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The Rules

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obesebear:
RULES
This is the rules page. I welcome all of our older members and new members to read over these and familiarize yourself with them. All users (even brand new ones) are expected to know and follow these rules. Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse. You registered for an account on these forums and thus you should know these.


We Do Not Condone Software Piracy
Asking where to get illegal software or cracks will not be tolerated. Asking for support for the Ultima Edition or any other pirated version of the game will not be tolerated. Any discussion regarding pirated software is an immediate warning. Assisting people that use pirated software is also forbidden.


We Do Not Allow Ripped Content
Content ripped from other games, including models, backgrounds, textures, etc., is not to be distributed or requested. This content is just as copyrighted as the games it's ripped from. Please only distribute things either you created yourself, or you have permission to distribute.


Asking for Help
We are here to help, but like to see people who try to help themselves.

* Try to find an answer by searching the Qhimm forums, there's also our Wiki Page.
* Try to find an answer by searching the Web
* Try to find an answer by experimentation!
* If you still cannot find a solution, make sure your post includes information about what you've tried.
* Be patient. We can't all be online all the time, and nagging will make us want to help you less, and may lead to warnings.
Posting Etiquette
* Double posting is generally not allowed. If your last post was less than 24-48 hours ago, edit your post. Some leeway will be given for new users who do not have access to the edit function yet, but please don't abuse this.
* Don't post the same thread in multiple boards. If it's in the right place, people will find it. If it's in the wrong place, a moderator will move it.
* Posting in threads more than a month old IS allowed. However, if your post contains no relevant information it will likely be deleted and you will be warned. If a link is broken, inform the author by using a Private Message.
* CAPS LOCK MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU'RE BEING AGGRESSIVE!! WE DON'T LIKE AGGRESSIVE PEOPLE!! SO DON'T USE IT!
* Smilies and shorthand (like lol) have a place in a message board, but too many can be annoying. If the amount of smileys you post is more than 1/5 of your word count, you may consider cutting some of them.
* Everyone interprets things differently than others depending on their culture, life experiences, and many other factors. If somebody posts a message that could be considered insulting or offensive to you, don't immediately flame them.
* Don't insult anyone. Report to a moderator if someone has insulted and/or threatened you. Responding in kind could get you warned as well.
* Be constructive with your criticism, if you like someones work then take the time to explain why rather than cluttering a thread with random words like "Nice" or "Cool". Similarly, if you don't like the work then be polite enough to offer advice on how it could be improved.
* Learn to use grammar and punctuation. Use of a spell checker is a good idea as well. "lol y evrone noes wat im sayin :?: :?: lol" is not an acceptable way of writing. Remember a well worded post shows respect to the people that are reading it.
* Try not to quote images. There is no need for it. If you wish to quote a post that contains an image just remove the link from the quote.
* Image macros will be confined to Completely Unrelated. There is no reason for them to be elsewhere as they add nothing to the discussion. This is not /b/.
Posting to Specific Boards
General guidelines on what should be posted where. These will be enforced. Obviously there will be some overlap between boards and there may be some confusion on which area a topic should reside in. Any gray area on where a topic should go will be decided by a moderator.

General Discussion
This is the "catch all" forum. Feel free to post anything pertaining to one of the Final Fantasies. If you don't think your thread really fits in any of the other forums, putting it here is just fine.

Audio/Graphical/Gameplay/Other Mods
These forums are for incomplete mods. Try to use common sense when creating threads; your custom Cloud model may be beautiful, but it doesn't belong in Audio mods.
     Releases
     These subforums are for released mods. As a general rule these should be pretty much complete.

Aali's Custom FF7/FF8 Driver
This forum is only for Aali's driver. If you're playing FF7 for the PC, chances are you either ARE using this, or should be. Only Aali can post in the release thread. All questions/comments related to hid driver go in the other one.

Tools
This forum is what makes EVERYTHING possible. Only threads containing programs that edit the game go here. No need for an example on this one. Programs only.

Troubleshooting
For ANY problems or questions about the game. However, if your problem concerns a specific program or mod, it will make it a lot easier to help if you post in the thread where you downloaded it.

Scripting and Reverse Engineering
This forum is about further advancement of editing the game. If there is something you would like to edit about the game (not concerning models), but can't find any info on how to do it, put your question here. If you've been exploring the game engine and found something new and useful, put it here.

Archive
Older threads. No posting here, just a reference for old times' sake.

Completely Unrelated
Anything goes. Things unrelated to Final Fantasy, image macros, double posting, reviving year old topics, and L337 $P34|<.  However, all the big rules still apply.

Q-Gears/FF7Voice/Team Avalanche
These forums are only for their respective projects. If you've got something to say or ask about one of them, it goes in here.


Use Meaningful, Specific Subject Headers
When posting a new thread, consider the subject header carefully. The subject is your opportunity to attract people to your thread, so it's in your own best interests to use it properly.

Stupid: HELP ME!!

