Important Announcements Thread

[James]

Greetings everyone. This thread will be used, from this point on, to share important announcements with the members. I strongly advise members to keep current on the contents of this thread (along with the whole forum) as our most important news will always show here.

[James]

That said, I’ll kick it off with two things I feel like sharing.

1) If you find that you lose the ability to put an avatar in your profile, it is because you broke the avatar rules so badly that we just decided to take them away.

2) We are thinking about moving the server very soon, to resolve some speed issues which have come up. We are still working out some details, and there will be some risk involved, but we are comfortable with it. I don’t want to keep the forum on a server that has trouble loading at reasonable speeds. Watch the public council for a chance to give feedback on this.

[Rhiannon]

Just a note that I keep meaning to post. If you are having problems with Invalid_Session, or losing new post counts suddenly, or logging in and suddenly being logged out, I recommend that you do the following things:

1. Change your bookmark for SoSZ so that it links to http://the-scholars.com, not www.the-scholars.com. (If you type in the address, make sure you do the same thing; using www.the-scholars.com can mess things up).

2. Go to your cookies directory (C:\Windows\Cookies) and delete any that have @www.the-scholars.com or @the-scholars.com at their ending.

3. Come back on SoSZ (using the appropriate link) and log back in, clicking the always log in option (remember, if you need to, you can log out, and that will cancel that option until you log back in).

It won't fix everything, but it does eliminate a lot of potential problems.

[Rhiannon]

Please try to cut down on nested quotes in the forum!

A nested quote is a "quote within a quote." When you hit the quote feature to reply to a message, it's going to quote everything in that post - including quotes the original post had. We ask that you please cut these series of quotes down to as little as you need to reply to - preferrably, no more than one quote nested inside another. Not only does it save space in our database, but it also makes large debates and conversations much easier to read. For example...

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Original Quoted Content:

Wait until it's quite late (about 10pm) before you try to put them together. Remember that hamsters are nocturnal, so a female will not come into heat during the day.

Place both hamsters on neutral territory (eg.carpeted stairway or setee/sofa). The male will sniff and lick the female, if she is in heat she will freeze and stick her tail in the air (known as standing), the male will then be free to go about his business.

If she carries on running around or sniffs/investigates the male then she probably isn't in heat. Put both hamsters back in their appropriate cages and try again the next night. If you don't separate them quick enough then she will probably pounce on him and start biting him.

When they do mate leave them together for about 20 minutes but keep an eye on them at all times just in case, some females get fed up with the idea pretty quickly !! The male will thoroughly clean both himself and the female in between matings.

After about 20 minutes put both of them back in their own (separate) cages and leave them to some peace and quiet.

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Should Be Changed To:

When they do mate leave them together for about 20 minutes but keep an eye on them at all times just in case, some females get fed up with the idea pretty quickly !! The male will thoroughly clean both himself and the female in between matings.

After about 20 minutes put both of them back in their own (separate) cages and leave them to some peace and quiet.

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Just remove the old quotes.

[Rhiannon]

Another originally posted by James, which is getting moved to this thread.
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We have said it before, but some members are still uncomfortable with it. If you have any concerns or troubles in the forum please bring it directly to the moderators. If you would be more comfortable going to the administrators with it, do it right away.

Some people think Lord Davion, Jonathan (currently busy), and myself are fairly unapproachable, and this is not the case. We do read our private messages carefully, and we look into every problem that comes up.

Don’t spend a moment worrying about who we are, how busy we might be, or whether or not you are wasting my time. I started this forum because I wanted a place to chat with friends over something I enjoy. Lord Davion, Jonathan, (edit: And Wild-Eyes and Dragon_Girl, of course) and my moderators received their positions because we feel they care about the forum too.

This is just a reminder that we are truly here for you no matter what your forum concern, so please come to us right away irregardless. If one of our private message boxes are full, go to another. Even though we may have the occasional “evil” title, and even though we are strict with the forum rules, this does not mean we take member concerns lightly.

Kind regards,
-James

[Rhiannon]

We have updated the <a href=/viewtopic.php?t=6428>Forum Rules</a>, with some minor revisions as well as a few major ones. For those of you who are curious, here are the major notations to look for:

Clarification of the Spam rule.
Clarification of Flaming.
Update of Sensitive Topics rule.
Update of Vulgar-Language Auto-Mod rule.
Addition of a Trolling Rule.
Addition of an explanation of the Warning System, including a new Warning System policy.

Excepting the last, these rule updates really do not affect the way the board has been run; they only clarify rules that were already present but not clear in the rules.

The Warning System explanation has been added to help members understand the importance of a warning on this message board, and how we execute warnings and bannings. It also mentions how you may deal with any problems regarding a warning or banning. In addition to these clarifications for members, we have added an entirely new rule to it: Warnings have a three month expiration date, unless it is severe (administrator's discretion). This rule has been implimented in order to allow members to change without having to worry that they might be banned 9 months down the road for making a mistake, and I am sure most of you will be quite pleased to hear it. It takes effect immediately.

[Rhiannon]

This is on KMA, but it hasn't yet been updated to our new server, though I'm sure it will be soon. Nevertheless, some of you might have missed it there, so this is here for future reference (particularly if you want to bookmark these sites).

