to issue warnings and bans to members for breaches of our rules. 

Warnings

Persistent breaches of our terms may land you with a warning. A warning will be applied to your whole FSElite account and you will see a yellow notice informing you of the ban. You will also be given a brief reason for the warning. 

Having a warning on your account means you are one strike away from being banned and any further breaches of our terms will result in a ban from the site.

A warning will stay on your account for an indefinite period of time. It may, at our discretion, be removed.

Banned

If you breach our guidelines and terms in a serious way, you may be banned. We are under no obligation to warn you first if we feel your content is malicious or a clear attempt to disrupt our community.

Being banned will restrict you from engaging in our community, including, but not limited to:

  • Unable to take part in conversations
  • Rate or review products/developers
  • Take part in polls
  • Take part in competitions/giveaways

You may continue to use your FSElite account to bookmark or access your data. 

A ban will stay on your account for an indefinite period of time. It may, at our direction, be removed.

Appealing a Decision

Should you have a grievance with a decision our moderation team took, you are free to appeal. You can use our contact form to reach out to our team.

We are under no obligation to change a decision from our moderation team.

When appealing, you should provide evidence of wrong-doing, be polite and construct a good argument. Rage, angry and rude emails will simply not be replied to.

Guidelines Updates

We’ll monitor our community and may make changes to our guidelines at any time. You will be notified should our guidelines be updated.

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