Smart: Help required with getting model into FF7

Smarter: FF7 model importing issues - problem with assigning textures.


Don't Be a D*ck
Be courteous, polite and show respect to others. Use of the forums is a privilege, not a right. Being a d*ck may get you warned. It may get you moderated. You might get banned for being a d*ck. Even if you are right and someone else is wrong, keep things civil. Incendiary comments directed at individuals or groups of members are not allowed.

If you really can't get along with someone, you can put them on ignore. But don't mention the fact you're ignoring someone as a taunt or parting shot - just do it quietly. Telling someone you're ignoring them to insult them is prohibited.


We Hate Spam
We don't want to buy your WOW gold, mobile phones or shoes. We already know where the porn is on the internet, so we don't need links to that either.

Post any of this and you will be banned.

Actually, you're best off not advertising anything on this site that isn't helpful to creating for or learning about Final Fantasy. If you feel you need to advertise anything, there are literally thousands of other forums where you can do that.


We Are Not Your "Blog"
What we mean by this, is please don't create mindless threads that are extremely off-topic.

If you have a topic of reasonable discussion to post, then by all means, please post away and let the intelligent discussion begin. However, we do not want to see random posts of "I ate cookies today" or "My car is blue", etc. etc. Even within the Completely Unrelated forum, there is no place on Qhimm for such threads. They provide no topic for discussion and are generally useless and become filled with useless replies.

"More mods, less words" is a good mantra to go by when considering yourself a contributing member of the Qhimm community.

We generally hand out Warnings for such threads, so please think about what it is you'd like to post, and how it will benefit a community of video game artists and modders.


Avatars
Avatars are a privilege not a right. Keep to these rules regarding avatars or suffer the consequences.

* Maximum picture size - 100x100 pixels
* Maximum file size - 10kb
Multiple Accounts
There is absolutely no reason to have more than one account. If you wish to change your display name you can change it in your profile. If anyone is found with more than one account they risk both accounts being banned.


Reporting Posts
We ask users that see a violation of the rules to use the report post function. This will give all moderators notice that an infraction has occured. Posting in the thread itself is not advised. eg: Do not post in a thread that was inactive for years. Just because someone else necro'd a topic doesn't mean it is ok for others to post in it. Moderators can't be everywhere at once... These are your forums, if you see a problem, report it. Please note that reporting PMs is currently broken.

Only use the report button to report actual rule infractions. Do not use it to report mods or tools that don't work, missing download links, members being unable to solve your problems despite their best effort, or updates that take longer than you hoped. If you cannot cite the exact rule being broken, chances are pretty good you shouldn't be reporting the post. Abuse of the report button will lead to warnings and potential moderation.


Warnings
A warning system is in place to help enforce the rules. To help you understand how the system works I will outline it below. Keep in mind each day that passes the warning level will lower by 2% until you are back at 0, at which point the icon will be removed from your username. (but off course you will never be warned, right?)

Level 1 (1-20%) Watched - User is placed on a moderator watch list. This allows moderators to see how frequently a user is breaking the rules. A green icon will appear under your username. This type of warning is simply to record what rule a user has broken.

Level 2 (21-40%) Moderated - User is placed in a moderator approval mode. This means that any posts that the user makes will need to be approved before the post is actually posted. A user will be moderated if rules are being broken at a frequent rate. Users may still gain more warnings in regards to the content of the posts awaiting approval.

Level 3 (41%+) Muted - User is banned from posting entirely, but will still be able to read posts. This type of warning will be dealt if the rule breaking appears deliberate and defiant. The only time you will see this is when a permanent ban is being considered. If you reach this level it is a good idea to really reflect on what you've done and plead your case to the moderators/admins as soon as you can.


Private Messages
Users must have a minimum of five posts before they are able to send PMs. Do not post spam or meaningless threads to raise your post count, as such posts will be deleted, will not count toward the minimum, and may result in a warning. The same rules apply to PMs that apply to the public boards.



If you feel there is something that needs changing, post it here. Any personal complaints should be taken to a moderator or staff member (Obesebear, sl1982, halkun, Bosola, Covarr, EQ2Alyza, Vgr) via Private Message.

Kudistos Megistos:
I think another discussion about the rules regarding what posts go where is needed, because it seems to me that the new rules are causing problems that never used to exist.

When I look at a lot of threads nowadays, I see a huge string of people with "watched" or "moderated" underneath their names. For people that have signed up and posted recently, those who aren't being moderated in some way seem to be in the minority. Some of these people deserve to be on the watch list; if people are repeatedly quadruple necroposting with questions about the Ultima edition, there's a good reason to moderate them.

However, a lot of the people being moderated seem to have committed very minor infractions, and some of them are moderated because they posted a thread in the wrong board. Why is this a problem with the rules rather than the poster? It's for four reasons. Th first is that the rules on what goes where do not make sense, and I touched upon this earlier. If a user is in any doubt at all about where their post is supposed to go (and for first time users, I don't think the rules are as clear as the people who wrote them think they are), then all they can do is apply common sense. Common sense dictates, for example, that a thread about modifying the game, whether or not the mod will lead to a release, should go in game tweaking. And yet this is not the case, and a user who posts a thread about tweaking the game in that forum may get moderated.

