Post by Tegan on Feb 13, 2008 1:11:09 GMT -5
This is going to be really long, I know that. But you need to read these rules so when you screw up and are banned, you know why. I'm just kidding, but you do need to read these. Once you're all done here, hop on over to the Introductions thread and introduce yourself to us.
1) All right, I'm not going to go into a friendship speech, god forbid, but I am going to just make this perfectly clear. We will tolerate absolutely no disrespect of any other person on this board due to race, gender, religion, political views, writing ability, creativeness of ideas, intelligence, sexual orientation or preference, and just disrespect in general. Just be civil, people. It really isn't all that difficult. Keep in mind that you're talking to people over the internet that you're likely never going to meet so it's utterly pointless and just plain stupid to get overly angry about something. If you violate this rule you will be warned twice. Violate again and you will be suspended for a week. Violate it again after that and you will be banned. You can, of course, appeal this, but depending on the reason for the banning, we're not likely to allow you back so just don't do it.
2) I never really consider myself a grammar Nazi until I see a particularly frightening example of chat speak or just butchered grammar. No single letter is a proper substitute for an entire word. This means that "u" does not mean "you", nor "r" "are", and "y" is not a shortened version of "why". I know that it is now popular to purposely misspell a commonly misspelled word, such as "teh" for "the". I hate that too. "Please" does not end with a "z", just like "8" is a number not to be confused with the suffix "-ate" and "2" is a quantity, not "to" "too" or "two". (By the way, "to" is used as a destination among other things. Such as "We're going to the store*." "Too" is a quantity. A similar word would be "also". Ex. "I want to go to the store too." And "two" is a quantity in that, "I'm sorry you can't come to the store too. My car only fits two people.") You are either unintelligible or you sound really stupid when your post is full of chat speak, and you'll make the staff really cranky and cranky staff tends to be not too much fun. Also, a sentence or thought is ended with a period or question mark or exclamation point, not an ellipses (...). These are used for pauses, or for omitted material in a quote.
3) As for what is appropriate to post, let's consider this mostly a PG-13 site. Meaning, you post what you'd see in a PG-13 movie. Would you see graphic sex or the word f*** in a PG-13 movie? The answer is no, in case you were wondering. In accordance with the first rule, no slurs will be tolerated. If the staff doesn't like the content of something you post, they will modify it and send you a PM stating what they changed and why. If you continue to be obscene or inappropriate as the case may be, you will be warned and if you refuse to change what you post, you will be banned. Just as with the chat speak, you sound unbelievably stupid you’re your post is full of swear words. That doesn't mean that you can't swear at all. Saying something like "what the hell" is fine as long as you're not telling someone to go there. Similarly, spamming is not allowed. There is a promotions area where you can post any site of yours you want to promote as long as it's PG-13.
4) Read the stickies in any forum you want to post in before you post there. The stickies are generally going to be more forum specific rules or guidelines such as, if need be, we may institute a cap on thread length in the chatter areas. Such a notice will be posted in a stickie in the chatter area that is affected by it.
5) Please try to remain on topic in the chatter areas. I don't foresee this being much of an issue in the actual role playing areas but it can easily become a problem in both on and off topic chatter. I know that sometimes you just have to say this one joke or tell this one story but it's not worth its own new thread, that's fine in the off topic chatter area. Just please try and stay on topic as much as possible. I am also well aware that as a conversation progresses, the topic drifts a bit.
6) Avatars and signatures are, of course, allowed. I'm going to put a size limit on both, however. Avatars should be no more the 100 x 100 pixels, and signature images should be no more than 50 x 400 pixels. In addition to an image in your signature you can have some words as well, however again, don't make it over long and
don't
write
it
like
this
because that can take up a lot of space and is just really annoying. Think of the people with dial up. It takes forever to load pages with a lot of large images and unnecessary text.
