Post by Professor Takumi on Mar 27, 2011 19:20:16 GMT -5
CANTRAN REGION FORUM RULES AND GUIDELINES
Table of Contents
1. Getting Started
- Introduction
- How to Use ProBoards
2. Rules and Consequences
- Minor Offenses
- Major Offenses
- Consequences
3. Individual Board Rules and Consequences
- Boards with Individual Rules
4. Ranks and Custom Titles
- Member Ranks
- Administrative Member Groups
- Other Member Groups
- Custom Titles
5. Name Change Policy
- Username Changing
Getting Started
Introduction
[/b][/center]Hello, and welcome to the Cantran Region, a forum for fans of Pokemon and other content created by Nintendo. These are the forum’s rules and guidelines.
Before we begin, you might need to become familiar with how this forum works. As you can tell, this forum is hosted by ProBoards and has many features to utilize as well as the features we’ve added to the mix.
How to Use ProBoards
This forum hosted by ProBoards. Click here for help on how to navigate the forum, what everything on the forum is, and how to use BB codes.
Rules and Consequences
Like many forums, we offer our own array of rules and their appropriate consequences. Here are the things you should not do on this forum.
Minor Offenses
These are actions that only form a minor offense. Doing them might not get your account suspended, but might hurt your reputation.
• Multiple Posts: A very common error made on internet forums. Multiple posts are when you post a message right next to one you already made. This is frowned upon because there’s a ‘modify’ button on the top right corner of your posts. Click this to add any extra information you’d like to mention. However, if you suddenly start posting multiple times repeatedly very rapidly, it is considered spam. Spam is a major offense on this forum.
(For more information about spamming, scroll down to the Major Offense section).
• Necroposting: Necroposting is a term specifically used for posting a a message in a thread that stopped receiving replies a long time ago. Leave these threads alone. If you really want to post on the same topic as an old thread, create a new one. This is sometimes referred to as ‘grave digging’.
• Backseat Moderators: A backseat moderator is someone who does not have any status as an authority staff member and tries to handle bad behaviour like they do have the authority. On this forum, your only job to do when someone is clearly breaking the rules is to report them to one of our moderators or administrators. We’ll take care of that stuff for you.
• Advertisement: Do not advertise anything outside of the advertisement board. If you are really serious about affiliating something here, post a thread about it in the advertisement board and we’ll decide whether or not we’ll let you affiliate what you’re advertising. Repeatedly advertising something outside of the appropriate boards is counted as spam. Also, this is obvious, but don’t advertise anything that’s offensive.
• Improper Reporting: It should be noted that when reporting a post of a member, please take into consideration that the post you are reporting has a legitimate reason for being reported. Please also take into consideration that people do have a harsh sense of humour on the internet, and that some posts are just jokes (however rude they may seem) and that the person making them might not be intending to create any offense. If you are unsure of what to make of a post, do not hesitate to ask an administrator or moderator to personally look at the post. Administrators and moderators will take responsibility in looking at all reported posts, and retain the right to make decisions and change their decisions about reported posts.
Major Offenses
Here is a list of actions that could get you banned from this forum if overdone.
• Spam: Like the spam you find commonly in your emails, spamming the forums is very annoying and is not tolerated. It’s when you post a bunch of nonsensical gibberish or advertisements over and over again rapidly. There’s an acronym that sums up basically what spam is. Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages. If you spam the boards or chat box, you will be warned not to do it again, and if you persist on spamming, your account will be suspended from the forum.
• Flaming: Flaming is basically the cybernetic form of going up to someone and insulting them, yelling at them and overall just being a total jerk to them. In other words, it involves violently swearing at, name calling, and threatening a person on the internet. Your account will be warned if you are spotted flaming another member on the forum, and after multiple offenses, your account will be suspended until further notice. Another term for flaming, most often used by people not as familiar with the ways of the internet is cyber bullying. Finally, sometimes what you might call flaming is merely a heated debate. Try to distinguish it from flaming if you can.
