We strive to make our forums a place where everyone feels welcome and comfortable, and where the content presented is of a high standard. In order to do this, we have to enforce certain rules. If you read them over and try to understand why they exist, we hope that you will agree with the fact that they are necessary in order to keep the quality of our forums high. We also have an entertaining short Flash movie available which sums up most of the common sense regarding posting on any message board, though it was not created specifically for our own (thanks, Steam). Another highly recommended resource is the Internet Writing Guide - a 10-minute course in online writing style. Much of what is covered in the rules listed below can be learned easily by reading through that brief course.

When you post in our forums, please comply with the following rules:

• (1) Only one registered account per person. To prevent abuse, members are only allowed one registered account per person. In the case that you lose your password and cannot retrieve it automatically, you should contact us with your login details and we will reset the password for you, so please DO NOT just create a new account. Any duplicate accounts we discover will be deleted without warning.

• (2) Do not post your thread headlines or messages in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS or excessively punctuated. This is hard on the eyes and annoying to read. ALL CAPS TEXT is not welcome on any message board. Posts with more than three question (?) or exclamation (!) marks also fall under this category.

• (3) Before starting a new thread, see if anyone else has started a similar one recently. There's no sense in beginning a new thread if a discussion on the same topic occurred not long ago (i.e. if a thread about it can be found on the latest page of the threads list). Often a new thread asks a question that was already answered in the old thread. If you don't feel like checking previous posts manually, you can use the search feature on the boards. However! do not revive a topic older than a few months unless you have a VERY good reason to do so. (Also make sure to check the date when the original post was created since responding to topics half a year old or to members that have been long gone will make you look silly.) Moderators won't look kindly upon that either. If you are not sure, it is always better to open a new thread, not resurrect an ancient one.

• (4) Limit your thread headlines to normal length. People will be reading your whole thread so you don't need to cram half of your message in the subject line.

• (5) Remember 3 basic tips for improving the quality of your thread headlines. (1) Start your headline with a capital letter and write names of places, persons etc. with a capital letter as well (Imoen is -not- imoen, Athkatla is -not- athkatla). (2) If your headline is a simple statement (for example: Multiplayer problem), do not place a period (.) after it. Except for unfinished statements marked by 3 periods (...), there should be NO periods anywhere in any headline. (3) With the exception of periods mentioned in count (2), you should always punctuate your headlines. That especially goes for questions (for example: How do I kill Irenicus?).

• (6) Make sure the headline of your thread is descriptive. Do not make headlines like: "A Question", "Please Help", "Read This" and similar. They tell us absolutely nothing about the meaning of your message. Moderators will have to edit such headlines to something related to your post, and we're sure you don't want the moderators to remember you as "that guy/girl who can't even get a headline right".

• (7) No "l33t 5p34k" and/or AOL shorthand (u, r, l8r etc) like: "I'm about 2 run off 2 the hills 2 see him." or "What do u get if u just take his body 2 the wizards?" Most people here trying to make sense out of such mutilated sentences will either not understand them at all, or need twice as long as if you had written "2" as to and "u" as you; the spelling people normally use. You aren't allowed to write like that in any formal correspondence, and we chose to hold our message board to the same higher standard. Not only is such "|33t" writing annoying and hard to read, but also makes you look silly since (hopefully) you are the only one in the thread doing it.

• (8) Write complete sentences and use proper punctuation, spelling and grammar*. Typing a 400 word run-on sentence will not gain you any respect. People reading your post will likely skip over what you have to say if it is difficult to read or understand. Learn to use paragraphs. If you live in an English-speaking country (exceptions apply; see FAQ), continuous show of lack of effort concerning punctuation, spelling and grammar will earn you the Grammatical Moron of the Week plaque without exception. Consequently you might find yourself banned if you keep displaying that elementary school education was lost on you.
  *[If you have an actual disability like dyslexia that prevents you from complying with the above, please mention that in your introductory post in our Sorcerous Sundries forum once you start posting or inform us of your disability via PM so that we know that you are doing your best even if your posts are sometimes hard to understand.]

• (9) Signatures are allowed, but subject to certain limitations.
  - You can't use any images in your signature
  - Maximum Characters in Signature Including BBCode Markup: 125
  - Maximum Characters in Signature Excluding BBCode Markup: 100
  - Maximum Lines in Signature: 2
  - this is allowed: basic/link vB Code
  
  Signature restrictions for SPS account holders do allow for images/smilies as well as advertising* and have higher maximum characters and lines allowed, plus certain additional allowances. Check the SPS forum for details.
  
