README: The TFF rules have been updated!

[LocoColt04]

I don't know how many of you pay attention to the little announcements box atop every forum here, but I know these sorts of threads always seem to catch more notice.

That said, the forum rules have been updated.

There have been minor changes, but they're still the same old rules you've come to know and possibly love. Or hate, if you get into trouble a lot.

Definitions are clearer, examples are given, and it's all fancy and list-styled.

The goal was to create something that sounded less "official" and offered more explanation. Hopefully, I have created such a list. These modifications were discussed by staff members and senior active members alike, so my input came from sources outside of the staff.

CLICK HERE for the rules, or view the announcement atop any given forum.



The previous set of rules will remain active until the third of August in your time zone, and then expire from public view. If you wish to compare rulesets, now is your chance to do so.

[Jesus Christ]

I don't know how many of you pay attention to the little announcements box atop every forum here, but I know these sorts of threads always seem to catch more notice.

That said, the forum rules have been updated.

There have been minor changes, but they're still the same old rules you've come to know and possibly love. Or hate, if you get into trouble a lot.

Definitions are clearer, examples are given, and it's all fancy and list-styled.

The goal was to create something that sounded less "official" and offered more explanation. Hopefully, I have created such a list. These modifications were discussed by staff members and senior active members alike, so my input came from sources outside of the staff.

CLICK HERE for the rules, or view the announcement atop any given forum.



The previous set of rules will remain active until the third of August in your time zone, and then expire from public view. If you wish to compare rulesets, now is your chance to do so.

Read and understood, captain.

[Fate]

Read and understood, captain.

Oh yeah right!! You did not read the rules. If any mods are reading this, I'm sorry for the post since it's off topic, but know that I have read it. Anyway, if Jesus Christ read the rules, you'd know that four word replies aren't allowed! I'm no mod or admin, I just read the rule. After all, I got in trouble for it once. P.S. I HAVE really read the new, clarified rules.

[Victoria]

Yeah..... No.

Thief, what JC's post is, is a ribbing/jab that is considered (with the new rules) okay. So, I'm going to have to take it that you did not read the rules, or if you have, you didn't understand them fully.

Also, your post could have just been a Visitor Message, or a PM. Honestly, I think Cesar should have just closed this thread off.. Don't know why he didn't...

Edit: Oh, that's right.. now I remember. Post count doesn't apply to this forum. Duh. And also, Thief... I would really suggest you don't act high and mighty anymore. It's not doing you any good. You just... come off as a.. um. How do I say this...?

Yeah. Just don't do it.

[Fate]

Yeah..... No.

Thief, what JC's post is, is a ribbing/jab that is considered (with the new rules) okay. So, I'm going to have to take it that you did not read the rules, or if you have, you didn't understand them fully.

Also, your post could have just been a Visitor Message, or a PM. Honestly, I think Cesar should have just closed this thread off.. Don't know why he didn't...

Alright, sorry Mistress. But anyway, I have read it and I'm gonna read it again. BTW, is this post allowed?

[LocoColt04]

Oh yeah right!! You did not read the rules. If any mods are reading this, I'm sorry for the post since it's off topic, but know that I have read it. Anyway, if Jesus Christ read the rules, you'd know that four word replies aren't allowed! I'm no mod or admin, I just read the rule. After all, I got in trouble for it once. P.S. I HAVE really read the new, clarified rules.

Apparently YOU didn't read the rules thoroughly enough. JC's post was completely within the guidelines of the rules. I laid out a non-discussion topic, and he posted letting me know that he acknowledged the rules. This was actually one of the alterations to the rule regarding spam.

Sheena, play nice.

I didn't close it off in case anyone had any questions or commentary. We've always left threads like this open to comments rather than closing them off. No reason to change that now.

Also, posts in the Forum Announcements section do count.

[LocoColt04]

UPDATE:

Clarification in the "Illegal Content" section has been made in regards to music.

[Merlin]

Technically, Thief's post is trolling. The apology is irrelevant. Its like someone saying, "I'm sorry, _____, but you're a ####ing #####." The positive doesn't outweigh the negative at all and does nothing but flamebait JC into responding with an equal and opposite troll about how he "did" read the rules and Thief didn't.

But whatever, that's not why I posted. The best way to describe my reasoning is to take a page from Fark...

AMUSING: Not News: TFF's rules were updated to be less formal. Still Not News: There was nothing wrong with them. FARK: They now read like a legal document. ULTRA FARK: Dr. Seuss reference trifecta in play?

Nuff said.

[Jesus Christ]

FARK: They now read like a legal document.

Good, I wasn't the only one who noticed. Now, maybe, just maybe that says something about the forum that isn't all that good. I mean, maybe ultra formality and such serious business with everything, arguing about what this post should be classified as or what that post should be classified as and how they're bad isn't really all that needed or good for a website intended for discussion on a series of videogames people play for fun.

Just a thought.

