Forum Rules and Suggestions

Shivering Isles Resident Joined : 26 Mar 2007 Posts : 9412

1. No spammage. To clarify, no wanton whoring of a website/manga/whatever-the-hell-you’re-selling. This rule is simply here so that when someone (or a bot) makes an account on this forum and their first post is something you’d expect to find in the spam folder of your email, I can ban them with extreme prejudice. Going off topic and posting a lot, however, is fine.

2. No flaming of other users (except in a clearly joking fashion, and not excessively).

Addendum to rule 2:
Any threads that turn into flames (or start out as such) are to be immediately derailed into something entertaining. See the Pizza Thread for an example.

3. No trolling, and don't feed the trolls.

4. No flaming individuals or of groups of people (except in a clearly joking fashion, an not excessively). Edit: Since some people apparently couldn't understand this, repeated insults counts as trolling/flaming.

5. Any content that isn’t ‘family friendly’ needs to have a warning that it is NSFW, must be spoilered, and should have a brief description of the offensive content (though the brief description is not necessary, it’s just polite)

6. Introduce yourself ASAP. The introduction thread can be found here. I would appreciate it if older forum members would help me out with this, and point new members to the Intro Thread if they forget to do so.

Edited April 8, 2007:
7. This rule will only be loosely enforced, but please; if you know you have problems with spelling/grammar, run your posts through a word processing program before you post.

8. If a user is over 25 days old and they have no posts, I will delete them. No sense clogging the user list with people who aren't actual users.

The Elastic Clause:

I'm not here to be fair, I'm here to make this board fun. So even if you're not technically breaking the rules (and there are probably ways around the rules that I haven‘t thought of), I'll warn you if I think you're driving people away. If you continue to persist, I will institute a temporary ban. If things continue in spite of the first two steps, I will simply ban you outright.

We will, however, discuss it amongst ourselves beforehand so we can avoid making a biased or hasty decision. If we are unsure on the matter, we will put it up to a vote.

9. No one may post any personal information (email address, private address, phone numbers, etc) other than their own.

10. No real debating. I don't want politics, religion, economics, etc, to be debated on this forum. It's okay to debate Dominic Deegan in the Plot Discourse forum, but even then, the other mods and I will warn you guys if it starts getting into a serious debate, and will lock the thread if things get out of hand.

I know that some of you really do like debating, but I’ve found that, unless the forum is composed of like-minded individuals, people will just end up saying the same stuff over and over again with higher and higher tempers. So, if you are someone who enjoys debating, find another forum where you can do so. But not here.

11. Do not post anything that will take away a person's control over their computer (viruses, Trojans, etcetera). This includes pranks. You may post such things for illustrative reasons, so long as you provide adequate warning (large red font above it) and tell exactly what it does, but you may not mislead people into clicking links that will take control of their computer away from them.

For example: linking to Rick Roll on Youtube is fine as a prank, as the pranked person can just close it and be done with it. Linking to a rick roll that prevents you from closing it by displaying an error bar every time you try is BAD BAD BAD I WILL SODOMIZE YOU WITH A RED HOT METAL BAR BAD.

12. Unless you have something relevant to say on the topic, ie a new development or something new to add, you may not bring up a topic that has been dead for the past three months or more. Ie, you cannot simply post spam in an old topic."

Shivering Isles Resident Joined : 26 Mar 2007 Posts : 9412

Suggestion: If you think that a thread will turn into a debate/flame war, don't post it. We won't lock it until it turns into one, but it's just better to avoid the hassle altogether.
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