Avatars, Appropriate Behavior and Other General Message Board Info

[Admin]

MESSAGES POSTED TO THIS MESSAGE BOARD FORUM

- Topic titles: When you post your question or your problem, you must use a title related to your topic/problem/question. Capitals should also be avoided. Why use explicit titles? The forum's search engine bases its research on keywords found in Topic titles. Think about the words someone might use in a search and how they might find your Topic. It is important to use titles related to your Topic. Doing this makes the searches much easier for visitors who use the search engine to get an answer specific to their question.

- Language on this forum: When you write please do so in English and not using SMS text (cell phone) or L3375P34K (leetspeak) styles in your message (i.e. LOL, IMHO and etc.). People reading your posts and replies must be able to understand what you write, so put a minimum of care in your writing, even if your English is not very good. Assume the people reading your message don’t understand abbreviations and acronyms – spell out what you want to say UNLESS someone else has already explained an abbreviation or acronym earlier in their post on the same topic.

- Colors and capitals and font size: When you write your message, please don't abuse capitals (it means that you shout), colors and bold. Re-sizing your text is also a bad idea. Overly large text resembles screaming. Colors and Bold text are reserved for moderation, by the Moderators so please don't use them.
Moderators will use their own color to moderate, and this is for practical reasons :

1- When we edit a post and add a comment, we write our comments in our moderation color to make it distinguishable from the poster's message

2- The use of color makes people know when we are talking as a moderator. When we use the default color it appears we are talking as a normal member and not a moderator.

- Flood and off-topic: Flood (overwhelming a topic with multiple posts, one after the other) must be avoided. One-word posts such like "lol", "rofl" or a single smiley must be avoided. You must also avoid posting the same topic twice...you will not get a response any faster. As long as your topic is not way down the list then it is useless to up it on the list by reposting it. If you make a mistake, please use the button at the top-right of your post, to avoid double-posting

- Advertising: Advertising of any kind, including goods or services is not acceptable, even by PM (private message). It is also forbidden to post advertising for money-related stuff. This is meant to be a family oriented forum so please be considerate of those who might read your topic and posts.


BEHAVIOR ON THE MESSAGE BOARD FORUM

- Defamatory, racist, hateful, pornographic, illegal or insulting content will not be tolerated on this forum. You must respect the fact that people may have a different opinion than you. If you are in conflict with another member, please use PMs for that, this board is not an arena! If any moderator or admin sees, or is made aware of inappropriate ‘behavior’ the offending member may have sanctions levied against them. See POSSIBLE SANCTIONS section below.

- Please, be patient. It's useless to repost your topic every 2 minutes (see the point "Flood and Off-topic"). Every member of this forum has a private life besides this message board, so they can't always respond immediately. If you want to know when someone posts something to a topic then watch the topic by clicking on the ‘Start watching forum’ link at the bottom of each topic. You will automatically receive an email when someone adds or changes something in the forum you are watching.

- You must respect the moderators and administrators. They all work voluntarily on this forum and they are human, not machines!

- If you received advertising, pornographic content or insults by PM, you must send the whole copy (including the headers) to a moderator or admin by PM. Posting it in a topic is useless and will only cause conflicts between you and the one who sent you the PM. Admins and moderators have the capability of locking the user out from contributing anything in the future. See POSSIBLE SANCTIONS section below.

- If you don't find your topic, it may have been moved to a more appropriate place How to find your own messages. If you have a question, PM a moderator for that!


AVATARS AND YOUR PROFILE

- Avatar dimensions: An avatar is a picture that represents you on a post. Your avatar's width must not exceed 150 pixels and its height must not exceed 200 pixels. These limits are to avoid scrolling for people who have a low screen resolution. You must also respect the file size limit which of 300 KB. There are still people who have a low-speed connection, and large picture files take time to load.

- Your avatar is not an advertising banner, so avatars containing a URL must not be used.

- Sexually oriented, violent or other seemingly distasteful avatars cannot be used.


POSSIBLE SANCTIONS

- If you posted or submitted advertising by PM, you may see your PM mailbox disabled permanently or for some determined period of time.

- If your avatar doesn't respect the rules and you ignore the moderator's request to have it changed, the Administrator may forbid you from displaying an Avatar.

- Advertising for money-related stuff = Immediate ban from the forum

- Ignoring the moderators' warnings and continuing to not respect the rules, insulting people and trolling may result to a simple ban from this forum.

If you have any question about one of the message board forum rules, please PM a moderator to ask your question.

Thanks for reading this and for adhering to the guidelines contained herein.