1. General provisions

"Orthodox Christianity.com" is an independent web-project supported by a group of editors formed for this purpose (administration/administrators/editors). The administration is in charge of all questions regarding the rules of the directory and drive decision-making processes on acceptance or rejection of new or existing links.

2. Submisiion/acceptance of new links

Preliminary censorship is a cornerstone of the processes related to the Directory functionality. All requests for addition, change or removal are prosessed in the order they come in. Links can be accepted, rejected, descriptions can be edited without explanations. Editors are not obliged in any way to notify applicants on the decisions made.Acceptance process may take anything from just a few hours to a few weeks depending on a number of things such as editors' workload and availability, complexity of the materials to censor and so on.

Links can be submitted to the Directory acceptance process by:

• Authors/webmasters of the respective websites
• Directory users
• Editors (automatic internet searches are being conducted to assist editors)

Editors and only editors choose most relevant categories for the submitted links. Each webpage can be placed into up to five categories. Your suggestions for Directory Categories are welcome but the final decision will be made by the editors.

The system automatically checks URLs for their uniqueness. Links containing identical full domain name and directory(ies) name(s) but different file names are still considered identical. For example, you cannot add a page with the http://www.hram.orthodoxy.ru/new.htm address if a link to the page http://www.hram.orthodoxy.ru/old.htm already exists in the directory. If you still want to add this kind of a link you should create a separate directory (folder) for the page on your site. In our example it will be something like that: http:// www.hram.orthodoxy.ru/new/.

3. Changing site descriptions

If you are a webmaster/administrator you would receive a user name and password after the link to your site is accepted to the Directory. This enables you to send us, when needed, description change requests.

Description change requests for existing links are assessed the same way as addition requests.

The editors reserve the right to change site descriptions, reject change requests or remove the site from the Directory alltogether. Complaints in regards to this and other policies will not be accepted.

4. Ratings

All sites present in the Directory can participate in the rating system. It does not bear any official meaning, may not be 100% accurate and was created to give only general idea of the relative popularity of the participating Orthodox pages. To participate in the rating system webmasters should place one of the directory banners on any or all of the pages comprising participating site. A site appears in the rating system if at least one move from that site into the directory was made by site visitors by the way of clicking a directory banner within last 7 days. Site's rating is defined as a sum of clicks out from the directory to the site for the last seven days and doubled amount of banner clicks into the directory from the site for the same period.

Any attempts to unjustly increase rating score of a site will be punished by zeroing site's score or exclusion from ratings or the Directory alltogether.

Directory banners can be placed on any number of the participating site pages. It is allowed to install more than one banner per page. It is prohibited to install banners with site ids different from the main site id. Only when a site with different ID is also a member of the Directory and is a parent or child site of the site where the banner is installed this restriction may be lifted off.

A text link can be used instead of an image banner. Text link should include ?from=id parameter. Moves to and from the Directory made by clicking on text links are counted the same way when made from image banners.

5.Reasons for refusing new links into the Directory/removal of the existing links.

Addition or description change requests can be refused by editors without giving out any further explanations. Due to possible changes in participating sites' contents or appearance editors may reassess any participating site at any time. As a result any site can be hidden or removed from the Directory if there are sufficient reasons for that. Any of the following will result in removal of the existing link/refusal to add a new link:

• Site contents have no relationship to Orthodox Christianity;
• Site is associated with one of the non-Orthodox Christian (by name) nominations;
• Site contents are of ecumenical, inter-religious, modernist nature;
• Site contents include religious and pseudo-mystical materials of non-Christian, occult or pagan nature;
• Site contents include schism propaganda or materials deepening existing church splits and confusions;
• Site contents include materials not complying with Christian morality;
• Site contents include links to non-Orthodox, anti-Christian or anti-Church Internet resources;
• Site exclusively is a chat, a forum, or other page serving only as an online communication tool;
• Site is under developemnt without any substantial contents already in place;
• Site contains a large number of mistakes, broken links or has unappropriate appearence;
• Site is unaccessible;
• Site has closed off or changed its address without notification.

6. Highlights and conclusions

Please be advised once again that editors are not obliged to reply to any complaints. Editors' choices are subjective and sometimes prone to mistakes. Editors do not claim to be 100% accurate in defining whether a certain page is of Orthodox nature or not. There is always a degree of subjectivity in any similar internet project. Nevertheless administrators are constantly working hard to eliminate subjective factors and make objective decisions. In non-obvious situations collective decisions are made with Orthodox priests involved to resolve difficult problems.