Universal Rules
The following are universal rules for the entire site and are applicable in all sections. Rules specific to individual sections will be listed below as well as linked to from their respective sections. By posting or submitting anything to this site, you are acknowledging these rules and guidelines and agreeing to follow them.
1. Use Common Sense
No pointless or stupid comments. Do your best to type in complete sentences and with correct spelling and grammar, don't spam or advertise, etc. Yes, this includes another person's topic.
- 1.1: Content Requirements
Single-word posts, short sentence posts, blankposting, and/or quoting a previous post with no additional content added by yourself are generally frowned upon. Don't just post to say "XD" or "lol". Doing this counts as spamming, which will result in a 30% warn and posting rights being revoked for 12 hours. Therefore, put something of at least SOME additional value to the current topic into your post that people might actually read, and not just scroll past.
- 1.2: Derailing Topics
Unless you have something interesting to add to the topic, don't post in it at all. Posting your sprites in someone else's topic isn't interesting. If you want attention so badly then make your own topic.
Don't just randomly flame other members and be mean for no real reason. Randomly accusing members of sprite theft and the like without evidence or a VERY good reason to do so is against the rules.
- 2.1: Respect of Others' Work
Since this board is heavily art-oriented, people will make sprites, music, writing or anything related to art. The board gives you the right to comment and give criticism on it, but if you act severely hostile towards the artist without helping at all, measures will be taken. We aren't saying to sugarcoat your criticism, just don't be downright insulting.
- 2.2: Reputation
One of our board's features is a system where you can give positive or negative feedback to members, along with comments about said feedback. This is still a part of the board system, so upholding politeness is also important here. If we find any unfair, aggressive, or unwarranted reputation changes (especially negative ones), the poster of that message will be warned for flaming.
This doesn't mean that you can't disagree with us or criticize us for our work, but don't think that just because we aren't regular members that we don't have bad days occasionally, just like everyone else.
- 3.1: Warnings
If you were warned, chances are you deserved it. Complaining why you got the warn, and/or sending threatening PMs to the mod responsible for the action will result in severe measures. If you really feel the punishment wasn't well-placed, contact the mod and please CALMLY say why you think you don't deserve the warning.
- 3.2: Rules Apply to Staff as Well
Just because we've got colored names, it doesn't mean those rules don't affect us. If you see a mod doing something abusive and/or wrong, contact an admin to take care of it. If you disagree with moderator actions, forum rules or how things are managed in general, you may criticize us. However, derailing topics, making sarcastic or rude comments is not acceptable. You can contact members of staff with your complaints or, if you prefer public discussion, make a topic at Site Discussion. Again, just as with rule 3.1, stay calm, be respectful and serious. Sarcastic remarks and defiant spam will have serious consequences. If you want to be taken serious, mind your manners.
- 3.3: VGFacts is not a Democracy
You can stay here and have a fun time, but if you break certain rules, the people in charge can (and will) ban you at their discretion. The rules aren't enforced because we're a police state or some grumpy dictatorship (that wouldn't be a very long-lived forum!), but rather because we want everyone to have a good experience. If you break the rules enough times, you will be banned. You don't have to come back, access to the forum isn't some sort of human right, and "getting revenge" surely won't help your cause. That said, this doesn't mean that you can't disagree with us or criticize us for our work.
- 3.4: No Backseat Modding
We all appreciate that you want to help keep the community a friendly, organized, and well-run place but doing so by berating people (or even reminding them in a friendly way) when they break the rules does not help. The staff are here for that very reason and backseat modding undermines the staff and confuses the community so if you notice someone breaking a rule, please just report them (using the report feature) and move on.
Don't post any porn or illegal material. This includes linking to ROMs and the sites that host them. Discussion about ROMs and emulators is fine but any links to or instructions for obtaining ROMs is strictly forbidden.
- 4.1: Other Site Areas
VGFacts has a lot of things that you can personalize, such as avatars, signatures, reputations, a biography and several others. Do not forget that THEY ARE PART OF VGFACTS, so if any offensive material is found in any of those places, the person responsible for it will be punished.
The items outlined below are by no means forbidden but excessive use of them is discouraged and will often border on (if not cross right into) spam territory.
- 5.1: Overuse of Fonts and Emotes
We have these nice features and there's nothing wrong with using them. However, overusing them isn't advised. Making all your posts in a non-standard font or color should be avoided. The usage of these should be restricted to cases where they make sense, for example to mark or emphasize text sections or to give large texts or story parts better structuring. There's also nothing wrong with using emoticons, but you shouldn't put a ton of random ones everywhere. There's no need to put long chains of emoticons at the end of every post or sentence.
