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Our New Forum Rules

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Entropy-Soldier:
We've come to realize over the past few weeks that it's not fair to our community to lack any clearly established and enforced forum rules.  The forums actually have had rules all this time, but they of course might as well not have existed since they were never acted upon.  Today that all changes, as we've come up with a concise list of rules to make moderating and using the forum easier.


Honestly these rules are fairly lenient and difficult to violate unintentionally, so there's no need to worry if you're not trying to cause problems.  This policy change takes effect right now, but does not apply retroactively, so everyone has a clean slate.


Rules as of 6/30/2016


Users should refrain from the following:

- Harassment or Degrading Comments
You are free to state your opinion on a matter, even if it is negative, but do not make it insulting or include personal attacks.  For example, something like “The map would benefit from a layout change and some new textures, right now I don't really like it.” is okay, but “The map's terrible and you're garbage at mapping.  Suck it.” is not.  Make sure there's a point to your post and it doesn't include anything inflammatory.


- Spam
Do not post meaningless topics or multiple messages to a single thread in quick succession.  If you are waiting for a response on a thread, you are free to bump it but only do so once every 12 hours.


- Necroposting
If a post has gone 2 weeks without a reply then you should start a new thread instead of responding to that one.  Exceptions to this rule would be stickied posts, or content release posts, like a community mapper's map thread.  Be sure that if you post on one of these threads that your contribution adds something substantial to the discussion and makes it relevant again.  The longer it has gone without a post the more substantial your contribution should be.


- Disregarding the Moderation Team
This small list of rules obviously cannot cover everything it needs to in order to keep the forum running smoothly all the time.  If you've been told by the team to stop doing something, stop doing it.  If a post you made was deleted, you will be sent a message as to why and what you should avoid doing in the future. 



In general, if you violate any of these rules you will first receive a warning.  Ignoring this warning will result in a temporary ban, and then a permanent ban if the behavior continues after that.  Particularly severe cases may skip parts of this sequence, but in general you will first be made aware of any problems before we take further action.


If you feel that an action taken by a moderator is unfair, you are free to appeal it privately with me via PM.  After I make my decision, however, the matter is final.  I'm not perfect, and the moderation team isn't perfect either, so there will be controversial decisions made in some cases.  Please respect that sometimes it's better to take a stand on shaky ground than to not take a stand at all, and move on.


This set of rules will be enforced, unlike our last set.  Here's hoping we can keep our forums as wonderful as ever.

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