Important Announcements Thread

[Rhiannon]

A reminder: animated avatars are not allowed on SoSZ. This is different from the Sim, but this is because the Sim is a game; this is an intellectual discussion and debate board.

We've been lax about this rule for a while, but I will start enforcing it again starting as of tonight. No animation in avatars will be allowed, even if it is very minor.

[James]

If someone contacted you claiming to be me over an instant messaging client, I’ll tell you right now, unless you already know me, that that person most likely is not me. If I were to contact you, you’d probably have a pretty good idea that you were really speaking to me pretty soon. Furthermore, I never use MSN. Just a heads up to the members.

[Rhiannon]

I'm going to pick on Justin as an example, but he's not the only culprit.

I have no problem with the D&D campaign being run in the Gaming forum. What I do have a problem is with the vertical length of some of your signatures, which, due to your character information, is becoming beyond acceptable or pleasant. As a general rule, signatures should be no more than 5 or 6 lines -- that's not a hard rule, but anything over six lines that isn't cut down with a size tag is getting too long vertically.

You don't have to get rid of any information, but you can cut it down tremendously. Watch me clean Justin's signature:

Horace Half-Orc Novice Barbarian
HP - 41 / 41
MP - 35 / 35
ATK - 11 + 5 = 16
DEF - 8 + 6 = 14
MAT - 8
MDF - 8
Acid Emerald, Bronze Weapon and Armor

Becomes:

Horace Half-Orc Novice Barbarian
HP - 41 / 41 MP - 35 / 35
ATK - 11 + 5 = 16 DEF - 8 + 6 = 14 MAT - 8 MDF - 8
Acid Emerald, Bronze Weapon and Armor

If you could devise an even better system for stats, like SimRTK's, where the signature could be cut even further to something like:

Horace Half-Orc Novice Barbarian
HP - 41 / 41 MP - 35 / 35
16(11) - 14 (8) - 8 - 8
Acid Emerald, Bronze Weapon and Armor

It would also be very helpful.


Those of you who have these extra long signatures will be getting PMs from me when I discover you, so please cut the vertical height down as shown above. Thank you.

[James]

I have just modified the permissions of the Imperial Edicts forum. Non-moderators cannot post in that forum any more. If you have questions please direct them to the Public Council forum, it has threads for everything we need.

[James]

The following forum rule has been clarified.

Gruesome or Disturbing Images
Do not ever post images that would highly disturb members using the IMG tag. I don’t want to see any exceptions to this rule from now on. Post them using the URL tag, and make sure an appropriate warning is provided. Furthermore, make sure you have a damn good reason for it. Against the war? Don’t bother posting images of a mangled child. People die in war, we know this, and that is going too far. Members who do this will be given a one time warning. These images are only appropriate when directly related to a topic, and not in general ways (such as the war example above).

[James]

Name Change Requests
We now have a new policy on name change requests. Essentially, those of you who are already members of the forum will be given one more with limitations and that will be a permanent name change. New members will not be given an additional name change. A new name change requests thread exists for these requests, and also includes the new rules and limitations. Please read it carefully before requesting a name change or asking questions.

Why? Well, name changes were starting to become a trend. People would pick something to entertain themselves for the next few months, sometimes even part of a profile, then discard it when they got bored of it. It made it difficult to keep track of who was who, and was also frustrating. Now you get to pick something permanent.

[James]

Kong Wen has been added as an administrator of SoSZ. That makes the current administrators James, Wild-Eyes, Lion’s Mane, and Kong Wen. You should send him chocolate covered raisins or buy him a book he likes in an attempt to win favor—or something. Anyway, if he has something to say I’m sure he’ll make an announcement himself; I’m off to bed. It is too early in the morning for me to be typing and trying to make sense.

[Rhiannon]

We are modifying the signatures rule just slightly to add the following bolded information:

:arrow: Signatures
The maximum number of characters that can be placed in a signature is 255 (and this limit is enforced by the forum). Do not use colors other than faded shades in your signature, do not increase the size of your signature, do not place images inside your signature (including excessive smilies), and do not use all caps. These rules improve forum readability (forums exist to have text-based conversation and to exchange knowledge) and page download times. Please try to avoid too much vertical space in your signatures.

If you have a signature that is posted in all capital letters, or mostly so, please modify it as soon as possible. Thank you.

[James]

The forum has been upgraded to phpBB 2.0.10.

This upgrade resolves compatibility issues with PHP 5, which, if our host upgraded to before this upgrade was made, would have broken the forum. If anything doesn't work properly after this update, please let me know right away.

[James]

Clarification made to forum rules:

:arrow: Members Enforcing Forum Rules
As a member of this forum, for various reasons, you might be tempted to ‘help’ the moderation team by enforcing, reminding of, or advising on the forum rules to other members and the leadership team. In general, we ask that you do not do this, as it is the job of our team. Moderators in this forum have access to every other member of the team and have been trained to handle these situations, while you, as a member, do not.

We do not mind it when members contact other members by PM with polite and constructive feedback about matters those members can change, but involvement should not move beyond this point. Examples of unacceptable response include “This thread is spam, and should be closed,” “This topic is pointless,” “You’ll get a spam warning for this,” etc. We ask that, when given a position like this, you post whatever useful information you can (and want to) manage in the thread answering the question, and if you feel certain actions should be taken in relation to it, contact an active moderator in that forum (or an administrator as well if you wish). Problems in this area can result in spam warnings.