[Furore]

I sort of like the more formal tone myself.
It leaves a smaller gray area which means less confusion (for me at any rate). Just looking at the old rules thread (thank you google), the new rules seem to leave less to chance or really just the personal opinion of the moderating team. Which for better or worse, should keep the rules seeming more fair to the average user I'd imagine.

The forums are based on Final Fantasy which is a game many play for fun, but I see TFF as so much more. It's a place to interact with friends you make, a place for discussing the most random crap imaginable AND it somehow manages to keep intellectual discussion more or less intellectual (and I mean in terms of TFF compared to several other forums offering their own intellectual discussion of sorts) and what I love most of all is the respect I see between members more often than not.

There are times things can be rocky, but in the end we're all like one of those large dysfunctional families that band together when need be.

True that concerning VMs though. Hell, I'm guilty of VM spam myself.
But then again, until this thread containing posts confirming that VMs were considered the same as other parts of the forum, I felt there was a gray area there. Hooray for ignorance?

You've done a damn fine job Loco.

[LocoColt04]

Yeah, I had noticed it myself.

Mayhaps "less formal" wasn't really the proper term. Either way, I wanted them worked out to be less strict. I think we achieved that by laying it out the way it is now.

[Raider]

I completely agree with it. I actually took rtime to sit down and read it cause it wasn't like trying to read a contract where your head goes numb. It was just easier to understand. it also gives less of a reason for not readin the rules cause tehy are just an easy read.

Well Done Loco!

[Merlin]

Seriously Admins, mods, if you're that bored around here with everyone following the rules lately, why don't you try enforcing SIGNATURE LIMITS. The above post is a fine example of breaking the forum layout with huge-ass images. Silver's is too big as well. They could write one sentence and it takes up the whole screen. Its been plaguing the forums for ages and never been solved.

vB has built-in signature image support now, so it should be used. Disable HTML and IMG in sigs. You don't need it. People will then be limited to one image of a maximum size/width/height. Those settings would have to be tweaked to fit whatever standards you want to set... but it would solve so many visual issues on the forums.

[Raider]

Seriously Admins, mods, if you're that bored around here with everyone following the rules lately, why don't you try enforcing SIGNATURE LIMITS. The above post is a fine example of breaking the forum layout with huge-ass images. Silver's is too big as well. They could write one sentence and it takes up the whole screen. Its been plaguing the forums for ages and never been solved.

vB has built-in signature image support now, so it should be used. Disable HTML and IMG in sigs. You don't need it. People will then be limited to one image of a maximum size/width/height. Those settings would have to be tweaked to fit whatever standards you want to set... but it would solve so many visual issues on the forums.

I completely agree with you! Another thing is a better cataloguing system for pre-set Avatars.

[Victoria]

Actually Nathan's signature and Raider's is fine. Maybe you just need a bigger resolution? I dunno.

But either way, maybe you're right. Though right now, no one uses the upload thing because it makes the image shitty and shrinks it. Though perhaps the limits need to be increased or something.

Edit: Also, the old rules weren't really that good. Apparently no one understood them at all.

[LocoColt04]

Edit: Also, the old rules weren't really that good. Apparently no one understood them at all.

Point.

Merlin, I had no problem whatsoever understanding the previous rules that we put up a couple years back. As far as I was concerned, it was perfectly clear, but when every other warning is contended with a "but the rules didn't explain it well enough," I figured it was time to dumb them down. A lot.

If it makes it look like a legal document, so be it.

At least people aren't going to get slammed with warnings for one-liners any more as long as it's not some spammy bullshit.

If there's one thing in the new set that I'm actually glad I changed, it was broadening "porn" to "NSFW." Everyone who offered input on the updated rules seemed to be all for that one, and it wasn't even my idea.

[Merlin]

{True Strike}. They were a bit outdated. Unfortunately, you can't fix stupid. Its a never-ending battle. No matter how you write it, a swarm of people with even lower IQs will arrive to find holes in your rules and claim they didn't understand. There's nothing you can do but try to make them better and go from there.

