Rules Of The Forum

[Geoff_B]

Due to the spammers attempting to troll the forum all new members will need to be validated by Admins. This means that although they can read most threads and reply to some no new threads can be started until full membership is granted.

To aid validation please complete your profiles in my controls to at least give us an understanding of who you are and help distinguish the true What-iffer from the pseudo-member only interested in spamming the site.

Current members please note we now have over 700 members; some of which will be duplicates, some will be casual members who join browse and never return others will sleeper members who join browse but decline from posting and finally there are those true members who participate.

Could all active members please ensure their profiles are entered, the sections on location, date of birth and interests. The elements relating to on-line contact details are best left off just in case as they are not hidden unlike the email addresses.

We will be running a purge on inactive members so those sleeper members please join in or may you be purged in the cull.

Regards

Thorvic

[Geoff_B]

Just a reminder for everybody of the rules of the forum to keep this place nice and friendly. I have had numerous complaints on various issues which basically fall down to a failure to keep within the guidelines and spirit of the place.

1. Signatures - These are supposed to be a couple of lines long with possibly a quote, info about yourself or a link to your own/others websites that may be of interest to other members. We would appreciate it you would leave out graphics, whilst initially looking good they soon get boring and they also take up valuable space and bandwidth, not everybody has broadband and these can serious slow page loading. Plus the space they take up on the page soon pushes other posts on to other pages to quickly.

2. Quoting other posts - Please do not re-qoute long posts with graphics, its one thing to mention a line from another post or reply to a previous post but completely copying a post is a waste of time and space again.

3. Political Posts - To be avoided at all costs in most areas except for alt history, due to the global nature of the forum its very hard to not offend somebody else especially if voicing a personal opinion. Due to the sensitivity and over reaction to some subjects even speculative posts relating to alternate history where the politics is a key factor in structuring your alternative timelines is generating over reactionary responses. Please remember that alt history posts are just that and members expect constructive critisim and eductated discussion to formulate thier timeline and not to get dragged into a reactionary argument.

4. Posting images - there are a number of images being copied and posted these days, please remeber to quote the source as you never know if the originator if the image is on the forum or not !!!!!.

5. Sniping - Its getting noticaible that some posts can generate a negative reaction resulting in a snipe or a slap down at the memeber who posted it. This is very bad form and can lead to serious disagreements, the same goes for putting down other forums or people, whilst you may or even we may disagree with whats occuring elsewhere on the net its not our place to be hostile. This can lead to serious problems to the forum and members should it get out of hand.

Minor breaches of the rules will result in a friendly warning, further breaches or a blatant breach will result in a suspension of posting rights. Continued breaches in the guideline will result in membership being revoked and a permament ban.

Sorry to get so politically correct boys but its all about respect of the forum and its members, failure on either can lead to a rapid decline in the standards and a decent into chaos.

We are a modelling forum focused on the 'What-if' aspect of the hobby and its associated areas of interest.

The Mod Team

[anthonyp]

Just a reminder, as they're popping up again:  Banners in signatures are not allowed (see rule 1 above).

[Supertom]

Hi all,

Just a friendly reminder, that animated .gifs are discouraged on this site.  The reason for it is that like .jpeg file attachments, they can be a potential security threat.  We don't have a lot of resources to fix stuff that breaks due to attacks so we're asking you guys to help out by helping minimize the risks.  We'd appreciate it if you would take them down.

Thanks,

Management.

[anthonyp]

Also, banners in signatures aren't allowed.

[PR19_Kit]

Also, banners in signatures aren't allowed.

Erm, I thought we were encouraged to display the 'I voted.........' banners? How long are they allowed to be there?

[Thorvic]

The Whiffies signature has been approved for use during the whiffies period, after which it should really be removed.

We had to ban picture signatures as some bright sparks filled them with pictures, logos etcs which impacted on page loading, reduced the number of posts per page and basically distract from the message actually being posted.

[The Wooksta!]

Good.  Not before time either.  I recall complaining about this some years ago as pages were taking AGES to load because of the things.

[Supertom]

Hey everybody,

If you're quoting/posting some information you've found, please quote the source.  A lot of hard work went into that research that's being used and it's only proper that we give proper credit to the author of that information.