- 5.2: Excessive Use of Memes or Fads
If it's on the internet, we've probably already heard or seen it. Please don't think you're original for posting "shoop da whoop" or talking about "long cat" - you can use 4chan for that.
- 5.3: Swearing
There are no hard and fast rules about swearing (it is allowed, so there's no real need to self-censor) but if you start aiming those offensive words at another member or just throw them out anywhere for no great reason, expect to be dealt with harshly. Hate speech is forbidden and will be dealt with severely.
Nobody will respect you if you join the community just to advertise something and then disappear forever. Joining just to advertise your work is forbidden and any attempts to do so will result in the offending content being removed and the account in question being warned or banned on the spot.
- 6.1: Advertisements Outside of the Shameless Self Promotion Thread
As an active member of the community, you already have two options for advertisement. The first is on your profile and in your signature. The second is the Shameless Self Promotion thread in the General Discussion section. If you post an advertisement outside of either of these places, it will be deleted on sight and you will be warned.
In general, bumping, necroposting, and double-posting should be avoided. There are exceptions to these rules, some of which will be outlined below, but for the most part, these actions should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
- 7.1: Bumping
Constantly posting in a thread to try to get it more attention while not adding any new content to it is not allowed. If you've asked a question or made some sort of request, just give it time. Breaking this rule will often wind up in the thread being locked which is counter-productive to your goal anyway.
- 7.2: Necroposting
If a thread is no longer on the first page or the forum list (or more than a month old in slower sections), avoid posting in it without good reason. Specific topics that have died likely did so for a reason and chances are, if there's a reason to bring it back, enough new information is available to justify a new thread. Exceptions here include ongoing threads with dedicated topics (e.g. threads discussing a video game or series, pretty much all of the "Real Life" threads, stickied threads, etc.).
- 7.3: Double-Posting
Posting twice or more in a row is, for the most part, not allowed. If you need to add more to your last post and nobody else has posted yet, simply edit the additional information into your original post. Exceptions here include the Errors and Suggestions threads, your own thread in which you are providing information (e.g. following a specific current event), and threads in which there isn't one specific topic being discussed.
Being a video-game related board, it's natural that images will often be posted. By nature, some of these will be very large. The forum software does a good job of resizing over-sized images to prevent them from stretching the layout but care should still be taken to avoid directly embedding anything too huge (a link to the file can be used directly in these cases).
- 8.1: Signatures
Signature images are limited to being 200 pixels in height. Having incredibly large signatures is unnecessary and distracting. Please do not include any images with extremely large file-sizes either (e.g. very long animated GIFs) or animations that are overly distracting (e.g. rapid or bright flashing). If found, these images will be deleted and if the problem persists, a warn or suspension will follow.
- 8.2: Quoting Images
Quoting videos and images, especially the big ones, also affects browsing performance while making the forum look like a mess. Use your common sense when quoting images and videos and edit them into links if you feel it's appropriate to do so.
The reporting system is there to report content that is offensive, breaking the rules, or just plain wrong. Don't report something along the lines of "he locked my topic" when you know good and well there was a good reason for a lock. The mods have to take time to check the reports and want to spend that time making the forum a better place rather than seeing needless reports.
- 9.1: Report System Abuse
The report system is an important and useful tool. The staff team tries their best to keep the site running well but we can't catch everything and we appreciate the reports we receive from our members when we do inevitably miss something. That being said, abusing this system only causes us more unnecessary work so avoid repeated reports of the same content (unless we claim to have fixed something that is still broken of course!) or reports on content that really don't justify them (like things you simply disagree with, for instance).
If you attempt to make an alternate account in order to get around a ban (also called bandodging) you will be re-banned (on both accounts) and additional time will be added to your original ban. If you were permanently banned, well, you're still permanently banned. If you continue to bandodge, you WILL be IP banned. Because of this, coming here through a proxy isn't the best idea. Though proxy use isn't disallowed, we do have a couple of banned members who have tried to get past an IP ban using proxies, so the proxy that you're using will probably end up becoming banned. You'll either have to find a new proxy or just come here through your normal IP address.
- 10.1: Posting on a Banned User's Behalf
Do not to post anything for a banned member. They were banned for a reason and if you do any such thing for them, you risk being banned yourself. There are contact methods in place for banned members to be able to appeal their bans if they wish to.
- 10.2: Alternate Accounts
Even if your account is not banned, creating multiple accounts is not permitted. If you cannot access your original account for whatever reason, you should contact staff in order to get help. If you think you have a valid reason to create an alternate account, an exception can be made but it must be discussed with staff first.