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Post by Dster. on Nov 17, 2009 15:25:11 GMT -5
These are the new rules that have been created by both Ravenfeather and Dster, two of the HiddenClans administrators. We both felt that we needed more rules than simple “no this” such as shown in the cBox rules. Also note how the cBox rules say to follow the general site rules. Kinda hard to do without general rules set, eh? Please read through these carefully. If you have any objections towards the rules, please don’t hesitate to send a PM to Dster, and we’ll try to figure out something that’ll work better for you. We’ve done our best to make them not too strict, but we want them to be enforced enough to improve the site and behavior of all members to give the site the best appeal it can have. It’s not just the skin and boards that impress visitors.
o1. HiddenClans is pretty relaxed with literacy levels as far as role-playing goes. However, it’d be highly appreciated if role-playing posts had at least 50 words. Yeah, 50 words probably sounds like a lot at first, but once you start writing it’s easy to increase the amount of words you have. For example, this rule right here has about 62 words as it is. One-sentence role-playing posts are rather difficult to reply to sometimes, which is what brought the idea for this rule. Having at least 50 words will make the role playing last longer, and make it more fun and detailed. Need a word counter? You can find that right here.
o2. About MPM’s (Mass Private Messages). A lot of you that are Top Star Warriors (TSW’s) probably like the MPM feature, and it’s pretty helpful for some things such as announcing a temporary or permanent depature. But as helpful as it can be, some members may not enjoy having their inboxes flooded with MPM’s from people they don’t know or talk to. MPM’s are meant for announcements related to the site or something that absolutely needs to be told to all members. This means that if you’re leaving for a while or forever, please use the proper leaving board, which can be located here. This also goes for wishing a happy birthday to someone. Please PM that person separately or make them a thread in the General Chat board. Birthdays are random events, and random discussions are what the General Chat board is for. MPM’s will be narrowed down this way, and it’ll hopefully leave people less annoyed with them.
o3. Have you guys seen the new Spoiler tag we’ve installed? We decided to put that there for anyone who still talks about the Warriors book series that this site is based on. You can find it next to the “Insert List” tag button, and under the drop-down list of colors. It doesn’t have an image yet, but hopefully we’ll get that fixed. Anyway, Spoilers are currently in effect for the newest books past Sunset. This means you don’t have to use them for any books in the first or second series if you don’t want to, though it’d probably be appreciated for the last few New Prophecy books. We won’t be too strict about this rule, since not everybody cares about spoilers and some members might not read the books anymore, but if you’re going to talk about a recent event [ex., Bluestar’s Prophecy and above], it’d be highly appreciated if you if you put it spoiler tags. They work the same way as an other tag; “[ spoiler=title of spoiler here] text [ /spoiler]”, without the spaces. To reveal the spoiler, simply click on the gray area where the spoiler's title is.
It’ll show up like this.
o4. As fun as it is to put a lot of images in your signatures, they can stretch the page and they become annoying when they’re incredibly tall or wide signatures. Sometimes when scrolling down a thread, those really tall signatures can make it feel like the longest thread ever. The staff won’t ask you to keep it at a minumum of pixels at this current time, but try to keep them at a reasonable height, and make sure they won’t stretch the page from right to left too much.
o5. No double-posting unless absolutely necessary. Double-posting is when you post twice in a row on the same thread, and it often causes spam, even if that’s unintentional spam. Times when double-posting can be necessary are if you are posting something such as fanfiction, and your post would be far too long to put a new chapter up in your previous post. It is not necessary, however, if you want to bump an old thread whose last post was your own. If you want a thread such as that bumped, feel free to PM an administrator, or anybody with access to the bumping button, to bump it for you.
o6. Here's the deal with swearing: Swearing won't be completely prohibited, yet there will be a limit as to what you can say. Since 13 year-olds do roam the boards just as everyone else, the F-Bomb is now allowed to be used, but only sparingly. Whether you're 13 or 18, this could be looked upon as offensive, so be careful about it. Please, we do not want swearing, especially the F-bomb, to be in every sentence you write. Don't use it to insult or offend others either. To those that want to disobey the rule, it's four strikes, and you're out. For each offense, a 25% warning will be added to your profile. When you exceed 100%, you will be banned. Have a ball.
o7. Avoid any subjects that could be considered offensive to other people. For instance, not everybody believes in the same things, so topics such as religion should be kept quiet. This also involves races, which words are “real” swear words, politics, and other related things. If you must discuss similar topics with a member, please keep it to PM’s or somewhere where the HC administrators don’t run the place, such as AIM or MSN for instant messaging. These can be fun to talk about sometimes to some people, but to other people they are offensive or highly irritating, so please do your best to keep the subjects away from the forum. Punishments for breaking this rule will be discussed privately with the person who broke it, as there are no exact punishments for this.
o8. Some of you may remember a time on the previous forum where there would be people running around the cBox pretending to be another member that they were not. This is called impersonation, or impersonating. The act of impersonation is strictly forbidden on HiddenClans, not only due to the events that occurred years ago here and the problems it caused, but because it is against the law. It’s like stealing somebody’s identity. Now you're probably thinking it's just a forum and impersonating somebody for fun won't get you in trouble, but this is not true. Impersonators can be reported to the ProBoards staff, and that staff team will be on the look out for anymore trouble-makers such as imposters. If it continued and ProBoards staff caught note of it, they'd be able to find the impersonator's IP address and track them down, and who knows what could happen next. So please, to keep yourself safe both here and in general, don't impersonate anybody. If the HC staff catches you, you're bound to have a huge warning and possibly a banning. Exact punishments will be discussed with the impersantor, should this ever happen.
This could be updated at any given time, so please re-check this thread slightly often!
Also, don’t forget to listen to the administrators and moderators when they tell you about something that’s occurred such as a broken rule; that’s one of the things they’re here for. The staff is also here to help you though, so don’t hesitate to send them a PM if you need the help with anything.
Thanks for reading the rules everyone, and have fun while you’re here. That’s what role-playing’s all about, isn’t it? :3
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