Oh and was it intentional that you used multiple organizational schemas in the rules? It feels like it was written by multiple people and then copy+pasted. You've got numbers, caps+colons, Dr. Seuss, bullets, paragraphs, etc all mish-mashed together. The wording on stuff is fine, I just recommend you use a specific organizational structure rather than everything available in MS Word and more. Just a thought...

~~~~~
Sheena: Both Silver and Another Chance to Live modified their sig images after I made note of it, so your statement on their images not breaking the postbit is moot. They were way too big when I mentioned it.

Not everyone runs their monitors at WTFxOMG, nor does everyone keep their browser maximized. If it breaks the postbit on a 15" laptop with an almost maximized window, the image is too damned big. FYI: I'm running at 1280x800 if you're curious. It was breaking the postbit at 1280 width.

With that in mind, I turn your attention to what I said:

People will then be limited to one image of a maximum size/width/height. Those settings would have to be tweaked to fit whatever standards you want to set...

The settings as they are will not do. It is too constrained, especially the file size. Also, if you force people to use it by disabling IMG and HTML then the problem on images being too big would be solved. If they don't want their image distorted, make your sig image fit within the listed size guidelines and vB won't have to ghetto-rig it. That's pretty much common sense, esp since it already does that on avatars, etc.

Also, the sig features the ability to limit the lines of text as well now. So, with both of these combined features you could clean up TFF postbits across the board in one sweep and make this place a lot more enjoyable to read. Bonus: You won't have to correct people for sig violations other than NSFW!

Its not that hard to implement. Just implement all the changes except disabling IMG and HTML and let people know. Give them a week to fix their sigs to fit the easy-to-use system. Then, nuke HTML and IMG tags. Voila!

Seriously? What do you need HTML in sigs for? SQL injection?

EDIT: Oh and ACTL, good point. The avatar selection system(built-in avys) looks like shit. I'm not sure of a way to fix that at the moment, but its worth investigating.

[Raider]

It was fine to me and i have a 1280x1024 resolution. Ye i did change mine but silvers stayed teh same.

[Furore]

It was fine to me and i have a 1280x1024 resolution. Ye i did change mine but silvers stayed teh same.

Yeah I found the same thing. And I did resize a little. Shaved off just enough pixels to make it smaller than Merlins. I'm thinking it may have been Merlin using an alternate browser though as I'm using Opera which ain't exactly the most widely used browser, despite it using less resources than both Internet Explorer and even Firefox.

Regardless I was thinking of making a new sig banner, and I looked at where the SIGNATURE LIMITS rules were. I'm pretty sure the limits for a sig banner's size are:

Also, if your signature is 75% of the viewing area on a 1024x768 resolution, IT IS TOO LARGE. There is no reason why people should have to scroll down an entire page just to get through your signature. That's ridiculous.

In other words, if you have an image (or series of images) that is taller than 450 pixels, you will be asked to remove it. Text and images together should not account for more than 600 pixels in height, as that is more than large enough. If you don't alter your signature after being asked, it will be altered for you. Continued abuse will result in a signature ban.

- http://thefinalfantasy.net/forums/ho...ew-topics.html

The thing I love most about these new rules is that everything you need to know seems to be either in the new rules post or linking directly from it. Note that my original signature http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a..._good_text.png , measures a staggering 550 x 400 pixels, where 550 = width and 400 = height. The monitor I am currently using runs at it's native resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels, but I found lowering it to 1280 x 1024 didn't make much of a difference in terms of what I saw concerning 'breaking the postbit'. It just made all text look blurry and ugly as hell as my monitor is widescreen...
Hell, Another Chance to Live's is currently 600 and it's not causing a negative effect for me neither.

This basically leads me to conclude that my signature was within the allowed size as Toph concluded the other day, and I do believe I'll be going back to it, as this resized version is of a lower quality.

EDIT: http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...etwentyone.png

Note from just above the sig cutoff line, extending past my 'edit' and 'quote' controls, the area stands at 521 pixels, an over-estimate.

[Merlin]

This is exactly why changing the rules does nothing. I fail to see what is so complicated about this:





The red bracket is your sig. The green bracket is the viewing area of the browser. This is at 1024X768. Your sig takes up over 90% of the screen height. I can't even see what you wrote because your sig takes up the whole thing. Clearly, its too big.

Take note of the Google ads. Which one is bigger? That should tell you something. Sigs are like small advertisements. You give people a glimpse of who you are and direct them to your User Profile or web site for more. That's it. Anything more and your sig is instantly more annoying to look at than a pop-up. Scrolling takes more effort than clicking the little close button.

A 500X200 image and two lines of text is more than enough. Anything more is simply ridiculous. Seriously folks... for the love of Pete, clean up your sigs. Its atrocious. And mods/admins, look at the pic yourself. Clearly the dimensions in the rules and the screen size are not equal. Who needs a sig 600px tall? Nobody. If the sig is bigger than TFF's header, that should be a big warning flag.

[Furore]

Fair enough. I think I was more agitated at being tricked into thinking I'd broken a rule.
But yeah, if people are still using resolutions as low as 1024X768 I can see how it'd be a problem. Perhaps the maximum dimensions of sigs should be changed as a final touch up to these new rules?

Regardless you've inspired me to make a new sig at a maximum of 500x200. Perhaps a bit smaller even. It might be bigger than some of the google advertisements I've seen though, as I tend to recall most of them being quite tiny before using Opera's built-in ad-blocker.

[Victoria]

Mine is 550x175. width x height, that is.

And then there's my animated userbar. My blog, and my goodreads.com profile. That's all I got. And my small line of TFF family. I think my sig is fine.

[LocoColt04]

I'm all for altering the dimension restrictions to better fit Internet Explorer's tiny little viewing window if you think it's a good idea. I personally always thought that 600 was ridiculously overdone, but so many people had such atrociously long signatures at the time that I figured it would be a good thing to start with. Perhaps it is time to shave it down again. I've seen some that use marquees for scrolling text... except rather than put it all on one line, it's all still on separate lines. That completely defeats the purpose of the marquee.