Q: The forum is running very slow, or is offline. What should I do?

A: We don’t always have up to date news on this at Kongming’s Archives because we are not always online when the issue occurs. If you want to know what is going on please check this server information page. The <a href="http://the-scholars.com/" target="_blank">Scholars of Shen Zhou</a> is being run off the “Jupiter” server. Further announcements about our server can be found here. If both of these pages fail to explain the occurrence, please send James an email so he can look into it. If you are also willing to perform a traceroute and email me the results, that would be great, (<a href="http://www.debug.net/connectivity/" target="_blank">go here</a> and enter “the-scholars.com”).

[Rhiannon]

Since I know some of you notice these things:

I have just recently gone through a major member pruning here (not quite done yet, but I'm wrapping up). Currently, we've gone from 89 pages of members to 64... that's approximately 500 members that have been deleted. We do this every once in a great while, and we really needed it this time. Accounts have been deleted (or are being deleted) as follows:

1) Accounts that are more than 2 months old (June 2003 or older) that have zero posts.

2) Accounts that are more than 3 months old that have under 10 posts that have not been within the last 3 months.

3) Many banned users will have their accounts deleted shortly enough (the ban will still be present however on them).


If you have been affected by the member pruning, it is certainly not our intention to delete you out of spite or anything of that nature. Your account just happened to fall in one of these criteria and it was pruned along with everything else. If you lost your account, you may register under the same email as before, and unless someone else grabs it, under the same name as well.

Along with that, I would also note to our members, that because 500 accounts were washed out, a lot of names previously taken up by these prior members are now completely free. If you once wanted a name that was taken, it would be a good time to now check and see if you can change it to what you'd like. Two I'd note that were waiting for this were Chuko Liang and Phoenix. There's also a lot of RTK fellow names free, including Zhuge Liang, Zhuge Kongming, Xiahou Dun, and etc. Now is the time to take advantage of these opened name slots (it's up to you to check for them), before they get taken up by someone else who will get deleted in a future pruning.

[Rhiannon]

Two minor announcements to make (well, one is not so minor).

The first is that the issues with the Morphorums and their members appear to be solved. That doesn't mean I'm not skeptical (and they know that I am), but I have appreciated the apologies that have come my way. I do want to express, to them and to you all, that I never took anything personal. The only thing I was really offended about was the harrassment that was involved: the utter crap that was posted about me here and on their forums alike. My personal well being didn't matter; what did matter to me was what the spam and posted insults on Scholars were doing to the forum and to the members here. I have accepted the apologies per viso things come to a permanent halt; I trust those good favors will continue.


The second, which is far more important in terms of this board, is my concern with the hostilities still present. We have never addressed it directly, though it has been discussed amongst the administrators before, but there needs to be something clarified now: you cannot hide flames through emoticons and 'sarcasm' and expect it to not be considered a flame.

Throughout my time here on Scholars, I have seen countless members use and in response to someone's argument. These emoticons certainly have their uses on this board; using them to insult someone or their argument is not one of them. The same goes for 'sarcasm'. There are plenty of uses for sarcasm; flaming someone with it is not acceptable. I will not accept the excuse "It was just sarcasm" or "Haven't you ever heard of sarcasm?" in response to some 'witty' comment that is a poorly hidden flame. I certainly have heard of sarcasm, most of the members have heard of sarcasm, and a poor use of sarcasm cannot be excused simply by labelling it sarcasm. The label 'sarcasm' does not disguise the fact that it is a flame, and it will be dealt with as such.

If you have to insult someone, keep it to yourself. If you want to criticize their argument, do it properly, by providing proof of the holes in their logic or the falsity of the facts they have presented. Do not take it upon yourself to belittle another person, ever.

Hence, to those guilty parties, do not be surprised if you find yourself recieving warnings for 'sarcasm' or 'emoticons' that I've labelled flaming. Learn to debate without insulting and belittling, and you won't have to recieve warnings of this nature.

[Rhiannon]

I'm dropping this here because I pruned the thread out of Public Council, and I want everyone to remember this:

The only time age, in terms of administration and moderation, comes into account is... never. Oh, sometimes we think to ourselves, "That member must be 10 years old, they're spamming enormously and none of their posts make sense", we make actions based on immaturity shown through their posts. Unless they tell us, we almost never have an idea how old someone is, nor do I care. I've seen adults come here and act worse than children. Maturity is an individual thing and it gets judged on an individual basis.

There was an incident on the Sim where we banned a user who was too young, but the main reason he was banned was his lack of maturity in posting and following rules. The age was just a clinker (since legally, you must be 13 to be on these forums).

Members, however, can get pushy and judgemental sometimes. I like to think of our member base here as fairly mature in that regard, and able to be non-judgemental in age, but I have seen a few make harrassing posts of that matter. Needless to say, they usually get a flame warning. The comment "what are you, a little kid?" or "You must only be what, 13 years old? X can't possibly be Y!" are absolutely inflammatory because they are meant to insult the maturity and intelligence of the members.

In summary: If someone is harrassing you in regards to your age, report it to a moderator or administrator, and we will handle it appropriately.