Forum Rules

Here are the current forum rules for AfterDawn, which should be followed at all times.

General rules

1. Before starting a new thread, use SEARCH first (located on top of the page..) to see if your question has been answered before!

2. Consider an appropriate forum before posting your question -- look at the forum descriptions on the main forum page first.

3. Post your question only once! Don't cross-post your questions to multiple forums!

4. Don't just ask questions and leave the forum after you've received an answer, try to contribute something as well.

5. -> PIRACY AND LINKING TO PIRATED MATERIAL IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE FROZEN IF YOU DO THIS <-

6. No foul language, insults, personal attacks or otherwise rude messages.

7. Describe your problem specifically -- including the thread topic, because this helps people who are willing to answer to you.

8. Don't reply with an off-topic comment/question -- instead start a new thread.

9. No ALL CAPS MESSAGES or you will be banned (you know, turn the caps lock off before you type anything).

10. Don't post your email address to the forums! Spambots love dumb forum users who post their email addresses to public sites and grab those addresses and you will soon discover the wonders of penis enlargement kits and other really useful products posted daily to your inbox.

11. Don't abuse private messages -- if your post CAN be posted to public forums, POST IT to public forums. Some of our knowledgeable members receive hundreds of private messages daily and might abandon the site if asking questions through private messages continues.

12. Repeated posts to increase total number of posts is not allowed. Especially if your message is the last in the thread, edit it rather than post a new message.

13. Do not "bump" up threads that you want to remain on the first page. Instead contact a moderator and ask him to "sticky" the thread if necessary.

14. If you see a post that violates any of these rules, please report it to our moderators using the "Report an offensive post" link. Do not play the role of a moderator if you are not one. There is absolutely no need to nitpick on the posts of new users. Let the moderators do their work.



Advertising and scams

1. Advertising via forum messages is strictly prohibited. If you need to advertise your products on our site, contact us via the feedback form and we will negotiate an advertising contract with you/your company.

2. Linking to pyramid schemes and other forms of "free schemes" is stricly prohibited (see [ link ] )

3. Providing affilate tagged links to products or services is not allowed.

Invites to private sites

Requesting for or offering invites to private sites (such as private torrent trackers or similar private P2P sites) is not allowed. This rule has been requested by several private site administrators, and we honor their request. (Penalty: 2 day ban)

Signatures

These rules exist to make viewing the forum as pleasant as possible to all users. Even though you might think signatures with large pictures look cool, some might find them extremely annoying.

1. Text-only signatures should have at most 5 lines of text.

2. An image-only signature should be less than 50kb in size, and be at most 500 pixels wide and 200 pixels tall.

3. If you use an animated picture in the signature, it should not be too distractive. Eg. blinking images or images with quick movement are not allowed.

4. If you want to use both text and image in your signature the image should not be more than 500 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall, and you can use up to three lines of text.

5. All the abovementioned rules for forum posts apply also to the signatures.

Violation of these rules does not lead to an immediate ban. However if requested user must edit his or her signature to fit these guidelines.

Administrative actions

Messages that break any of the rules above can be removed or edited by the moderators and administrators of these forums. Even if something isn't specifically mentioned in the rules, it doesn't mean that it would be permitted. It is up to the moderators and administrators to determine what is appropriate and what is not.

Users who willfully violate the forum rules can be banned by the moderators and administrators.

Forum Etiquette

Besides following the above forum rules, there is a forum etiquette that should be followed to make everyone's time on the Afterdawn forums more enjoyable.

If possible, try to give as much information as possible when posting so that help can be more easily administered. Posts such as "my dvd burner wont burn" will not give contributers anything to work with whereas a post that includes perhaps your DVD burner model, the last thing you tried to burn that worked, and some PC specs would give other users a much better foundation to help answer your problem.

Multi-posting of threads (posting the same problem multiple times) is not acceptable, and therefore should not be done. All multiples of the thread will be closed anyway so why do it?

Double posting in a thread is also not considered acceptable and instead you should edit your posts. (We will go into this in the next part of the series)

Cursing is clearly not acceptable as younger kids may be reading the forums.

Text speak (yo waz gud, im da sh!t) is also generally frowned upon and makes your post much harder to read which is generally not what you want to do.

Finishing Up

I hope this first part of the series was helpful and make sure to read the next few installments which will help you learn how to find what you are looking for without posting a new thread, how to post, edit, private message and how to use the excellent guides and glossary here at AfterDawn.

Version History

v1.0 -- 10th October, 2007, First version online (Dvdback23)