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| The Western Star Important or useful announcements can be found here. |
| Announcements in Forum : The Western Star |
10-08-2009 until 10-01-2020
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Forum rules
English Only
As with all other aspects of the game, this forum is English only. Please limit other languages to well known (or translated) short quotes or phrases and use only when appropriate in the situation. Manners Please treat each other with respect and remain polite. Do not forget that there are people of different ages and with different gaming ‘know-how’. Therefore, please stay patient if questions arise that you may consider "stupid" or "childish". You may use tactics to provoke your opponents in the `Politics and Propaganda’ forum as long as the tactics are game-based. Personal insults are not allowed anywhere in this forum or in any ‘other’ private format. Please make sure that all insults or “flames” are strictly game-related. Any Real Life (RL) related insults will be strictly punished. Users are not allowed to impersonate moderators. Trying to act as one is forbidden and will lead to a warning. Please do not feed the trolls and do not post in threads that are likely to be deleted. Posts like "In before lock" are forbidden. Players are also forbidden to provoke the moderators against them in a deliberate way. Posts made for the purpose of creating a personal conflict between users and staff will be deleted and their author will be punished severely. Players who deliberately act against the building of a community will be denied access to these forums. Posting Before you post, please make sure that you know what you are posting is within the forum rules. If you are not sure, contact a moderator. Offtopic Posting Please post answers/comments that are relevant and relate/refer to the thread topic. If you cannot post a sensible answer it is better to avoid saying anything. This is particularly true for one-word-posts like "lol" or "rofl". To avoid repetition of arguments especially in long discussions you should always read the whole topic before posting. Posting Pictures It is allowed to post pictures without any comment as long as they obviously belong to the topic of the thread. Pictures are restricted to a maximum size of 640x480 pixels. If you want to post something larger than that, please provide only the link for the picture and not the actual picture in the post. No animated images are allowed on the forums. Post in the right forum Please take a moment before posting a new topic and make sure you are posting in the correct forum so the administrators don't have to move it later. Please be aware that some sub-forums have additional rules. Please read them before posting. Avoid repeating topics Before you post a new topic please make sure that there has not already been a similar topic. Proper naming of topics Please choose appropriate titles when creating a topic. Please avoid incomplete or attention seeking names as they are deemed unfavourable. Generalistic titles such as "question", "help", "lol" should also be avoided. Please reread the text before posting it to avoid mistakes. Your text might be read by hundreds of players so make sure it is understandable. Be economical with quotations! Quote only the relevant parts so that posts won't get unnecessarily long. P&P P&P stands for Politics and Propaganda The idea of P&P is to post about ongoing conflicts in the attempt to spread information, ideas and even rumors in order to help yourself or harm your opponents. P&P can be a valuable tool on the forums and bring a new element to the game. All P&P should be done in character. No personal attacks or flaming are allowed. Examples Acceptable:
PnP can be great fun for those who participate. If used properly you can rally support for your side and turn those against you into allies. It can also cast a light on your opponent that the rest of the world is not aware of. Your opponent can use the same tactics for the same means. The thread starter can designate the thread is PnP by adding the PnP prefix to the original post. Once a thread has been designated PnP all posters are to remain in character and post within the spirit of the thread. Staff has the right to delete any thread designated as PnP that does not conform to the rules and infract if necessary. Grammar/spelling flames It is not allowed to rebuke another user concerning his grammar/spelling. If the grammar/spelling of a user is that bad, that the content gets lost, you can use the "report post" feature to report the post. Then an admin or mod will deal with it. Extreme content Anything deemed politically extreme, pornographic, illegal, or unsavory in any way is prohibited in this game whether posted or referenced. Racist or ethnic bashing comments are forbidden even if used in jest. Mentioning drugs is allowed, but comments that play down the use of illegal drugs or promote the use of said substances are strictly forbidden. Please note that starring out characters like "F*ck" does not make it any less a swear word. it is still perfectly understandable and still intentionally offensive, and thus is forbidden in all forms. Copyright Do not use copyrighted materials of any kind in your posts. Reporting posts All members have the right to report posts made by members of the forum. The function should be used only to report posts that break the rules and must be accompanied by a reason for the report. After the report has been sent it will be checked by a moderator. Abuse of the report system is prohibited and violators will be warned or in extreme cases banned. Complaints about other players To report the breaching of rules by another player In Game please use the support system. Do not open complaint topics in the forum. Any reference to IG (In Game) Bans, Ban discussion (forum or IG) or cheating is forbidden. The West Team will act with discretion in all situations. This is to maintain the privacy that stands between Moderators and Players, and we expect that privacy to be upheld by players also. This applies to Forum Moderation as well as IG Moderation. See the "Moderation" section for more on Forum Moderation. Signatures and Avatars Avatars may not exceed 80x80 Pixels. Animated images and links with referrer-IDs are not allowed. Signatures Signatures can be a maximum of 120 pixels high x 700 pixels wide. All signatures must comply with the current rules, especially advertising. No animated signatures are allowed.    