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Forum Rules & Help

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 5:16 am
by skalpel
General Rules

Basically, don't be a dick. Respect other members and the site in general. The staff members take a common sense approach to moderation, and while we try to let things flow without being as strict as most other forums, we will take necessary action where we feel fit. If you have any complaints about how you've been moderated or another user, contact an admin or moderator.

Rules

1 - No spam or commercial advertising. This includes trying to sell tickets/merchandise on here, or signing up purely to post a survey without even attempting to be a part of the community. Contact an admin if in doubt or if you feel it's genuinely in our interests.
2 - No victimising or discriminating against others. This includes but is not limited to bullying, racism, homophobia and posting of personal information without consent.
3 - No NSFW (not safe for work) content outside of NSFW tags. Content in NSFW tags may not be illicit or explicit (so no porn, sexual content, etc). Further explanation below.
4 - No swearing in usernames or thread titles. Elsewhere swearing is allowed (we have a profanity filter on by default for new members, turn it on/off here) but try not to do so excessively.
5 - No avatars over 250KB. This is plenty for a 200z200 image. If you're struggling to get under these limits or just don't understand them, contact an admin. Use http://ezgif.com or http://www.online-image-editor.com
6 - One account per user. Don't make multiple accounts.

Regarding mature content, the following are expressly NOT allowed at all, be it in or out of NSFW tags.
- Full nudity
- Pornographic images, videos, or games
- Pornographic cartoons or anime (hentai/ecchi)
- Strategically covered nudity
- Close-ups of breasts, buttocks, or crotches

Common Courtesy

1a - If you absolutely must post large or long animated GIFs put a warning in the thread title. A third of our visits come from mobile devices, large GIFs make pages load slowly and quickly eat through data allowance.
1b - Much preferred: Use http://gfycat.com to host GIFs you post, it compresses them a lot and gives fancy features like playback speed control and reverse mode. To embed a gfycat video just put the link between gfy tags, for example [gfy][/gfy].
2 - Give your thread a descriptive title. Users should be able to tell what the thread is about before clicking on it. Just having a player name or half a leading statement doesn't do this. This is especially important in the Football Discussion forum.
3 - Post news, interesting happenings or new topics of discussion in a new thread. More threads are a good thing and lead to more discussion and a better quality of discussion, since then there aren't multiple distinct conversations going on in one thread. On the same note don't make threads which cover a massive range of topics, it's better to make multiple specific threads.
4 - Try to post threads in the right forum. Football related topics in Football Discussion, video games in Gaming, etc. If in doubt, contact a moderator or post it where you think it goes and we can move it afterwards if necessary.
5 - Post in English with decent grammar and spelling. While we don't expect perfection, at least make it look like you tried to write a real sentence. This is a forum, not an SMS or IM client.

With that said, we hope you enjoy using ToonForum. If you're a new user or a long-time lurker, why not introduce yourself in our New Members Thread?


Posting Guidelines

Making New Topics (aka Threads)

The Main Thing: Make sure your title is not vague and properly represents the content of your thread.

This means using some common sense. But here are some guidelines to explain what is meant by this anyway:

Don't paint unconfirmed info as fact
- If something is still a rumour or an unconfirmed bit of information, then don't state it as a fact in your title.

Vague titles are not good titles
- Don't put a few vague words from the beginning of a sentence as your title. "I think that..." is not a good title.
- Make sure your title properly represents your thread's purpose. For instance, if John Smith has just been confirmed as injured, then "John Smith is injured" would be a good title, "John Smith" would not. Similarly, if we have an upcoming match against Manchester City, then something like "Man City Match Discussion" might be a good title, whereas just "Man City" would not. Or if your thread is making a point about the English national team, then "England" is not a good title.. you see where this is going.
- If John Smith has died, then "Today is a sad day" is not a good thread title. "RIP John Smith" or "Today is a sad day because John Smith is dead" would be examples of good titles.

Warn People if there are lots of GIFs in your opening post
- If your thread contains one or more large (3mb+) GIF images in the opening post, add something like "(GIFs)" to the end of your title. For instance: "The John Smith Tackle (GIFs)" would make it clear that you are showing GIF images of a tackle on John Smith. Why is this important? Because some people, particularly those on certain mobile devices, pay for bandwidth. And it's nice for them to have a bit of warning before huge chunks get eaten out of their usage.
- If you are not sure whether your thread is worthwhile existing at all, see the FAQ below for some advice on whether or not you should post it.

