Forum Rules Created 20 years ago2004-11-02 11:57:23 UTC by Peace and LOve

I think these style rules should be implemented to prevent further retardedness. Employ more moderators, and use the card system.

FORUM RULES

The following rules are your guide to behavior on these boards. In most cases, these rules address general situations. It is up to the moderators to deal with specific occurances that are perhaps not covered here. When a rule and a moderator appear to be saying different things, the moderator is always right. Do not argue with the moderators - if you feel you've been wronged or misrepresented, you're welcome to contact me by Private Message or by Email. Voicing your grievances on the message board itself is prohibited.

There is a card system implemented on this board that assists moderators in keeping the peace. We operate on a three strikes and you're out policy. If you act against the rules, or against common sense or better judgement in any way, you will receive a yellow card. If you receive three yellow cards, you are banned from the board. SOME offenses WILL lead straight to banishment, so do not think that you have a two-card buffer to act like a retard.

Blue Cards are your tool to help moderators. If you see someone breaking the rules, hit the Blue Card. A moderator will deal with the situation. Do NOT try to take matters into your own hands, or you could end up getting in trouble yourself.

Rules

Watch your language. Swearing is not against the rules, but excessive use of it just for the sake of using it, is. Using bad language directed at a fellow board member is also against the rules.

Breaking this rule gets you punishment deemed by the moderator to be appropriate to the offense.

No Flaming. Whatsoever. I don't care what your personal opinion of someone else is, if you can't express it without being mean, childish, insulting or spiteful, keep it to yourself. You are allowed to express your opinions, but they must be done so calmly, intelligently, and without purposeful intent to attack the other party. The interpretation of such is entirely up to the mod, so if you are not completely sure that you can express your opinion without it sounding like an attack, you're best off just not doing it at all. Anyone seen attacking another forum member for any reason will be removed from the board.

Also, bringing up old "flames" as in old animosities which has since been resolved will result in strict action against the member. Bringing up old flames creates new ones people.

Breaking this rule gets you punishment deemed by the moderator to be appropriate to the offense.

No offensive content. This includes, but is not limited to :

Gore and excessive violence (both photographic and animated) including 'stick death' and violent Flash animations
Pornography and strongly sexually suggestive material (both photographic and animated)
Full Nudity (both photographic and animated)
Racist and hate speech material
Other material generally considered rude, vulgar or crass (including bodily functions)
Posting written material or inline images containing the above is unacceptable. Links to gratuitous examples of the above is prohibited. It is sometimes reasonable to link to an external resource that contains borderline material because of it's redeeming attributes (an article about a breakthrough in medical science with graphic pictures of surgery for instance) and it is polite to warn people about what they might see. Please note this is simply netiquette and not a licence to break this rule. If you have concerns about material you wish to post, you can contact me first.

Breaking this rule gets you an automatic red card.

Exception to the rule: If you have artwork or writing that may be graphic of some nature, and wish to post it in the Artist's forums, you may do so ONLY in those forums. And you MUST provide ample warning prior to display. Racist and hate speech related material is still prohibited.

No illegal content. This includes, but is not limited to :

Material concerned with illegal drugs and drug use
Material concerned with making weapons and explosives or committing crimes
Pirated software, music, or other media, including modern commercial game emulation, file sharing networks and ways of circumventing copy protection. Despite the nature of this web comic, and the community thereof, discussing these matters in public could land me in trouble, so I have to disallow it.
Discussing the implications, ethics and other theoretical aspects of these subjects is acceptable, but promoting, advocating or providing specific details is not.

Breaking this rule gets you an automatic red card.

No advertising, spamming or scams. This includes, but is not limited to :

Promoting other message boards or sites (except inside the Missing Link forum)
Pyramid and other MLM schemes, referral programs and money scams
Passing through the board to advertise your service, event, competition or personal website - even if your link seems to correspond to the theme of the message board (except for web comics inside the Web Comic forum)
NOTE: Sharing your website or webcomic with the other forum dwellers is something reserved for people who become part of the community, as this is not a public noticeboard for you to advertise on. Avoid promoting your website in your first post as it makes it difficult to tell if you intend to stick around or not.

Links in your signatures are allowed, but be responsible with them.

Breaking this rule gets you punishment deemed by the moderator to be appropriate to the offense.

Not all behaviour is so simple, these tips can help you fit in better with the existing community.

Guidelines

Make your signature a reasonable size. Large, ugly and slow loading signatures visually pollute the board, enlarge threads and slow down modem users. Show respect for your fellow posters by ensuring your signature, if used, is somewhat discreet, space efficient (avoid using vertical content or images that break the layout of the forum) and quick loading. If you use other message boards and don't want to change it for this one, then disable your signature when you post by unchecking the box below your message body. You will be warned if your signature is unacceptable.

