I'll have those links posted for you shortly, but first, I'd like to talk to you a bit about:

Forum Rules and Etiquette

Sponsored by the Department of Common Sense, and the Department of Redundancy Department.

A byproduct of Holland's vast tulip industry, Forum Rules and Etiquette are designed to create a helpful, engaging and enjoyable forumgoing experience for all users who abide by them. The official rules for the E-H Forums may be found here, but this thread will provide you with additional information about things you should avoid doing on the forums so that you can suck less, acquire more friends, and smell like a man.

Trolling and Flaming

If you clicked on this topic expecting to find porn, you have already experienced Trolling firsthand. Some users are under the mistaken apprehension that any form of cruelty or insults count as Trolling, and those users generally need to fuck off and die.

Trolling is the act of deliberately aggravating or otherwise eliciting a strong emotional response from another user for personal amusement (also referred to as lulz, if you're an obnoxious loser who is too young to be here). This can include Flaming (see below), threats, sarcastically offensive comments or arguments, and posting any kind of material that is so stupid it had to have been put there for the express purpose of pissing in the cornflakes of whoever happened to read it. In some cases, though, the person posting that material actually is that fucking stupid, so situations where other users are Not sure if trolling are common.

If you witness Trolling, it's important to remember that responding in anger is exactly what they want. The correct way to handle the situation is typically to lighten the fuck up and don't take it seriously. Once you've done that, it's best to just ignore the troll. While giving them what they want can be amusing at times, it can also lead to more trouble. This is known as Feeding the Troll, and should only be attempted by trained professionals.

On the other hand, simply being mean and insulting is known as Flaming. This can include personal attacks or offensive imagery. Simply swearing or saying something untoward is usually not enough to be considered Flaming. Actual Flaming is against the rules, but may be permitted to some extent. It's ultimately up to the discretion of the forum staff to decide whether someone has gone "too far."
(And don't forget, Flaming is permitted within the Free Speech Zone, you fucking worthless, pit-stained, disgusting sack of shit)

Related to Flaming, there is a practice known as Flame-Baiting: inciting an argument or attacks, intentionally or otherwise (unlike Trolling, which is always intentional and for laughs). If you witness Flame-Bait, be advised that responding by Flaming will typically trigger more Flaming in return. One Flame ignites another, as the name implies. If this continues, a full-on Flame War may erupt. The casualties of Flame Wars are always numerous, and they're all brain cells.

Given these facts, it's easy to wonder why anyone would intentionally engage in Flaming. The answer: some men just want to watch the world burn.

Posting in the Wrong Forum

If you read nothing else in this section, read this: requests go in the Requests and Bounties sub-forum. No exceptions.

Posting in the Wrong Forum is not just a problem for moderators who are forced to move threads to their appropriate places, it's a problem for you, the average forum-goer. If you make a thread in the wrong place, especially if it's a request, you're not likely to get the response you are looking for. Not only are the people who might want to see your post less likely to find it, but you send the message that you don't particularly care about being a part of the community, you just want to get something out of us, be it help finding a desired gallery, troubleshooting advice, or just entertainment.

Well, sorry pal, but we don't give it up to just anyone who comes knocking. We're a classy bunch, and we want to be respected, romanced. So, play by our rules. You've got to do the dance if you want to get in our pants find out where the gallery you wanted disappeared to.

Oversized Forum Signatures

Please, just make it smaller. Nobody wants to see that oversized picture you stuck down there to come off as artistic, and nobody's going to read all that stuff you copy/pasted. One quote is plenty, and your HV equipment-related links are perfectly happy in the HV Chat subforums; you don't need to advertise them everywhere you go.

Stop taking up the entire screen with every one-line post you make. My scroll wheel is crying like a gay kid at bible camp.

Sharing Personal Information

This one is for your own protection. It's bad enough to share someone else's private phone number, email, or home address, but sharing your own? It never ceases to amaze me how many people, for all manner of misguided reasons, will share their own home address or other personally identifiable info with complete strangers on a site as sketchy as this.

Do not share your personal information in any thread. Seriously. Why not just climb into the mountain lion enclosure at the zoo slathered in bacon grease if you like to live life on the edge so much?

Double-Posting

The act of posting multiple times in a row in the same thread is known as Double-Posting. This may be abbreviated as DP, but typically is not, as that abbreviation is already used in reference to a sex act which is, by comparison, much less deplorable. As with the Oversized Forum Signature, double-posting makes people scroll unnecessarily, and scrolling past the same name and avatar several times in a row has been the cause of much annoyance, as well as rare light-induced epileptic seizures in some users, though sadly never the ones you want.

Should you feel you need to add something else after you've posted, just click Edit on your existing post. The only time you wouldn't want to edit the post would be if the thread is fairly active and likely to get more replies before you're done editing, in which case it would make more sense to just wait a minute and post again after someone else has interjected.

Thread Necromancy

In the setting of a forum, Necromancy refers to replying to a dead thread. Threads are considered dead once they have received no new replies for an extended period of time. The exact amount of time a thread takes to die is widely disputed among Internet scholars, but in general, the more atrocious a thread is, the more quickly and painfully it needs to die.

For users who wonder what's so bad about necromancy, the answer is not altogether simple, but should be obvious once pointed out. Virtually all threads will run their course and eventually die, very much like people, and very unlike my personal disdain for the fucking French (see Flame-Baiting). Threads tied to real-world events naturally die off as time passes from that event. Good threads tend to die off once all the regular users have seen it and said all they wanted to in response. Bad threads will be ignored and left to fall off the front page into oblivion. Awful threads will be left to die as well, but first will be defaced and the OP told what a disastrous waste of genes they are and instructed to kill themselves in various unseemly ways. Do not examine this practice too critically; it is a beloved tradition.

In all these cases, the thread dies for the same reason: there's really nothing left to be said. The topic ran its course, and should be left in peace. Once the dead thread is bumped, it reappears at the top of the thread list, and that is when bricks are shat. Necromancy is bad when done to good threads because typically they are being disturbed from their eternal rest just so somebody could chime in "haha, me too" or something equally unimportant. Necromancy is much worse when done to bad or awful threads because everyone who sees the thread back on page 1 does a facepalm and wishes they'd never been reminded of the accursed thing's existence.

Necromancy is occasionally acceptable if the thread has not been dead for too long, or there is something new and important to be contributed to the discussion, but if the thread is long dead, it's typically better to just create a new thread with new information in order to begin a new discussion.

Unless you're talking about the end of the world. We had like three of those fucking threads at once and they all were terrible. We don't need another one, ever.

Useless Posts and Creating New Threads

This topic is covered extensively in this thread, so it will not be repeated here.



Thank you for reading this guide to Forum Rules and Etiquette. I hope you enjoyed it. This post will be updated occasionally with new content, so keep an eye on the latest replies to find out when new sections have been added.

This post has been edited by FourThirteen: Jan 25 2014, 00:50