Spoilers You are able to put spoiler tags into signatures. This then restricts you to a 95 pixel height signature. Here is an example. (not to scale)  Spoilers do not affect the height of a signature until clicked; therefore you are allowed extra space in these. Please keep these within 640 x 480 pixels, which is equivalent to 18 lines of text. Please do not embed spoilers into spoilers. Official the-west signatures You are able to fit two official signatures into your signature. They must be in the following format.  You can also have one official signature, and directly under it three lines of text. A line of text is considered any line in the signature, whether it includes text or is a blank line separating text.Quotes You are able to have a maximum of a three line quote with no extras. If your quote has two lines, you are able to have one line of text directly under it.Moderation Moderation The Moderators (mods) of the forum are volunteers recruited by the Admin and Community Manager. They come in Three Forms: Forum Moderator: Only have rights in the specific forums they Moderate, nowhere else. They will moderate fairly and will answer any questions you have that they are able to. In Game Moderator: Not connected to the forum. Sheriffs: Overseers of the Deputies, these people are the ones to go to if you have a problem with any of the forum-level moderation or if you have any questions on moderation in general. If you have a problem with the moderation of any subforum or the forum in general, please do not create a topic about it. Contact a Sheriff with your problem and we will either explain the reasons or do our best to solve the problem should one exist. Creating Topics only serves to increase public unrest and will not solve any problems. If you wish to create a topic regarding moderation, please contact the relevant Sheriff or Deputy first. The mods have a very tough job: it can be hard to keep the balance between a clean forum and a fun forum on a daily basis, and they also receive a lot of negative comments and abuse regularly. We would ask that you remain patient with all moderators and that you would be helpful and polite when talking to them; this will make their job that much easier, and in turn make the forum a more pleasant place. Please note that most Sheriff's and Deputies still play The West! They have as much a right to post in the capacity of a player as any other user on the forums: No mod will ever mod the worlds that they play, and thus there is no element of Bias involved. Remember that they are volunteers, and are players just like you. This means that outside their realm as a moderator, they are to be treated as you would treat any other player (see Manners section at the top). This is not an excuse to give out about a mod’s moderation, however, which is in no way related to their gameplay! Punishments Breaching of the assigned rules will lead to an initial warning. The creation of other accounts to evade the blocking of the forum account is not allowed and will be punished. In very extreme cases a permanent account ban can be issued for the forum and for the game if persistent Ban Evading occurs. The Deputy Sheriff (mods) have the right to edit or delete posts and close topics. Please follow their instructions. Discussions about their behaviour are to be held over the support system. Every complaint or criticism regarding moderation should be voiced using the support system, or PMed to a Sheriff in minor cases. If you think your request affects a large part of the community and has to be discussed in public, you can post it in the "General" forum in a non-provoking and well-phrased way. Arguing against the The West team that violates these rules will be punished and topics that seek to create or worsen existing problems will be deleted. If you notice that your post or topic was deleted, it has been removed for a good reason. Please do not rewrite it. If need be, PM the moderator in question about why it was removed. Topics posted in the "General" and "Suggestions and Discussions" forums need to be approved by a moderator before they are seen by other users. This has been done because of the high number of topics posted there that were in the wrong section of the forum. Please do not repost those or open other topics to ask why they weren't approved. If a topic in those forums hasn't been approved for a few days and you believe it should be you can PM the moderator responsible for the forum. Please note that We reserve the right to ban or infract players even if they haven't violated the stated forum rules. Other Use of private messages Conversations, discussions and arguments between two people should be done in private. Please use the private message system in this forum or other applications (e.g. IRC, skype, ...) Advertisement Topics and/or posts that are created solely for the purpose of advertising other websites without connection to "The West" are forbidden. "Referer-ID's" and thief-game-links are particularly unwanted. Discussions relating to other games are allowed. If you are unsure as to whether something is against the rules or not, please contact a moderator before you go ahead with it! We will advise you as soon as possible on whether it is allowed on the forum or not. |
