Introduction

Welcome to this book, which covers in detail many aspects of MeridianGroup.

If you are trying to get to our website, you are in the wrong place!

For users of the server, this book might contain some interesting or useful information, however it is generally written for staff to read, so some of the information might confuse you, or may just not be relevant. If you need help with anything, you can contact us at support@meridiangrp.co.uk.

Downloading this Book

Although you can download or print this book with the print button in the top right, it may be updated at any time, so it might be worth accessing it online whenever possible.

Other Contacts

If there are any issues with the email system, please contact postmaster@meridiangrp.co.uk.

If there are any issues with the website, please contact webmaster@meridiangrp.co.uk.

If there are any issues with copyright or intellectual property, please contact owner@meridiangrp.co.uk.

If there are any issues with abuse from our systems, please contact abuse@meridiangrp.co.uk.

If there are any issues with safeguarding concerns regarding any individual, particularly those under the age of 18 on Meridian, please contact safeguarding@meridiangrp.co.uk. Please note that we cannot provide any information regarding to anything they might have said to a member of staff at Meridian as we operate with a policy of confidentiality.

If there are any other major issues, please contact us at support@meridiangrp.co.uk.

Intellectual Property

The content of this book is fully and wholly owned by Lily Hopkins t/a MeridianGroup, regardless of original author, unless otherwise explicitly stated.

Reborn by MeridianGroup

Reborn is MeridianGroup's FiveM server.

Installing FiveM/Reborn

FiveM is a mod that uses Grand Theft Auto V's single player and turns it into a modded GTA Online style experience!

If you own a legitimate copy of Grand Theft Auto V, you can play FiveM for free! You can download it here!

To connect to the server, connect to mg-1.meridiangrp.co.uk and remember to bookmark it so you can find it easily.

The Staff

Reborn is managed by the FiveM Manager. This role is currently held by Joe P.

Our Discord Server

Our Discord server is available at: go.meridiangrp.co.uk/discord.

Staff Team

Discord is managed by the Community Managers. These roles are currently held by:

Server Rules

Rules Introduction

MeridianGroup is an LGBTQ+ friendly community that is accepting of all users (above the ages of 13). The rules stated here are to be enforced by all MeridianGroup staff for the protection and safety of all members of the Discord Community, to keep everyone as safe and satisfied as possible. If there is anyone breaking these rules, please mention or DM a staff member immediately so we can help you as soon as we can.

Certain exceptions to these rules can be made if permitted by either:

  • The Owner/Founder
  • A Community Manager

Definitions

Throughout these rules, the following definitions apply:

  • "NSFW" content is any content that would not be safe for viewing in a school or workplace, including full or partial nudity (where partial nudity is defined as wearing neither a top or bottom, or where the clothing worn is revealing more than half of the upper chest or any part of the hips) or any other form of sexually explicity content, or content which implies any sexual connotations.
  • "content" is any posts, reactions, comments, attachments, files, images or links published within the MeridianGroup Discord server.
  • "offensive" content is any content that could be determined to cause offense to a minority protected by the Equality Act 2010, or to any user who is recently bereaved.

§0 Meta-Rules

  1. New rules don't affect already existing content.
  2. Current or past bans or warnings aren't affected if rules are changed/removed.
  3. Staff aren't exempt to any of these rules, except where they have attained permission from their supervisor.
  4. Users must report rule breakers to a member of Staff if they know a rule is being broken.
  5. Staff can warn users if they are causing another user significant and measurable distress.
  6. Staff reserve the right to use their own discretion in line with the rules.
  7. Exploiting loopholes in these rules is prohibited (please report them).
  8. Using exploits, glitches, hacks or bugs in Discord is prohibited.
  9. Duplicate accounts are not allowed unless explicitly permitted by the Community Manager.

§1 Profile and Nickname Rules

  1. No blank or invisible nicknames.
  2. No inappropriate, offensive or sexually suggestive nicknames.
  3. No nicknames comprising only of unusual or unreadable Unicode glyphs.
  4. No blank, NSFW or offensive profile pictures.
  5. Staff reserve the right to change any user's nicknames.
  6. Rule revoked
  7. Rule revoked
  8. Rule revoked
  9. Rule revoked
  10. Offensive status messages are not permitted. Once a warning will is issued, you will be given 12 hours to change the status.