7) As of right now, we don't have any moderators (watch me forget to change this if we ever get moderators) which means that your two lonely admins run the whole board. That also means that we have ultimate power! And that simply means that we can edit, delete, or move your posts for whatever reason we want. We won't do that, though. If we edit your post in any way, we'll (usually) have a good reason and we will PM you right away to inform you of the 'what' and the 'why'. Something to know about your fabulous admins, we have these very specific rules for a reason; so we can be fair. I'm sure we've all been on the board where those on staff do whatever they want, and you'll get banned for disagreeing with them, or violating some rule they just made up, or just because they're having a bad day. Ryu and I will (hopefully) never get to that point. If you feel very strongly about one of these rules, or feel another should be added, or are angry about a decision we've made, please feel free to PM either Ryu or myself with a well articulated argument. Don't just send us something like, "You suck and your decision sucks and you should un-ban me because I don’t suck." We will just delete something like that immediately taking it as confirmation of a good decision on our part. But if you do have a genuine complaint, then let us know. We are not infallible (*gasp*), we have bad days and that may affect a decision we make here. If you think that you've been treated unfairly, tell us that.
8) Thank you for reading all of these rules. I know it was long, but you made it through and you're better informed now! A few final things, if you're looking for something, use the "search" feature that's up near the top.
I lied, I'm not done yet. Role playing related guidelines now!
1) No godmoding. Just don’t do it. It really pisses people off. Don’t take control of another's character without their explicit permission.
2) When asked in the character profile outline whether you've read the rules or not, say "Trix are for kids!" Keep reading, you're almost done.
3) Keep all illegal substances out of your posts. They make some people very uncomfortable. You can drink a little, or smoke a little. Just don't smoke a pack an hour, or get drunk. No drugs, no suicide or self mutilation. Leave your personal, real life problems in real life. People come here for a good time, they don’t want to read about how depressed you are and how many sleeping pills you took the other night so don't talk about it. Similarly, no one wants to RP with a character that's always talking about suicide and how nobody likes them. Give your characters depth. Make them unhappy with life if that's the case, just don’t go on and on about how unfair life is.
4) If you're going to be out of character(OOC) in an RP post, put your OOC comments in (), {}, or []. But try not to be too OOC in the RP area.
5) Relationships are allowed, just don't get graphic.
6) Try to make your RP posts long-ish. I know there's sometimes not much to say but don't post one-liners. It's just not worth it.
7) Write your posts in story/paragraph form and make them in the third person. Ex. "She walked down the street and bent to pick up a coin."
8) Most importantly, your character must be approved by the admins. We will send you a PM letting you know whether it's approved, needs modification, or rejected and why. You cannot RP with an unapproved character. We reserve the right to deny a character based on writing ability, this will probably not happen all that often so don’t worry.
1) All right, I'm not going to go into a friendship speech, god forbid, but I am going to just make this perfectly clear. We will tolerate absolutely no disrespect of any other person on this board due to race, gender, religion, political views, writing ability, creativeness of ideas, intelligence, sexual orientation or preference, and just disrespect in general. Just be civil, people. It really isn't all that difficult. Keep in mind that you're talking to people over the internet that you're likely never going to meet so it's utterly pointless and just plain stupid to get overly angry about something. If you violate this rule you will be warned twice. Violate again and you will be suspended for a week. Violate it again after that and you will be banned. You can, of course, appeal this, but depending on the reason for the banning, we're not likely to allow you back so just don't do it.
2) I never really consider myself a grammar Nazi until I see a particularly frightening example of chat speak or just butchered grammar. No single letter is a proper substitute for an entire word. This means that "u" does not mean "you", nor "r" "are", and "y" is not a shortened version of "why". I know that it is now popular to purposely misspell a commonly misspelled word, such as "teh" for "the". I hate that too. "Please" does not end with a "z", just like "8" is a number not to be confused with the suffix "-ate" and "2" is a quantity, not "to" "too" or "two". (By the way, "to" is used as a destination among other things. Such as "We're going to the store*." "Too" is a quantity. A similar word would be "also". Ex. "I want to go to the store too." And "two" is a quantity in that, "I'm sorry you can't come to the store too. My car only fits two people.") You are either unintelligible or you sound really stupid when your post is full of chat speak, and you'll make the staff really cranky and cranky staff tends to be not too much fun. Also, a sentence or thought is ended with a period or question mark or exclamation point, not an ellipses (...). These are used for pauses, or for omitted material in a quote.