Don't post nonsense and gibberish. Don't waste people's time by spieling off nonsense prose or other forms of brainless rambling. While we all have a sense of humour, material that's completely devoid of intelligence, thought or wit, does not belong on these boards. (except in Rantings of Madmen, though certain rules still apply)

Make use of the preview function. The preview checkbox that sits next to the post button is a powerful tool that will show you exactly how your post, profile picture and signature will look before you add it to the board. You can use it to check your BBcodes and other formatting, as well as seeing how your profile and signature looks without making 'test' threads, and save yourself from having to fix blatant mistakes with edits.

If you have a large picture to display, either in filesize or dimensions, link it. Stretching threads is a no-no, and if it occurs your expected to edit your post to fix it.

If you post an external link, please be discerning. They belong in the Missing Link only. You can share sites with the rest of the board that make you laugh or think, but just try to be sure to only pick the best of the bunch, as mediocre Flash animations are not rare treasures that the world must be notified about. If you're going to post trivial and silly content, it must be all ages or have a very visual disclaimer BEFORE the link.

Discussions are to be carried on intelligently and calmly. You may express your opinions, but avoid mocking somebody else if their views differ from yours.

If you're not a moderator, don't feel compelled to act like one. If someone is breaking a rule in a way that annoys you or makes you feel uncomfortable, feel free to tell them that you don't think they should be doing that, or click the BLUE card. This reports a post to a moderator. Do not travel the boards looking for people who you feel are breaking rules so you can tell them off. Do not copy-paste quote sections of the rules at people. Do not warn people of the rules when they first arrive - that can be insulting. If someone is being a nuisance on the board, and a moderator is aware of the situation, consider backing off. Goading and provoking troublemakers takes control of the situation away from the moderator and makes their role more difficult.

If you're new to the boards, you can simply join in on the existing "newbie introduction" thread, or start one of your own to announce your presence. If you do start an introduction thread, please take the time to tell us about yourself, because while we're generally friendly and interesting people it's difficult to respond to "Hi I'm new. Bye."
Handy icebreakers include what some of your interests are, how you found this board, if you know anyone who already posts here or even what part of the world you hail from. If you're going to use a new thread to announce yourself, be sure to give us something to go on.

How are you going to prevent the individual from re-entering the website
with a different login name?

They can re-join, but they get three username bans before a full IP ban.

Mmm, vaguely good ideas but totally unrealistic. What we don't have a problem with is moderators. What we could use are better tools.

1. Guys, please read up about IP addressing before all rambling on about IP-based bans. Read about how IRC does it or somethin';

2. Stop tryin'a be mods ;

3. atom is too busy with exams to write loads of code for shizzle.

We don't have enough moderators.

I've set up a system that will let me ban him, so you can expect that to happen pretty soon.

If the system works well it can be applied to other trouble-makers as well
in the future, keeping TWHL a happy place.

Quote from Atom on the subject of Anonymous.

I suppose we don't need too strict forum rules. If anyone does anything innapropriate or stupid, I'd say they would be banned.

Great news to my ears, and I'm sure a whole lot of other people's ears as well.

Indeed.

Well done

keeping TWHL a happy place.

Like it used to. The atmosphere used to be so lovely, everyone was friendly, and things were going great.

I really hope we can get things back like that. Seriously.

Have a look what TWHL used to be like.

Have a look in 2002 and 2003 mainly. It would've been great. I wasn't around here back then, but I wish I was.

The atmosphere's still friendly, etc.

Still... people are bound to start disliking each other.

Everyone was just so friendly. There was no hatred. If someone mentioned something about a CS map there would be no "CS is teh gay!!!1". There is also no idiots saying how 1337 of a h4x0r they are.

Everything was just perfect. :

I really loved it when I joined...it was cool.

Hmm... Who the hell was that?

I agree with all his points as well.....

Is that you Atom?

this is how i remember the place when people where always friendly to eachother.....
http://web.archive.org/web/20030801071756/cariad.co.za/twhl/

BUHHUMBUG!

