The New Rules of the Forum

I have done a lot of thinking and I think it's time for a change. Ultimately, the time for being strict is over for now. I'm going to experiment with a new set of rules and we will see how it works if this place gets active again in the future. If I have to, I will go back to the old rules, which are archived and can be brought back at any time.

1: Excessive trolling and flaming will not be tolerated. I no longer care if you take the piss out of each other. But if you take things too far and get too crazy, I will step in and hand out sanctions. At what point that trolling and flaming becomes punishable is up to the discretion of the staff. Some examples of excessive posts:

-Death threats: These will not be tolerated at all and will likely result in a 3 day ban.
-A paragraph with nothing but insults: We'll know that you've gone off the deep end from this.
-Personal attacks (note the plural) to the staff.
-Clear discrimination of any kind.

Retaliation to trolling and flaming will be taken lighter than the one starting trouble. Retaliation to flame bait will also be taken much lighter than unwarranted flaming.

If you're trolling or flaming, someone has every right to call you out on it now, as long as they adhere to the rules. All disputes will go in "The Net". One topic per dispute.

2: Spam will still be unacceptable. If you are posting random thoughts that are off-topic and repeating the post and/or continuing with off-topic nonsense, it will be dealt with as spam. The "What's Up" thread is for random thoughts, but don't spam up the topic with nonsense just to get your post count up or anything of that nature.

3: I will close any threads that have to do with religion. History shows that discussions about religion never go over well on the internet. Political discussions I will allow for now, but keep it civil. In discussions about politics, there will be no bashing a different political party than the one you are affiliated with.

4: Signatures and Avatars should be fair sizes. Avatars larger than 150x300px are too large and I will ask you to size down your avatar. If the warning is ignored, your avatar will be removed and you will receive a light infraction. If activity persists after that, harsher action will be taken. Signature height should not exceed 550px. Width should not stretch the page. The same actions will be taken as avatars. If anyone prior to this post has a larger signature than what is allowed, you will be asked once for free to change it. Within a week of logging in, if your signature has not been downsized to the appropriate size, this updated rule will now apply to you and I will ask once again.

5: If you want to advertise your site, keep it in your sig and website option on your profile and/or post it went it is relevant to a discussion at hand. Threads that are made to advertise your site will be removed. Threads advertising a twitch or YouTube channel are okay, as long as they are relevant to the section (i.e if you are live streaming games on Twitch, you can make a thread about your live stream channel on the video game section).

6: Home addresses, phone numbers and other personal information like that will be removed if found. An exception is posting the address or number of a public place like McDonalds.

7: Multiple accounts for the purposes of ban evasion will result in longer ban periods. Any new multiple accounts found for other purposes will be deleted with no sanction, unless the new account was used for malicious means. But continuous abuse of that lack of punishment will result in an infraction. Any new duplicate accounts are only accepted for the purpose of appealing a ban. Learn more about appealing in the new section labeled, "The Warrior's Battleground". Exception is reserved for a staff dummy, which is controlled by the administrator for testing.

8: Any illegal material found on the site will result in a heavy infraction and removal of said content. Pornography is banned as well as direct torrents and other pirated material (no direct links to any of those).

Staff members reserve the right to exercise moderation tools (moving, editing posts, locking threads, splitting them, merging them, etc) on any non-staff member if necessary. If you feel that moderation abuse is at work, contact me, the administrator and I will review that personally. Staff members can deal with other staff posts if absolutely necessary. Administration reserves the right to deal with every post on the site.

If you follow these simple rules, you will be in good standing.