IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

[PlantAKiss]

Hi everybody

Its been a number of years since the Forum rules have been updated. Its long overdue! So we have been working on this for several weeks. We looked back over past issues and tried to cover everything we think we need to in order to make clear what we expect of our members to keep things running smoothly.

There really isn't much that's new. We just clarified some foggy areas and added policies that have always existed but weren't spelled out specifically in the old rules.

Probably the most notable point has to do with signatures. While we have always had a policy regarding image size in sigs, it wasn't spelled out clearly and wasn't being uniformly enforced. In the past, we had a period where signatures were disallowed due to abuse. We want sigs to be your personal expression but we need to have a limit on the size of images. So please read that section and if your sig image is larger than what we have set as a limit, we'd appreciate it if you would resize them. We'll have a period of time for you to make adjustments before we start contacting people to comply.

So go read through the rules. If you have any questions, please contact any Mod or Admin.

And thank you to each and every one of you who contribute to this great community and make it the grand place that it is!

 

[Est]

Rules can be found here.

 

[PlantAKiss]

Oooops...thanks Jonathan. I neglected to mention the rules are pinned at the top of the General Forum.

DUH.

Thanks for the link!

 

[Ozzy]

I think the first rule should banning any memeber that posts something and forgets to add a link. And that wasn't Bleu cheese.

 

[TheAntiLion]

Nice set of rules.

 

[CopcarFC]

I feel like I'm being pointed at... OK I'll change the stupid sig that none of you prolly understand anyway.

 

[adnedarn]

LOL- I like the part where she says we've been working on it a few weeks.. haha...

Not counting the few times the topic came up and went away... Our current disscussion was started ( by PAK, so how'd you forget?!! lol) on July 06 2006,11:16

I support Ozzy's movement for the new rule. 1 more mod to support it and it's into law and PAK is OUTTAHERE!!!!

 

[adnedarn]

Oh and CopCar... Notice the signature Ozzy had about that STUPID game is gone too... I've been giving him crap for like a month about that. Pak was on him more though... I'd guess that's fueling his rage against here as posted above.

 

[Est]

Didn't know they still made 28.8 modems- you learn something new every day! >_>

Who else is up for some windows 3.1?

/passive agressive

 

[Alexis]

It's do with size too. Copcar's signature (sorry to single you out) takes up 1/3 of my screen width, and I'm on a 21" monitor at work!

 

[kahnli]

it is a pretty big sig...

Nice work on the rules.

 

[schloaty]

Quote[/b] ] Pak was on him more though

I think she's on his as much as she can!

Wait...that's not what you meant....

 

[Clint]

Most of those rules are common sense. I read them like three times and after all that hooplah of Salvia theres nothing in there about Entheogens? Pretty liberal rules, I don't think you should add anything though. I thank you for being so open minded! What brought about the change?

Does my rant about radical islamic fundamentalist break the rules? If so then remove it asap.

 

[PlantAKiss]

Now wait a minute! How did this end up being about me? I didn't feel the EXACT amount of time it took to get the rules approved mattered. And considering the fact that it took YEARS before anyone noticed the rules were incomplete and outdated, I did pretty darn good to bring it up.

I also updated the Trade Rules since that hadn't been done either. AND I keep up the Bad Trader List. Ummm...any other complaints??

CopCar, you are not being singled out. But it is a fact that your sigs are VERY large. Signatures are supposed to be a small part of a person's post that can be customized to reflect your personality or make a statement. ANY signature that is very wordy or has large images tends to dominate and take away from the topic at hand. Like I said, we've had the sig privilege removed in the past because people went overboard with it. We don't want that to happen again.

Sigs are fine but we don't want it to take up so much space you can't see but a few posts per page.

And yes, Ozzy had to get rid of his large sig too. You'd THINK a Moderator would have known better!

 

[PlantAKiss]

Quote[/b] ]Most of those rules are common sense.

Thank you Clint.

We think so too.

We do try to be pretty liberal about topics for discussion. There are some topics that have a history of being inflammatory so we have to watch those carefully (religion, politics). As long as people know the difference between debate, discussion and a flame war, we should be fine.

It IS sometimes very difficult to draw the line on personal expression and avoiding looking like we PROMOTE certain behaviors (illegal ones) since this forum welcomes children as well adults.

Best rules for topics are 1) If you don't like it, don't participate 2) speak your mind but don't attack anyone for differing views. If you keep those things in mind, most topics are open to lively debate. Its GOOD to hear different viewpoints on some issues.

Really there is not much new in the rules other than defining the sig size.

 

[Clint]

Oh I understand completely. In the case of the salvia thread, my horror stories were pretty vivid, and I can see how someone that isn't experienced could get excited by the intensity and take it as me promoting it. Drugs are a huge part of my life and as long as I don't don't do anything hardcore and don't let my grades drop I don't see why not. If anyone ANYTIME has any problems with me, let me know. I'm very nice.

By the way, the name JustLikeAPill isn't about drugs, it's a Pink song

That said, I'd also like to say that this forum is so very friendly! I've been to other forums were there's nothing but flaming. Rules are important. They keep the peace. Giving up some freedom of speech (really only the things we shouldn't say anyway) is worth it most of the time. This forum is by far the best I've been a part of.

Edit: I hope you guys don't think i'm nothing but a druggie! I'm really a great, honest person who doesn't fit the steriotype at all. I'm in honors classes and want to be a doctor or a biopharmacologist.

 

[PlantAKiss]

Awwwwwww...that's really good to hear.

 

[larry]

Ok, so the large image based sigs are to be made smaller. What about large text based sigs? Some people have multiline sigs, you know who you are

 

[PlantAKiss]

Yeah...what about those large multi-lined sigs that are so big? I wonder who THAT could be...

 

[adnedarn]

Currently signature lenghts are limited to 300 characters... It was smaller than that... But alot of the URLs out there for pictures are long. That's why we give so much space there... And there are a few people who use every single character of that 300 for actual text. Maybe we should change it to 150 characters of text.... But leave the 300 characters avaialble for those whom need to link a picture? I'm sure Ozzy will be happy about this thought. hahahahahahahahahahaa

also, JLAP said: "and after all that hooplah of Salvia theres nothing in there about Entheogens?" And there is one thing in there now about that....

Quote[/b] ]The above rules are subject to admendments and revision and may or may not include all policies enforced by these forums.

So now there is no "What do you mean we can't talk about that? There is no rule about it..." We don't want 40 pages of rules so we just cover the big ones... In the rare instances that something comes up (like the Salvia thread) we still (obviously) reserve the ability to do whatever we think "nessasary" without having to make it a stated "rule" I think after beeing a member for a while... Most people know what the mods will and will not allow to happen. It's generally pretty rare that we need to say anything to seasoned members.
But I am glad that it seems most are happy with our rules. As PAK said, very little has changed. Mostly because these same rules have severed us VERY well over the past years.

Andrew