§2 Text Content Rules

  1. Don't spam @everyone or @here.
  2. Don't spam @mentions of user, either alone or as a group.
    • In the event that a group continues to spam a user, any user who has mentioned the targeted user within more than once five minutes will be considered to have broken the rules.
  3. No NSFW content in channels not marked as such.
  4. No illegal content, including piracy of any sort.
  5. No publishing of personal information (full or partial addresses, emails, passwords, bank information, full names, medical history or personal history).
  6. No offensive remarks targeted at a particular user or remarks that include harassment, including to any large group of people.
  7. Rule revoked
  8. No discussion of any religion, religious practices or faith.
  9. Rule revoked
  10. No trolling, spamming or harassment.
  11. No walls of text (either in separate posts or as a single post).
  12. Keep conversations primarily in English.
  13. Staff reserve the right to delete or pin any post at any time.
  14. No personal advertisement of any form, except for social media links to personal (not business, charity or for-profit) pages in the #promote-yourself channel.
  15. No commercial advertisement of any form, including for a business, or any other for-profit group.
  16. No advertising or links to other communities, Discord or otherwise.
  17. Keep on topic of the channel and read its description carefully.
  18. Link previews are also subject to these rules. Test your links first.
  19. Selling or buying is not permitted with the exception of posting a single post in #general offering the product to a user. Any further conversation must continue off the server (e.g. in DMs or over email).
  20. Rule revoked.
  21. Impersonating other users is prohibited.
  22. Any MLMs, sponsorships, discount codes, gifts, giveaways or competitions which could possibly benefit any user of the server in any way (monetary or otherwise) are not permitted without explicit prior permission from the Community Manager.
  23. Advertisement for charity events is permitted only with prior permission from the Community Manager.

§3 Voice and Sound Rules

  1. No repetitive channel changing (defined as changing more than 5 times in 10 seconds, or more than 20 times in 2 minutes).
  2. No loud (any noise that causes audio to become clipped, or is louder than -2dBFS) or high pitch (any noise where the fundamental is higher than 2.5kHz, thereby excluding harmonics) noises.
  3. Reduce the amount of background noise, wherever possible.
  4. Staff reserve the right to disconnect you from a voice channel if your sound is of unacceptable quality.
  5. Staff reserve the right to disconnect, mute, deafen, or move members to and from voice channels.
  6. Voice changers are not permitted in any voice channel.
  7. Recording voice channels is not permitted unless authorised explicitly by every user in the channel, except for the sole purpose of providing a member of MeridianGroup staff with videographic evidence of an event. After any evidence is submitted, the video - if permission was not obtained from members of the voice channel - must be completely deleted.
  8. Streaming voice channels is not permitted unless authorised explicitly by every user in the channel before any of thier voice is on stream.
  9. NSFW content is not allowed.
  10. Offensive language is not permitted.

§4 Bot Specific Rules

  1. Send commands to bots only in the #music-bot channel.
  2. Do not spam commands.
  3. Bot management is for staff only.

§5 NSFW Content Rules

  1. All NSFW content must be legal under UK legislation.
  2. No gore or excessive blood or bodily fluids, including those of animals.
  3. No pornography. Sexually suggestive memes at most.
  4. All NSFW content must stay in the NSFW channels only.
  5. No linking to content that is NSFW in non-NSFW channels.

§6 Video Streaming Rules

  1. No NSFW streams are allowed.
  2. Photographs of streams cannot be taken without permission from all involved.
  3. No offensive streams are allowed.

§7 Harassment and Bullying

  1. Harassment of any kind will be warned.
  2. The Police will be called if deemed necessary by Staff members.
  3. Constantly bringing up past or present issues, personal or socio-political, to any channel is not allowed.
  4. No personal or hateful issues in #general.
  5. Comments or remarks referencing people in a provocative way are not allowed.

§8 Event Rules

  1. Rules governing text content apply during events, with the exception of rules 1, 2, 17 and 18.

§9 Warnings and Punishment

  1. Rule revoked
  2. Rule revoked
  3. Rule revoked
  4. Rule revoked
  5. Relaying information from banned members into Meridian again is subject to a warning.
  6. Staff can decide how long they deem a ban to be appropriate, and can increase or reduce bans as they wish.
  7. Breaking the law will result in police action and a permanent ban.
  8. Any previous roles are not returned after returning from a ban.
  9. Rule revoked
  10. Being warned ten times within 30 days is a 3 day ban.
  11. Rule revoked
  12. All ban appeals can be sent to support@meridiangrp.co.uk.