IRC *NEW

Good times, good times.

as the oldest saying in the book goes. If you don't have something good to say DON'T say anything AT ALL!!!

the rules he posted came from the CAD forums. thats why it talks about webcomics.

the old twhl was really something. i mean not only did atom periodically log in, he even went on irc! ah, back then IRC was a tool used by all who grace twhl with their presence, and back then there were no members who didnt grace twhl with their presence. nobody went into the forrums screaming about broken boxes and counter strike and whatnot. of course then there was a huge rush of members joining. everyday there would be so many more. no less than 5 joined a day. fter that things started to go downhill. there was probably some other site involved which advertised TWHL for mapping. or maybe it was something to do with the VERC's map exchange going to buggery, even though that wouldnt have caused a rush of noob mappers. well, im just an old-timer rambling about my day...

This forum already has IP bans, atom is just afraid to use it.

With good reason, what I've heard is that he's afraid that it would ban all users registered after Anon. registered or something, which wouldn't be very good now would it?

But he developed a new system...... so it won't happen now.

He can ban all he wants.... I do wish that Atom would become a regular TWHLer again.... I wanna talk to him. Everyone was so friendly back then because Atom was there to keep order.... And the fact that they were all scared of his ownage.

Sigh...
First up I am a little surprized Rick... I thought you were against Nazification?
Secondly... When something grows, there is every chance that it will change.
Welcome to life folks.

Not one of you has mentioned the fact that this still is a great site...
So I wonder what your still doing here?

Stop bitchin and start getting nice to each other.
Don't react...
That way, the bellpolishers will be mutually excluded.

Hey... I thought everyone knew it's still a great site, so it is pointless to mention.

I was just saying how lovely the atmosphere was back then.

I merely posted it as a suggestion of what we as members should try and aim for, we can't go head-on into having the forums ruled by Nazi's, no; but surely we as users (I mean teh non-Mod members) can take some personal responsibility and stop the flaming and elitism which has been present, if one thing is to come from this whole gay little episode, it should be that we learn to bite our tongues, avoid flaming, and respect teh Mod's, and not try to do their jobs.

I have learnt that you can't reason with some people, (like myself, I am unreasonable) and you have to take shit every now and then, but let's just step right over that pile of poo and head towards a betetr future.

Why do we need atom for things to be in order? Can we not just do taht ourselves? A little maturity from all of us would go a long way, and if we get any noobs or newbies, we give them a chance, and if they fail to behave responsibly, we report them to the Mod's and let them do their jobs.

That's all I wanted to say, but instead I copy/pasted the rules from a webcomic forum.

I think we should all learn from this, no more flaming, no more mod hating, no more shit and nastiness, if someone has such a problem with someoen else, go to IRC and debate it in front of live witnesses and then everyone decides what happens.

Exactly, what the hell is the point in arguing over a series of hours and days, when you could duke it out properly. Arguements will always happen, and generally its fun to have a pet-hate. But by posting crap instead of saying it directly to someone, all that you succeed in doing is cluttering up the site, and overshadowing the actual forum threads and posts, like mapping or intelligent debate. None of the arguments I have read here in recent times have been helpful to anyone (i.e. they are not debate, and there is no outcome). If you want have a problem with someone, you don't post an angry letter in a newspaper, you talk/shout/bite them.

All this talk of how to behave in the forums is very good, and well, but the ammount of people both talking the talk and walking the walk is miniscule, to the point where I would deem threads like this as spam (no offence). While its nice to list off the shalts and shalt nots, the fact is that everyone knows how to behave, so its pretty pointless. Sorry.

True, but alot of people sit on teh fence and point out the correct way to behave, but then carry on regardless and completely ignore their own advice.

In the case of Peace and LOve vs Anonymous, we were both guilty as charged of spamming, flaming, and generally disobeying every rule, and every piece of advice given to us.

I'd like to apologise (if I haven't done so already) for my behaviour, and I can honestly say it won't happen again. I guess sometimes you need a kick in the arse to know how you'd react to it, I didn't react in a way fitting of how I would like you to perceive me.

The point of arguing on the internet could be applied to apologies too, why bother? But the fact is that I intend to stay here and try to help and be useful for as long as teh site lasts, and as long as I have nothing better to do (sorry, things change as we all know). So I feel apologising, and perhaps setting out some of the guidelines I intend to follow in future is a good place to start.

If you think about it, as a collective which we all are, really, there is always going to be one bad apple, it's the law of nature that prevails.

We need to learn to move on. By responding in a harassed manner we are actually throwing fuel into the fire. We give these kind of non-entities alot of joy as they seek to gain controversy.

Consider them as sentinals from the matrix...

Well said, Dr Jehff.

I think that sums it up pretty nicely, in that I don't take all teh blame and ill-feeling. Just my share.

• :/ Peace and LOve

Not one of you has mentioned the fact that this still is a great site...

... I have, frequently.

But nobody listens to Teh Monkey!

(unless he has rabies)