As you may or may not know, when you make a thread on here it gets posted to ToonForum's Twitter and Facebook pages within a few minutes. Your threads are popular, we get a large amount of views from people seeing your thread titles on Twitter or Facebook and coming to the site for a read. So if only for that reason, please keep your thread titles sensible. If you post a thread with a bad or vague title, it will likely be amended by a moderator. If this is the case, the moderator will change it to something relevant without changing any of your post. If you have a problem with a moderator changing your thread title, feel free to PM any of us - you can find the list here.

One final note, we don't want to discourage creativity. You're welcome to be very creative or amusing with your thread titles, but they still have to be understandable and representative of your content.


Posting Comments

Do not post abusive comments.
- Flagrant racism will earn you an instant ban. If there is a misunderstanding of some sort, in which phrases may be construed as racist by some people, all parties involved are encouraged to take it to a moderator rather than spam up somebody's thread with argument. These instances are dealt with on a case by case basis, so obviously if it is possible that you may have been misunderstood, or if you appear to have suggested something that you did not mean, then you have the chance to clarify or make a retraction.
- Unprovoked or gratuitous abuse is not acceptable and repeated instances will likely earn you a ban. This is not a discouragement of arguments or debates, by all means get stuck in. Unprovoked or gratuitous abuse basically involves insulting somebody for absolutely no reason or making violent or threatening personal statements.

Warn people about Not Safe For Work content
-NSFW images must be placed inside NSFW tags. What is NSFW? It's literally anything that you would really not want your boss seeing you look at. It's not just limited to revealing photographs, use some common sense. Pornography is not allowed and threads dedicated to drooling over women are not either. You have the whole internet at your finger tips, if you wish to do that then you can find plenty of places for that purpose. These rules also apply to avatars and signatures.


Help FAQ

I have something to say, but I'm not sure if it's worthy of being a topic (thread). What should I do?
This comes up a lot and usually has people complaining that the old "Carvery" thread for random comments was closed. It was closed because the more threads we get, the more discussion we get. This has been proven unequivocally. So you are encouraged to make threads no matter how small you may think your bit of football information is, how often you use the site or who you are. Here are some extra guidelines:

- If your post is related to football and you would happily post it as a comment if there was a thread already about the general topic, then make the thread. For example, if you have found a statistic somewhere about Newcastle's injuries, and you can't find a thread about injuries anywhere, just go ahead and make it a thread. If the statistic is small, maybe try adding your own thoughts about it or a little bit of extra context to make the thread more likely a success.
- If your post is related to football, but there is already a thread about what you are talking about on the front page, then post it in that existing thread. For instance if there is a thread about Newcastle's injuries close at hand, don't make a new one for your statistic.
- If your post is not related to football, go and post it in General Discussion instead of Football Discussion.
- If your post is completely pointless and encourages no valid discussion at all, then don't post it at all. In other words "Michael Owen likes horses" followed by a picture of a horse is not a good thread. "X Referee is an idiot" with an angry smiley face is not a good thread. You get the idea.

Ultimately, don't be discouraged from making a thread if you have something relevant to say. It's very rare that a thread gets totally ignored, this is a very active forum and we'll all be interested in discussing whatever comes up.

How do you post images?
Find the picture you want to post online, then copy the link to the picture and paste it into your post. Then highlight the link you have pasted, and press the Image button above the text box. If you can't see that button, then simply do the following:
[img]ttp://i.imgur.com/ak1pBsb.jpg[/img].

How do you post Youtube / Vine / Facebook / Other videos?
Find the video you want to post, then copy the URL of the page, for example " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, then press the Image button and paste the link between those tags. You can also manually do this by typing [media][/media] either side of the link, for example:
[media][/media]

I can't find the button to post a new thread. Where is it?
If you are a brand new member to the forums, you will not yet have permission to make a thread, this will come once you have enough posts to become a fully fledged member, or sooner if an admin grants it. This is to help prevent any spam bots from registering to make a spam thread right away and also to prevent advertisers from showing off their website and never coming back. If you are new, go and introduce yourself to people in the New Members Thread and you'll make five posts in no time.

I have another question to ask but it isn't here. Panic, panic!
PANIC!!! Then you can either get in touch with a moderator (the moderator list is here) or you can go to Shearer's eBar in General Discussion, it's a thread for all off topic comments, random questions or thoughts. If you ask in there, I'm sure somebody can help.