New Game Servers

Every so often a user may wish to open up a new server on Meridian. There are a few options available. The only thing we ask is that you abide by a few rules which mainly are common sense. We don't want to take the fun out of it, but it is important that we are all vigilant and keep Meridian a safe group of people!

Host on Your Own Machine

Hosting a server on your machine may not seem like a very useful thing, but by using the MeridianGroup VPN players across MeridianGroup can connect to you without the potential dangers of port forwarding and without using a public service which may not handle your data safely.

Host on MeridianGroup's Infrastructure

This option costs money, but generally a lot less than hosting a server by yourself! We can help you set up and help you maintain your server, whilst providing you with powerful and reliable infrastructure.

Still take full control over your server, as we provide you with the tools that the professionals use. It's a steep learning curve, but it is worth it and gives you valuable skills in technology and server management. You could even put it on a CV!

Connecting with Us

This section of the book details how to connect to MeridianGroup services.

Most of these services require having an account with us. If you do not have an account but still wish to use our services, please contact support@meridiangrp.co.uk and we might be able to set you up with an account purely for accessing our additional services.

Emails

The person in charge of the Email System is: Lily H.

When you are working with MeridianGroup, it is likely that we will provide you with an email account. This can be accessed using our webmail system, or by using the details below:

IMAPS (incoming):

  • Hostname: mail.meridiangrp.co.uk
  • Port: 993
  • Username: your full email
  • Password: your password
  • Security: SSL/TLS

SMTP (outgoing):

  • Hostname: mail.meridiangrp.co.uk
  • Port: 587
  • Username: your full email
  • Password: your password
  • Security: STARTTLS (accept all certificates)

Alternative services might be available. If needed, please contact the person in charge.

Your password can be changed (as well as further account management) at the Account Management system.

Meridian VPN

The Meridian VPN runs on OpenVPN.

Note that if you install OpenVPN on Windows, it must be run as an administrator to work correctly.

If you have an account with Meridian, you can have an OpenVPN profile emailed to you by going to the VPN request page and logging in. If you don't have an account then you won't be able to connect.

Using the VPN allows you to host 'LAN' games which are available to everyone else on the VPN. This makes it particularly easy to host servers.

Note that the VPN Meridian uses is not the kind that hides your internet traffic.

Policies

The following pages summarise the policies staff at MeridianGroup should follow. The policies should be reviewed regularly to ensure they are up to date.

Branding

Last reviewed: 31st October 2019

MeridianGroup uses consistent design features to maintain a clear brand image. This page sets out some of the guidelines we follow.

If you require any branding materials, please see the GitLab Repository (please note that you must have permission to access this repository).

Fonts

The MeridianGroup font is a clear way of showing affiliation. The font must only be used in projects approved by the committee. It should be used sparingly and only for product titles. For headings, the font 'Raleway' should be used. For paragraph text, the font 'Source Sans Pro' should be used.

It should be noted that very soon the fonts we use will change as part of our Vision 2020 plan.

Naming

Services closely affiliated with MeridianGroup should include a reference to either 'Meridian' or 'MeridianGroup' in their title, however this should not form an integral part of the name of the service. For example, XM is permitted, whilst MeridianXM is not.

The MeridianGroup logo can be used for any purpose associated with MeridianGroup. However, the following guidelines should be followed:

  • The logo should not be blurry or pixelated.
  • The logo should have sufficient spacing around it.
  • The logo should never be stretched.
  • The logo must never be used in a manner which suggests affiliation with MeridianGroup, unless you are affiliated with MeridianGroup and have permission from the committee to do so.

Colours

The current colour palette follows the original specification, which is available on request from Lily H.

Transparency

Last reviewed: 31st October 2019

At MeridianGroup, we have a policy of being transparent about what we do and how we do it. This means that we try to publish information about what we are getting up to and the approaches we are taking. We mainly do this through our Discord server, particularly through the #transparency channel.

Exceptions

  • Any situation which requires confidentiality (safeguarding and where someone is otherwise in danger)
  • Personal data
  • Trade secrets
  • Security flaws which have not been patched

Offensive Language

Warning: This page contains many offensive terms.

Generally, we use an adapted version of Ofcom's rules on offensive language. If there is any doubt, please use your own discretion.

Context is cruical

Adapted from: Ofcom

People take into account context, such as the tone and delivery, when assessing whether offensive language is acceptable.

Clear racist and discriminatory language was the most unacceptable overall. Such words were viewed as derogatory, discriminatory and insulting. Many were concerned about them being used at any time, unless they were particularly justified by the context. Many said that discriminatory and racist words were harder hitting, carrying more emotional impact than 'general' swear words.