3) As for what is appropriate to post, let's consider this mostly a PG-13 site. Meaning, you post what you'd see in a PG-13 movie. Would you see graphic sex or the word f*** in a PG-13 movie? The answer is no, in case you were wondering. In accordance with the first rule, no slurs will be tolerated. If the staff doesn't like the content of something you post, they will modify it and send you a PM stating what they changed and why. If you continue to be obscene or inappropriate as the case may be, you will be warned and if you refuse to change what you post, you will be banned. Just as with the chat speak, you sound unbelievably stupid you’re your post is full of swear words. That doesn't mean that you can't swear at all. Saying something like "what the hell" is fine as long as you're not telling someone to go there. Similarly, spamming is not allowed. There is a promotions area where you can post any site of yours you want to promote as long as it's PG-13.
4) Read the stickies in any forum you want to post in before you post there. The stickies are generally going to be more forum specific rules or guidelines such as, if need be, we may institute a cap on thread length in the chatter areas. Such a notice will be posted in a stickie in the chatter area that is affected by it.
5) Please try to remain on topic in the chatter areas. I don't foresee this being much of an issue in the actual role playing areas but it can easily become a problem in both on and off topic chatter. I know that sometimes you just have to say this one joke or tell this one story but it's not worth its own new thread, that's fine in the off topic chatter area. Just please try and stay on topic as much as possible. I am also well aware that as a conversation progresses, the topic drifts a bit.
6) Avatars and signatures are, of course, allowed. I'm going to put a size limit on both, however. Avatars should be no more the 100 x 100 pixels, and signature images should be no more than 50 x 400 pixels. In addition to an image in your signature you can have some words as well, however again, don't make it over long and
don't
write
it
like
this
because that can take up a lot of space and is just really annoying. Think of the people with dial up. It takes forever to load pages with a lot of large images and unnecessary text.
7) As of right now, we don't have any moderators (watch me forget to change this if we ever get moderators) which means that your two lonely admins run the whole board. That also means that we have ultimate power! And that simply means that we can edit, delete, or move your posts for whatever reason we want. We won't do that, though. If we edit your post in any way, we'll (usually) have a good reason and we will PM you right away to inform you of the 'what' and the 'why'. Something to know about your fabulous admins, we have these very specific rules for a reason; so we can be fair. I'm sure we've all been on the board where those on staff do whatever they want, and you'll get banned for disagreeing with them, or violating some rule they just made up, or just because they're having a bad day. Ryu and I will (hopefully) never get to that point. If you feel very strongly about one of these rules, or feel another should be added, or are angry about a decision we've made, please feel free to PM either Ryu or myself with a well articulated argument. Don't just send us something like, "You suck and your decision sucks and you should un-ban me because I don’t suck." We will just delete something like that immediately taking it as confirmation of a good decision on our part. But if you do have a genuine complaint, then let us know. We are not infallible (*gasp*), we have bad days and that may affect a decision we make here. If you think that you've been treated unfairly, tell us that.
8) Thank you for reading all of these rules. I know it was long, but you made it through and you're better informed now! A few final things, if you're looking for something, use the "search" feature that's up near the top.
I lied, I'm not done yet. Role playing related guidelines now!
1) No godmoding. Just don’t do it. It really pisses people off. Don’t take control of another's character without their explicit permission.
2) When asked in the character profile outline whether you've read the rules or not, say "Trix are for kids!" Keep reading, you're almost done.
3) Keep all illegal substances out of your posts. They make some people very uncomfortable. You can drink a little, or smoke a little. Just don't smoke a pack an hour, or get drunk. No drugs, no suicide or self mutilation. Leave your personal, real life problems in real life. People come here for a good time, they don’t want to read about how depressed you are and how many sleeping pills you took the other night so don't talk about it. Similarly, no one wants to RP with a character that's always talking about suicide and how nobody likes them. Give your characters depth. Make them unhappy with life if that's the case, just don’t go on and on about how unfair life is.
4) If you're going to be out of character(OOC) in an RP post, put your OOC comments in (), {}, or []. But try not to be too OOC in the RP area.
5) Relationships are allowed, just don't get graphic.
6) Try to make your RP posts long-ish. I know there's sometimes not much to say but don't post one-liners. It's just not worth it.
7) Write your posts in story/paragraph form and make them in the third person. Ex. "She walked down the street and bent to pick up a coin."
8) Most importantly, your character must be approved by the admins. We will send you a PM letting you know whether it's approved, needs modification, or rejected and why. You cannot RP with an unapproved character. We reserve the right to deny a character based on writing ability, this will probably not happen all that often so don’t worry.