  *Advertising: Any kind of commercial product/site advertising in signatures (or posts) is allowed ONLY for active SPS account holders - your ads will expire along with your SPS account. To keep it simple - if you're selling a product or a service on the site that you link to, it's considered commercial. If the site is your own and you don't have an SPS account, you can display its url in your public profile as your Home Page, but you are NOT allowed to advertise it in your signatures. Of course, there are exceptions that don't quite fit under the "commercial" umbrella description, so if in doubt, contact Taluntain with your proposed signature for verification.
  
  Censoring: Please do not include any fully or partially auto-censored words in your signature. Auto-censor is something that shouldn't need to be applied in any signature, so keep them clean.
  
  Promoting Mods: If you are a mod maker and would like to promote your mod(s) in your signature, please limit your promotion to the name and url of the mod(s), or make a blanket link to a listing of multiple mods, e.g. "All my mods". This is a precaution to prevent signature wars between mod makers.
  

• (10) Do not advertise a site or service with the intent to expand its member base at our expense. This goes for any public website, community or service advertising, as well as any private means of contacting members through our boards. Recruiting members from an existing community ("poaching") is considered very bad netiquette and something that we have zero tolerance for.

• (11) Criticize and discuss to your heart's content, but do it constructively. No attacks, insults, or flames - be it on someone's person, religious beliefs, race, national background, sexual orientation or whatever. This is one of our most important rules. If you have a problem with somebody, do not flame them on our boards. No flaming of ANY kind is welcome here, neither in public posts nor in private correspondence via our message boards. The quickest way to get banned from our boards is to break this rule.
  
  NOTE: Every member has the right to manually decline the receiving of private messages or reputation (with or without comments) from any other regular member for any reason. If a member directs you not to communicate with them via PM or to stop giving them reputation, they will only be expected to ask that of you ONCE, via a separate PM. You are required to abide by their wishes and cease such communication with them immediately, but you have the right to request the same of them (i.e. that they should not PM or use reputation on you again). Your counter-request should be in the form of a SINGLE response to the original PM.
  
  To report violations of this rule, please click on the Report Private Message icon in the top right corner of the PM in question. This will send a copy of the unwanted PM to our moderators and they will deal with the offender. To report the receiving of reputation hits from someone after you have notified them that you don't wish to receive reputation from them, please PM Taluntain.

• (12) No excessive swearing. We try to keep Boards o' Magick as clean as possible. If you want to swear, this is not the place for you. Automatic censoring will pick up the most offensive swear words and replace them with asterisks. Please do not space out swear words, replace one character in a swear word with an asterisk, or use any alternative spelling to avoid the auto-censor. Rather use one of our appropriate emoticons or less offensive words to get your frustration across.

• (13) No inappropriate*/obscene/adult material outside MUG. Please do not post or link to any inappropriate, obscene or sexually explicit content, be it stories, pictures, sounds, animations, games, etc. outside of the Mature Users Group (MUG). SP is a family-friendly website and as such we make every effort that the majority of the content is suitable for everyone.
  *[A couple of examples of inappropriate material would be any discussions or stories on the topic of suicide (please read this), or posts where too much personal information about any of our members is revealed. We feel that it is in the best interest of all our members that we discourage posts with such content.]

• (14) No intellectual property violations. We don't take kindly to people using our forums for the illegal solicitation or trade of illegal or copyrighted material. Requesting cracks, keys and the like is out of the question. The same goes for any discussions about pirated software.

• (15) Make sure you are posting in the correct forum. For example, if you have a question about the D&D rules, it goes into the Dungeons & Dragons forum. If there's a forum specifically for your topic, please make sure to post it there. If it doesn't belong anywhere else, put it in the Whatnots forum. Threads opened in the wrong forums are frequently moved, but never deleted, so if a thread of yours disappears from the forum where you've posted it originally, check the e-mail account you signed up with for a notification of where your thread has been moved, or PM one of the moderators or admins for more information.

• (16) Make sure that you are posting on-topic. Posting something unrelated to the original post is called being off-topic. While this is permitted somewhat as long as it develops out of the original post and remains at least vaguely connected to the issue, starting to post about something completely unrelated to it is frowned upon. In such a case you should open a new thread for it, if needed. If you feel the need to converse further about something unrelated with someone you can either PM or e-mail them, or come to our chatroom and open a private discussion there.

• (17) If you have a personal issue, keep it personal. We don't want our forums clogged up with posts specifically for one person that aren't of general interest, so if it can be handled over PM or e-mail, please handle it privately.

• (18) No cross-posting across different threads and/or forums. Please do not post the same message in multiple threads or forums. Make one post, either a reply or a new thread, in the proper forum, and no more. Once you get a reply to that, feel free to post more on that subject. But under no circumstances should you open multiple threads about the same thing, anywhere. Hijacking other people's posts to get answers to something unrelated to the original topic is considered extremely rude as well.

• (19) No re-registering or posting via proxy if you are banned. If you're banned, that means banned. Please do not register another name and start posting again. We will contact your ISP if necessary.