Sexual terms were seen in a similar way to the stronger general swear words. They were viewed as distasteful and often unnecessary, but people said they found them more acceptable if used after the watershed, when they would be more prepared.

Prohibited Phrases

Over any content across Meridian, the following phrases are banned, including any possible derivation or word of equivalent meaning.

General swear words:

  • Beaver
  • Beef curtains
  • Bloodclaat
  • Clunge
  • Cunt (only where used in a derogatory manner)
  • Gash
  • Minge
  • Punani
  • Pussy (only where used in a derogatory manner)
  • Snatch (as a noun)

Sexual references:

  • Nonce
  • Rapey
  • Whore

Discrimination against religion:

  • Fenian
  • Kafir/Kufaar
  • Kike
  • Papist
  • Prod (when used as an insult, not when used as a verb)
  • Taig
  • Yid

Discrimination against sexual orientation:

  • Batty boy
  • Bender (only when used in a derogatory manner)
  • Bum boy
  • Bumclat
  • Chi-chi man
  • Dyke (except when voluntarily used by a lesbian, or at the request of one)
  • Faggot (except when voluntarily used by a gay man, or at the request of one)
  • Fudge-packer
  • Gay (only when used in a derogatory way or to mean something bad or unimpressive)
  • Homo
  • Lezza/lesbo (except when voluntarily used by a lesbian)
  • Muff diver
  • Nancy (except as someone's name)
  • Poof
  • Queer (only when used in a derogatory way)
  • Rugmuncher/Carpetmuncher
  • Shirt lifter

Discrimination against gender identity:

  • Chick with a dick
  • Gender bender
  • He-she
  • Shemale
  • Tranny
  • Tran

Discrimination against disability:

  • cripple
  • mong
  • retard (except when used in a clearly humourous manner)
  • spastic/spakka/spaz
  • window licker

Discrimination against race and ethnicity:

  • Chinky
  • Choc ice
  • Coon
  • Darky
  • Dago
  • Golliwog
  • Gook
  • Honky
  • Jap
  • Negro
  • Nigger
  • Nig-nog
  • Paki
  • Polack
  • Raghead
  • Sambo
  • Slope
  • Spade
  • Spic
  • Wog
  • Wop

Supporting our Members

Last reviewed: 31st October 2019

As a community, we try to support our members where appropriate and to the best of our abilities. In any situation where professional help is the best way forward, we try to encourage people to seek help.

Some charities we will recommend are:

  • Relate provide help and information to do with relationships (in family and romantic contexts), sex, family life and divorce.
  • Childline provide help for under 18s about any aspect that might be important to you.
  • Samaritans providing a place to talk over the phone when you are considering suicide. 'Every life lost to suicide is a tragedy.'

Server Management

This applies only to servers hosted on MeridianGroup equipment.

Getting Connected

Generating your Key

For some actions on MeridianGroup, an SSH Key might be required.

In order to generate your SSH key on Mac/Linux or Windows:

$ ssh-keygen

The public part of your key will then (by default) be available in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, where ~ is your user directory.

Please generate at least 2048-bit keys using RSA.

Once you have generated your key, please send the public part of your key to the person in charge, who will add it to your account. Note that multiple keys can be used for one account, so it is a good idea to use a different key for each machine you connect from to increase security.

Connecting to SSH

One of the most useful tools you will have access to is secure shell. This allows you to issue commands directly to the server.

In order to connect on Mac/Linux or Windows with CygWin MinGW, or PowerShell in an up-to-date version of Windows 10:

$ ssh <username>@<hostname>

In order to connect on Windows with PuTTY, enter the hostname into the hostname box.

You will be prompted to provide your username and your password, after which you should be connected.

Connecting to SFTP

As well as using SSH, you can also use SFTP (not to be confused with FTPS). This allows you an easier way to transfer files. Setup is the same as above.

Some recommended SFTP clients are:

A Quick Guide to SSH

Navigation

To navigate around, you can use the command cd, short for 'change directory'. Specify cd followed by the folder you wish to descend into. To go up a folder, use cd ...

To list the contents of the folder you are currently in (also known as your working directory), type ls, short for list.

Editing a File

To open a text file for editing, type nano and then the name of the file, for example:

$ nano config.cfg

For more experienced users, vim is also available.

