Forum Rules

[Havoc]

We don't have very many rules here, but ensure you stick to the few we do have.

1) Be Civil. The game has players of all ages and from all over the world.
2) Post in the appropriate forum/thread. Search before you post. Your question may have been answered already.
3) Mark Spoilers. Unless the thread title warns the reader to expect spoilers, you should clearly mark any spoilers using [spoiler] tags.

[Badstench]

A couple of points have come to the fore... I'll state them, then leave it to individual members to decide whether they need to look at their 'habits'.

1) Signatures: It has come to my attention that signatures can be whatever you want them to be, but a few guidelines need to be set. First, keep it brief.
Second, when you can post a thumbnail, keep it small. Third, don't overdo it (ie, multiple quotes, etc).

I won't name names, but there are a couple of members whose signatures are very big! This takes up space and creates more pages to a thread than need exist.

Please look at your signature area and delete what isn't necessary.

This is the friendly approach. In three weeks, I will send you a private message to the same effect.

2) When doing a 'quick reply', please edit the quoted parts that don't matter. Again, some posts are unnecessarily long due to long quotes being left complete.

Thanks guys.

[Scarbrow]

A friendly reminder:

Please try to keep your posts on-topic, specially when something serious is being discussed. We all know it's funny and occasionally interesting to derail a topic to some extent, but use your common sense and try to keep it at a minimum. Ask yourself before posting: how will the thread look in a couple of months, when somebody who wasn't there at that moment reads it? The informative/funny value looks a lot clearer after taking a little distance.

If you (intentionally or otherwise) derailed the conversation, please do your best to redirect it back to its original course. Consider keeping a little watch over your posts and even delete some of them if/when they get out of context. To clarify a common doubt, when you delete your posts (or they are deleted by a moderator) you don't lose the reputation gathered for them, nor the associated comments (they are kept and still visible on your User Control Panel)

[Oldschool]

Spamming/advertising and the like on this forum is prohibited. This includes the use of signatures, homepages, visitor messages and the like.

Accounts in violation of this rule may be banned along with the associated ip address(es) without notice. Other action(s) could be deletion of signatures, homepage info/links, removal/modification of visitor messages, so on and so forth.



This is just a reminder for folks and serves as a more detailed explanation of a global announcement.

Spamming and adverting on this forum is prohibited and has been a very limited problem, due in large part to the forum's confirmation protocol for new accounts which seem to keep most spam bots and the like out of our community.

Occasionally someone registers and posts spam. And we've had other persons register to post spam as visitor messages. In both cases it has been very limited and those accounts/ip's have been banned immediately.

However, more recently folks have registered and posted spam/advertised in their signatures and/or homepage in an attempt to avoid being noticed. Both fields are viewable from the profile page including the signatures of members who haven't posted.

The global announcement and this post is in response to these instances and to serve as notice for the future.

This does not apply to established members promoting their own personal websites, blogs, etc... nor linking legitimate, acceptable and safe sites in posts, their sigs, etc....

[Oldschool]

And while I'm here a reminder about forum rules/protocol in general which are laid out in the preceding posts can't hurt.

Also a request to members to report any suspicious activity via PM'ing myself or another staff member or in the case of individual posts or visitor messages/"wall posts" using the "report post" function. There's an icon in the upper right hand corner of individual posts that generates a "report" to staff members and a "report post" link on the lower left of visitor messages.

Also I forgot to mention the activities/members that necessitated these forum announcements have been addressed.

Thank you for you patience and cooperation.

[Oldschool]

Recent events necessitated a reminder re: general forum rules/etiquette so consider this a bump.

And the same recent events require the following new behest. Actually, in spite of current happenings, behest seems a bit strong so I'll go with request, plus it rhymes. :)

Keeping one of the few rules we have here in mind. That one being,

1) Be Civil. The game has players of all ages and from all over the world.

Internet trolling is not acceptable in this forum - plain and simple.

__________

[Oldschool]

Be advised that the reputation system on this forum is not to be abused by indiscriminately negatively repping other users. Similarly, intentionally negatively repping other users to incite, agitate or provoke them or to elicit a response will also not be tolerated.

[Oldschool]

Seems another reminder and a request for help may be in order. First the reminder which is probably a bit redundant since actual members don't seem to be the problem. Still here it is and the request for help will follow the quoted passages.

Also I've "reset" the global announcement re: spamming for another 30 days so I don't know if it'll show new for current members. It's not for me but may when I log off then back onto the forum. And if any of the staff feels that's redundant feel free to cancel it.

Here's the reminder with the request following.

Spamming/advertising and the like on this forum is prohibited. This includes the use of signatures, homepages, visitor messages and the like.

Accounts in violation of this rule may be banned along with the associated ip address(es) without notice. Other action(s) could be deletion of signatures, homepage info/links, removal/modification of visitor messages, so on and so forth.



This is just a reminder for folks and serves as a more detailed explanation of a global announcement.

Spamming and adverting on this forum is prohibited and has been a very limited problem, due in large part to the forum's confirmation protocol for new accounts which seem to keep most spam bots and the like out of our community.

Occasionally someone registers and posts spam. And we've had other persons register to post spam as visitor messages. In both cases it has been very limited and those accounts/ip's have been banned immediately.

However, more recently folks have registered and posted spam/advertised in their signatures and/or homepage in an attempt to avoid being noticed. Both fields are viewable from the profile page including the signatures of members who haven't posted.

The global announcement and this post is in response to these instances and to serve as notice for the future.

This does not apply to established members promoting their own personal websites, blogs, etc... nor linking legitimate, acceptable and safe sites in posts, their sigs, etc....

Having just took a stroll through the membership roster and only looking at suspicious users (those beginning with a small letter "e" seems particurlarly popular or odd names especially with a couple out of place letters/initials stuck in are good examples) , I just removed the signatures and then permanently banned a dozen or so users (apt term instead of member) for signature spamming. A lot of them dating, married dating sites (there's a worthy WTF if ever eh?) or sex sites.

This is a friendly request. Some folks look at new users/members. I often do and I notice "regular" visitors so I'm not expecting anyone to troll through the current roster (I"ll do that more in depth later btw) or to check out new members. And more importantly and a reminder/warning as well. I don't expect anyone to click on any links because they could lead anywhere.

But for those that do look at a member's/user's profile their "about me" field and "contact info" fields will display signatures and home pages respectively. Don't know if you normally look at those fields but if you do and if you find anything suspicious please report it. There's no way to report a profile like there is for post so PM me or one of the other staffers. If for whatever reason(s) you don't want to PM one of us (staff can be viewed by clicking Forum Leaders (http://www.srythforum.com/showgroups.php) at the bottom of the main forum menu and PM'd from that page as well). If you post in open forum Random Chat is good or a new thread in the forum section (not this thread as it's locked). If need be we can create a separate thread later for such posts.

Thanks in advance.

FYI EDIT: It seems that some of these users will create their profile then wait a few days before adding their spam sigs/homepages. I'm guessing in an attempt to avoid first notice.

Again thanks in advance.