Sonic Turbine Forum Rules

:: WELCOME! ::

Hi there! Welcome to Sonic Turbine Forums. Thanks for coming by and thanks for taking your time to read our rules.
As you can see, we're a very nice community, but in order to assure you a better stay, and to get along better with the rest of our members, it's important to follow these rules. We may look a bit strict but order makes the place better.

:: HOW TO START? ::

Right after you've created your account, you'll be put in the Validating usergroup, which has very limited access. Make a new topic in the Introductions/Validations subforum, introduce yourself, and you'll be moved to the Member group in no time to have access to the rest of the forum.

:: WARN SYSTEM ::

All the members have a particular warn level below their profile information. If you're not familiarized with it, it's a strike meter. Each time you break a rule, you'll receive a strike, and depending on the gravity of the situation, it may include a temporal suspension or even a ban. In some cases, where the issue is not very serious, you may receive only a verbal warn. Two verbal warns make one strike, however.

Members can have a maximum of three strikes. If you reach 100%, you are banned. There may be very exceptional cases where you can be conditioned, but not all of these cases are declined in your favor.

Warns are usually removed after a determined period of time by the same person who gave them, but only if you have shown good behaviour for that determined period without getting another warn. Each staffer has a different determined period for this, considering lowering your warns isn't an obligation. In more rare cases, a different moderator can decrease the strike.

:: BASIC GUIDELINES ::

These are the basic guidelines for the lazy. Detailed explanations are listed under these guidelines.

1. Respect all members and staffers.
2. No spamming, double posting included.
3. All your posts must be written in a clean, concise way. You must use proper grammar and spelling. Chat and leet speak are not tolerated.
4. No gravedigging.
5. No backseat moderation.
6. No inappropriate content is allowed (e.g. porn or shock images)
7. No discussion about roms or other illegal content.
8. You may only have ONE account. Having several accounts will get them all banned.
9. Evading bans is strictly forbidden and will result in an IP ban.
10. Keep arguments/problems that didn't originate in STF out of the forum.
11. You may only advertise your sites or forums in your sig.
12. Sig and avatar limitations. (see below for details)
13.. Any rule that's broken is subject for a warning or a ban. You may discuss the warn with a staffer but in a discrete way.
14..The staff may skip giving verbal warns and proceed may to make an immediate warn or ban if needed.
15.. Last but definitely not least important, use your common sense. Adding to that, the staff can still warn you for reasons that are not explicitly mentioned here. Throwing stones over walls will not be tolerated.

:: DETAILED GUIDELINES ::

These are detailed explanations about the rules.

1. Respect all members and staffers, self-explanatory. You may not attack or threaten other members of the community in ANY way. Warns or even bans will be handed out depending on the gravity of the situation. The staff also deserves the same respect as the members.

2. No spamming, double posting included. SPAM means Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages. This includes posts that are very offtopic (e.g. talking about Zelda in a Sonic topic with no connection at all), making one-word posts (e.g. Simply posting to say "yes" or putting a smilie face), or simply annoying ones. It doesn't take much to turn a simple "yes" into a "Yes, I believe it's true", so try expanding your simply responses to avoid spamming. You may not make a post simply by quoting someone elses' words and putting your name either, this is spam as well.

3. All your posts must be written in a clean, concise way. You must use proper grammar and spelling. Chat and leet speak are not tolerated. Self-explanatory as well. You should use correct punctuation and check your grammar and spelling before making a post. If English isn't your first language, get a translator and/or a spellchecker. Firefox has an integrated spellchecker, use it.

4. No gravedigging. Gravedigging is the act of bumping a very old topic without having a significant update. In STF, a bump is considered a gravedig when it's over a month old. Avoid doing this at all costs unless it's of utmost importance. If a topic is really old, just make a new one. You may bump anything that's less than a month old as long as it's relevant to the topic at hand. You may gravedig topics freely as long as it's relevant as well.

5. No backseat moderation. Backseat moderation consists of acting as a mod. There's a fine line between being helpful and doing the aforementioned thing. We have a staff team for a reason, we don't need others doing our job. You may, however, be helpful and give new members pointers on how things work on the forum or remember them of rules. We are lenient about this rule though, so be helpful if you can without worrying much about backseat moderation.

6. No inappropiate content is allowed. To make this simple, Invisionfree's Terms of Service state that porn is not allowed, so don't bother posting. This, along with shock images (e.g. Goatse, tubgirl, etc) will get you banned on spot, no questions asked.