• Trolling: Probably the most infamous form of offensive behaviour is the phenomena known as trolling. Trolling is when a person intentionally posts extraneous, inflammatory messages in order to get a desired emotional response. In other words, saying something that aims to cause a big commotion usually involving annoyance or anger for your own enjoyment. Trolling can sometimes hard to spot, and sometimes very obvious. If someone is trolling on the forums, report it to our staff and we’ll handle it from there.
• Pornography/Inappropriate Images and Videos: This is the internet. There is a ton of media that most of us do not want to see or hear about. Posting something that is considered insanely inappropriate is probably the worst offense you could make on this forum. If a member is spotted posting porn or anything that most people would find strongly offensive, your account will be banned on the spot.
Consequences
On this forum, there are 5 levels of punishment for members who break the rules.
I. Notice – A staff member informing you that you are misbehaving is the first consequence.
II. Warning – If you ignore the notice, you will be warned, and your warning meter will go up according to how severe the offense is.
III. Final Warning – After continuing to misbehave after the first warning, depending on the seriousness of your crimes, your final warning will be the warning that sets your meter to 100%.
IV. Ban – When your warning meter is 100% and you commit an offense, your account will be temporarily disabled for a while.
V. IP Ban/Account Deletion – After being banned a few times and you still misbehave, you will be permanently expelled from the forum.
After the first ban, your warning meter will remain at 100%. We will lower it if you behave for a while.
Here are the warning meter increases for each major offense.
Spam – 15%
Flaming – 30%
Trolling – 45%
Inappropriate Images and Videos – 100% (ban)
Individual Board Rules and Consequences
Boards with Individual Rules
NOTICE: The individual board rules are still in progress.
• The Mature Discussion Board
• The Trainer's Board
• The RPG Board
• The Pokemon RPG Board
Ranks and Custom Titles
[/size] [/center] Member Ranks
You might have noticed that in everyone’s mini profile (the left section of every post that shows all your stats and info) and on your profile page, there is a blue bar that has goes up each time you post on this forum. That is your level up meter. Each time you get the bar to the maximum amount, you go up a rank and the bar resets and starts going up again. The levels will gradually take longer to reach the higher you go. Here is a table constructed with all the member ranks on this forum, how many starts each rank has and the required amount of posts for each.
| Posts | Rank | Stars |
| 0 | Newbie Trainer | - |
| 1 | Junior Trainer |  |
| 50 | Intermediate Trainer | |
| 100 | Veteran | |
| 250 | Elite Veteran | |
| 500 | Champion | |
You may have noticed that there are some members on this forum that have large, coloured stars at the top of their mini profile and their member rank is bolded. These are our administrative staff members who watch over the forum to make sure everything’s fine and dandy, as well as updating the forum and setting up events for everyone to do. Here is a small table of the two administrative ranks on this forum.
| Rank | Alias | Stars |
| Moderator | Region Overseer |  |
| Administrator | Region Professor |
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Custom Titles
Here in Cantran, it is possible to receive a custom title for yourself after you have posted 250 times and have been a contributing member of the forum. If you meet these criteria and you want a custom title, PM a staff member to give you one. You are allowed to use any BB code on your custom title, except for increasing the size above size 4. For information about BB code, follow the link to the ProBoards website help page which is in the ‘How to Use ProBoards’ sub section under ‘Getting Started’ (GGS).
Name Change Policy
Username Changing
As of now, there is a new name changing policy in order for the forums. The reason we are implimenting this is to keep the community organized and to keep the community from getting confused with who is who.
In order to change your display name, you must ask a Piklere administrator via PM once you reach a certain amount of posts. You must have a total of 150 posts in order to request a change of your Display Name. Following your first Display Name change, you can change it again in three months. Special requested name changes that occur earlier than three months may be submitted by PM, as long as there is a valid reason for said name change. Not all name changes will be approved. Do not abuse the name change system.
This aside, you will get one free name change in for your Display Name upon joining the site. You can use this immediately after you join in order to correct things such as spaces, symbols, and other things that you want your first Display Name to be shown as. Here's an example of this:
Register as: johnsmith
(PM Administrator upon Joining for Name Change)
Display Name change: John Smith
Keep this in mind as this type of change is the one freebie you get when you first join!
That concludes our forum rules and guidelines. We hope you have a good time here in Cantran!