The second reason is that new users are getting conflicting information. The rules do not match up with the board descriptions or the board names. When a new user is getting different information from different sources, how is he to know what to do? Once again, the newcomer is likely to get confused and will put the thread where it seems more logical.

The fourth reason is that we are likely to make an even worse name for ourselves than we already have. I'm not sure how many people know this, but a lot of discussions about these forums on other parts of the internet have people saying things along the lines of "they're great modders and they know a lot about the game, but they're arseholes, especially to newbies". Surprisingly, not all of these people are saying this because they ran into me; some of these complains pre-date kudistos megistos. That reputation is likely to get even worse. New people will come here, read the rules and look at the board names and descriptions, be confused, put the thread where it seems most logical, and then get shouted at and moderated. They will then go away and tell everyone how awful we are. I'm aware that some people might respond to this by saying that you don't care what people say about us, but I do think it's important that we don't get ourselves a bad reputation and we don't scare away people who might become valuable members because they either heard bad things about us or because they got shouted at on their first day for something that they didn't know was wrong.

The fourth reason, and I think this is the most significant, is that "what goes where" wasn't a problem before. It is now.

Game tweaking may have been a catch all in the past, but at least it meant that there was very little arguing about where threads go. There really weren't many problems with the way things worked before when "what goes where" was fairly intuitive; problems have only recently begun to arise and I can't see what benefits we have that would justify the cost.

We'd be far better off by going back to the old rules on what goes where, or by completely revising the whole thing so that we have one board that is for programs, released mods and WIPs, one board for tech support, one for playing with the mechanics of the game and one board for general (non-modding) FF discussions. If we had something like this, I doubt there would be any problems at all with knowing what goes where.

sl1982:
I do agree with this for the most part. Having the rules and the forum descriptions different is very counter productive. This is the reason why I have not given anyone a warning for posting in the wrong area (and I have moved quite a few posts.) Anyways, until we can get qhimm to change the layout and description of the forums I think we should be lenient on posting in specific areas.

obesebear:
Attracting new people is great.  Having a reputation for being "arseholes" means that when people come here from those boards, they are more likely to conduct themselves in a respectful manner, which is even greater.  No "leet speak", decent grammar, and are more likely to pay serious attention to the rules we have in place.  Personally, I would be just fine and dandy if these forums consisted of only a select few people.  But new people will join, and keeping this forum semi-professional is of great importance to me.

"What goes where" was a problem before.  Perhaps you don't remember Game Tweaking being nearly the only forum being posted in?  I agree that the forums could use a serious revision.  Fact is, moderators have no control over it.  So we are stuck with how things are.  The reason forum content is heavily kept in check, especially Game Tweaking, is to make searching easier.  Game Tweaking is meant to be for programs and mods.  Not questions.  If a newcomer is confused if their post is in the appropriate place, it can go in General as long as it's FF related.   There is already a thread about proposing new forum structure, feel free to add your 2 cents in there.  If it's good we can all petition Qhimm to implement it.  Though so far even my suggestion to add a few subforums has been rejected.

About the warning system.  Being warned means nothing, the only consequence is that a subsequent warning is more likely lead to being moderated for a few days.  Even if you break a rule or two, as long as it appears you have a strong grasp of them, it's unlikely you'll ever be more than warned.

Kudistos Megistos:

--- Quote from: obesebear on 2010-07-22 17:13:29 ---Attracting new people is great.  Having a reputation for being "arseholes" means that when people come here from those boards, they are more likely to conduct themselves in a respectful manner, which is even greater.
--- End quote ---

The empirical evidence suggests otherwise...


--- Quote from: obesebear on 2010-07-22 17:13:29 ---"What goes where" was a problem before.  Perhaps you don't remember Game Tweaking being nearly the only forum being posted in?
--- End quote ---

Why was that was a problem? Most of the posts went in game tweaking because most of the topics being posted were about tweaking the game. I don't recall there being any problems at all; at least everyone knew where everything went.


--- Quote from: obesebear on 2010-07-22 17:13:29 ---The reason forum content is heavily kept in check, especially Game Tweaking, is to make searching easier.
--- End quote ---

Searching is harder because the rules on what goes where have suddenly changed. Whereas previously one only had to search game tweaking if one wanted info on something to do with tweaking the game, one now needs to search game tweaking (to look for older posts) and general (to search for newer ones). For some reason, there's now a limit on searches as well, which means one has to search one forum, wait, and then search another. I've found that searching has been a lot more bothersome recently. I foresee a lot of people asking questions that have already been answered if they are unaware that the rules have changed recently and only search general; they'll miss threads on the topics they want to know about if those topics were posted in game tweaking months or years ago.

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