7. No discussion about roms or other illegal content. Like the above rule, this is not allowed by Invisionfree's ToS either. Discussion about illegal content includes, but is not limited to, pirate sites, torrents, rom and emulator sites.

8. You may only have ONE account. Having several accounts will get them all banned. Self-explanatory too. You may only register one account on STF. If, for some reason, you plan on registering another account on the same computer, inform a staff member first to avoid confusions. Having more than one account without telling the staff will get all the accounts banned.

9. Evading bans is strictly forbidden and will result in an IP ban. When we ban members, we do it for a reason. Evading bans by making another account is not allowed. We'll ban your IP if you do that. If you rejoin with a proxy, we'll reban again and again until you get bored.

10. Keep arguments/problems that didn't originate in STF out of the forum. This rule ensures that no external drama harms the forum. We don't care if you had a fight with 'x' member on 'y' forum 'z' days ago, keep it out of STF. Keep your grudges to yourself too, we don't care who you hate, we'll ban you for starting problems.

11. You may only advertise your sites or forums in your sig. Pretty straightforward and simple to follow. You may not make a new topic to advertise your forums or sites. You may show off your art/media by linking your DeviantArt, SheezyArt, NG, etc. pages in your art topics though.

12. Sig and avatar limitations. Your avatar is the image you have under your username and above your member information. Your avatar has to be an image smaller than 151x165 pixels, if it's larger it will resize. Your signature has a limit of 2,000 characters, you can add any stuff you wish, however, you mustn't have images larger than 320x512 pixels, nor offensive content in general. Moderators can have the liberty to remove your stuff when you don't obey this rule, and give you a verbal or direct warn.

13. Any rule that's broken is subject for a warning or a ban. You may discuss the warn with a staffer but in a discrete way. If you feel like you were warned unfairly, talk it over with the staffer WITHOUT making a fuss. If that fails, talk it over with a staffer in a higher position. Ultimately, talk it over with several admins but make sure you tell them everything that happened, hiding the facts will only harm you. Slander against a staffer counts as disrespect and is subject for a warn, so make sure you know what you're talking about. The staffers have their positions for a reason. Their decisions are final most of the time because they know what they're doing.

14.The staff may skip giving verbal warns and proceed may to make an immediate warn or ban if needed. Self-explanatory. This depends on the staffer's individual leniency and tolerance. Usually, verbal warns will be given to less serious rules like bad grammar, gravedigging, or spam. This does not mean that the staffer has to give a verbal warn first, however. A staffer may very well skip giving a verbal warn and apply a real warn or even a ban at his own discretion if he has his reasons. Since Invisionfree doesn't have a "yellow cards" option, we can't keep track of the verbal warns we give. Complaining about not getting a verbal warn won't help your situation.

15. Last but definitely not least important, use your common sense at all times. Adding to that, the staff can still warn you for reasons that are not explicitly mentioned here. Throwing stones over walls will not be tolerated. There may be things that have not been listed in these rules for 'x' or 'y' reason. This does not mean that members can take advantage of that and do whatever they want because "it's not mentioned in the rules". The staff may very well warn or ban people for doing something that they feel is wrong. Usually, however, the staffers have a talk about it first to make sure the warn is fair. Lastly, some offenses may add 66% rather than the usual 33% given the gravity of the offense. Needless to say, immediate bans may also be carried out in extreme cases.

:: CBOX RULES ::

1. Follow Standard Rules. The Standard Rules are applied in the CBox, since it's a part of the forum too. Therefore, you can be warned alike if you commit a violation in the CBox.

2. No Impersonating. Unless it is clearly stated as a joke, it's NOT allowed to impersonate other members or staff members. Also, multiple names are not allowed. Remember, we can check your IP, so we can ban you too. Violations of this rule result in a warn increase.

3. About Guests. Guests are usually allowed to use the CBox too. However, it's not allowed to use multiple names, impersonate, nor adversite. You can still use the Cbox without being logged in.

4. Discretion. Basically, the same as you do in a regular chat room. Don't give away passwords or codes as everyone can see them. The staff is not to be held responsible for any stupidities committed by the members (e.g giving away personal info).

5. No Roleplaying and/or Cybering. Roleplaying is not allowed in the CBox. The Cbox purpose is to talk freely about any Topic. If you wish to roleplay with another person, we have divided subforums to roleplay, or you may want to use a messenger software as well, but not our CBox.

So basically, that's everything regarding rules.
Feel free to ask any of our members of the moderating team if you have any doubts, and enjoy the forum.

~ Sonic Turbine's Staff Team