• (20) Do not ask to be a moderator or admin, or pretend that you are one. We are not looking for new moderators or admins, and if we were, we would not pick anyone who posts/mails us asking for it. The only persons qualified for interpreting and enforcing our forum rules are the moderators and administrators whose status is written in white text below their user name. NO ONE else should publicly advise any members of BoM how to comply with these rules, or publicly tell them how they have broken any of them in their opinion.
  If you feel that a certain member is in violation of any of our forum rules, please use the Report Post icon () inside every post (to the left of the signature area). When you report a post via the said icon, we get exact identification of the problematic post, so you don't need to describe where the post is at or link to it - you simply explain why you're reporting it. Please make use of the post reporting facility if you're making a general report that the first moderator who sees it should act upon. All such reports will be treated as being anonymous and strictly confidential. We will investigate the reports and act, if we deem it necessary. NOTE: This rule also applies to itself, meaning no one should publicly quote it to another member.
  
  If for some reason you want to notify only a single moderator of a problematic post, you can still do so via a private message to them (Taluntain, Blackthorne TA, dmc or Beren).

• (21) If you have an issue related to the moderators... If you have a problem with a ban or a thread being either closed, edited or deleted, be it yours or someone else's, send the moderators a private message or e-mail about it. If you have any comments regarding the actions of any of the administrators or moderators, PM or e-mail them personally. Please DO NOT post a message arguing about it on the forums, as it will likely be deleted. Also, please don't come to our chatroom and start arguing about it there, as you will be escorted outside. If you don't feel comfortable contacting one of the moderators, contact another one. This rule is enforced because every time someone starts arguing with the mods/admins, the thread is more or less ruined and nothing of relevance gets posted there any more. Obviously we do not want that happening.
  
  Please keep in mind that we have a very low tolerance for people who try to skirt the rules, seek loopholes or have authority issues. If we wanted to cover every single aspect of common sense we could write a whole book about it, but that's not really the point here. When it comes down to it, our list of rules here serves mostly as a set of community guidelines conveying the community spirit, and we believe it is thorough enough that if taken as a whole, everyone gets the picture of what is acceptable here and what isn't. The administrators and moderators have the authority to do and say whatever is necessary to keep Boards o' Magick the sort of place we want it to be, and if you don't agree, you are always free to leave. However, as we hate losing visitors over such trivialities, we would rather ask you to respect our rules even if you don't agree with all of them, and keep being a part of our community.
  
  NOTE: Should you ignore the rule above and begin an argument in a certain thread, or post a public remark which we feel requires response (for the purpose of damage control), we will usually respond ONCE in public as well (either that, or simply delete the comment, as noted above). If it comes to that, and you feel the need to add anything further, you should PM or e-mail the mod/admin who replied to your argument (as you should have done originally, see above). If, at this point, you attempt to create a full-blown public argument by responding in public again, your post WILL be deleted. We don't believe in airing dirty laundry in public any more than completely necessary, and will do our best to privately handle matters which only concern one particular user. We kindly ask you to do the same.

• (22) If you have a question related to any of the rules... It might seem to you that some of our rules are quite strict, and indeed they are. However, our enforcement of these rules is what makes the huge difference between our forums and 99% of similar forums on the Internet. You might also wonder why there are so many rules. The answer to this is very simple. We have to painfully explain nearly every aspect of common sense and acceptable behaviour, because if we miss one single point, people will claim that it was not covered in the rules and therefore they shouldn't be held accountable for it. Needless to say, that is not how it works.
  
  If you have any questions whatsoever about any of our rules, you are welcome to open a thread about it in the Sorcerous Sundries forum. Also feel free to PM or e-mail Taluntain if you require any further explanations as to why any of the rules above exist. For more general information about our message boards, please read the BoM Frequently Asked Questions.

What happens if you break the rules?

Members failing to comply with our rules will be issued a warning, sometimes in the form of a note appended to their post for minor infractions, via a private message (PM), infraction system or e-mail. It is every member's responsibility to regularly check his or her PMs or e-mail on the record for moderator notices. If our warnings go unacknowledged, we will be forced to suspend the posting privileges of the member in question until they have taken note of our warning(s).

Repeat and deliberate infractions may constitute removal from the board. The fact is, if you choose to make this place un-enjoyable for everyone else, you will be dealt with. We do log all accesses to the forums, and we will not hesitate to contact your ISP if you abuse our site or our visitors.

To conclude...

Finally, please don't think that simply because we state our rules in advance, we are overly strict in enforcing them and that we don't tolerate mistakes newbies tend to make. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless you really set out to break our rules on purpose, the worst thing you have to fear here is getting a warning PM from one of the moderators or administrators. In short - you don't need to be afraid to post for fear of making mistakes. We don't bite... much. ;) Thanks for reading.