Controlling your Server

Unless you have been told otherwise, your server will be controlled through a program called systemd. This means a few things:

  • Your game server will automatically start if the whole server restarts
  • Your server will save all it's logs to a central location

In order to see the status of your server, and the last few lines of it's log:

$ systemctl status <server name>

where <server name> is the name of your server as provided to you by the person in charge. For example, for XM, the FiveM server, you would run:

$ systemctl status fivem

If you wish to control your server, you can run the following commands:

$ sudo systemctl start <server name>
$ sudo systemctl restart <server name>
$ sudo systemctl stop <server name>

Note that you need to use the word sudo here. This allows you to execute some commands as the 'superuser', a privileged user.

Viewing logs

To view logs, you need to view part of the journal using the command:

$ journalctl -u <server name>

Where you view the journal unit for your server. To find out more about the clever things journalctl can do, see the manual by running the command man journalctl.

Using git

git is a version control system. It is important to remember throughout this document that it is intended to keep a history of changes and a full history of versions of your code, or other files. The fact that using git provides backups at each stage should always be considered a convenient side effect.

Avoiding Commands: Git the easy way

Without commands, some of the more advanced features of Git are not available, however most are still usable.

The Git client we suggest is GitHub Desktop.

Downloading a git repository

If you have a repository online which you wish to download with git and use, you can execute the clone command:

$ git clone git@gitlab.com:meridiangrp/brand.git brand

It is worth spending a moment to break this command down:

  • The git clone part runs the git program and tells it that you wish to clone a repository.
  • The git@gitlab.com:meridiangrp/brand.git part is a URI which specifies where the repository is located. It can either be an SSH type location, which will usually start git@someweb.site, or an HTTPS type, which starts with https://. SSH type is preferred, but requires an SSH key to be set up with both the machine accessing the repository and the git server.
  • The brand part specifies where to clone the repository to. It must be either an empty or non-existant folder. . can be used to clone to the current directory.

This will download the repository ready for use.

Making a new repository

To make a new repository go into a folder with which you wish to start using git and run the command:

$ git init

Then add the remote (the git server) with the command:

$ git remote add origin git@gitlab.com:meridiangrp/brand.git

The URI to use should be given to you by your git host.

Syncronising changes with the remote

You might not always be the only person making changes to your repository. To see if any changes have been made, run:

$ git fetch

If running this shows nothing, no changes have been made. Otherwise, it should suggest how many changes. If you wish to actually then download the changes to your copy of the repository, run:

$ git pull

If you have made changes to the repository that need to be uploaded to the remote, run:

$ git push

Note that if this is your first push, you may need to explicitly set the master branch on the 'origin' remote:

$ git push -u origin master

Making changes

When making changes to files in a git repository, they start off unstaged. These will not be uploaded. When you have completed adding a feature to your repository, ie. something with making a version for, you can add the files you have changed, or remove them if you have deleted them:

$ git add file/path
$ git rm file/path

Once you have staged all the changes with the above commands, you can commit your changes to the repository. Note that at this stage they are still saved locally on your computer:

$ git commit

You will be prompted to add a message explaining what your commit contains. You can then push.

How often should I make commits?

Do make commits for:

  • A new feature that is complete and working
  • A new asset or collection of assets
  • A change or improvement to code

Do not make commits for:

  • An incomplete feature
  • An untested portion of code
  • A collection of files which are completely unrelated

Moving on to more complex situations

Git is a powerful tool, and this only covers the very basics. It is worth spending some time to learn what git can do. It might be worth finding out about:

  • Branching and Merging
  • Amending commits
  • Resolving merge conflicts
  • Rolling back changes that have broken something
  • Tags
  • man git

GDPR Requests

On occasion, people may make requests under the Data Protection Act for a copy of their information to be sent to them. In this case, administrators, if able, should take the following actions. If unable, they should raise the case with a more privileged administrator.

Stores of Information

  • Databases
  • Unix User Accounts (if applicable)
  • Mail (if applicable)

Collecting the Information

Databases

A .csv export of any records from tables relating to the subject. Ensure that no user data of other users is compromised.

Unix User Accounts

If the user has a Unix account on any MeridianGroup controlled server, the details of this account should be collated. This should include entries in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/groups.

Mail

If the user has an email account, the details of the account, any aliases and a .zip file of the user's email inbox should be collated.

Sending the data

Once collected, the data should be sent as a .zip file containing all relevant data in separate folders. Before any file of this kind is transmitted, it must be checked by a member of the committee, who can be contacted at committee@meridiangrp.co.uk.