RULES

[Uncle_Mart]

I just accidently broke the rules thread so I'm copying and pasting the old one instead of typing it out again.

Listen to me carefully. We are all fed up with having to warn people about requesting, especially when we don't see that it helps.

Here are the new rules. Don't say we didn't warn you.

1. If you request, you are AUTOMATICALLY BANNED. No more warnings, no more fluffy bunnies and hugs. If you can't read this basic rule, you're out. Simple as that.2. If you REPLY to a request with what the requester WANTS (such as posting a serial number or sending him a website/crack) you will be AUTOMATICALLY BANNED. You are encouraging the problem, and putting the site in peril.

I'm sorry that it had to come to this, but nothing has been improving.

And just in case you didn't realize:

YOU CANNOT REQUEST THE FOLLOWING:

 - TRAINERS
 - GAMES
 - RIPS
 - LEAKED VERSIONS OF GAMES
 - CRACKED PATCHES
 - CRACKED SERVERS
 - PASSWORDS
 - CD-KEYS / SERIALS
 - ANY ILLEGAL APPLICATIONS OF ANY SORT
 - LINKS TO ANY HTTP SITES WITH ILLEGAL APPLICATIONS
 - LINKS TO ANY FTP SITES WITH ILLEGAL APPLICATIONS
 - E-MAILING CONTAINING ANY OF THE ABOVE
 - MMORPG KEYS, INVITES, GUEST PASSES, AND SO ON

YOU CANNOT DO THE FOLLOWING:

 - PRIVATE MESSAGE PEOPLE ASKING FOR ANY PROHIBITED ITEMS
 - E-MAIL PEOPLE ON THE BOARD ASKING FOR ANY PROHIBITED ITEMS

Remember, you are NOT the exception to the rule. We won't allow it "just once" because of <insert lame reason here>. We don't care how much you need it or want it, the rules apply to EVERYONE at ALL TIMES. If you are caught with any of these, you are BANNED.

Now you know. Thanks to all of the people who have lived carefully by this rule, and discouraged others from doing it.

Update:

Q: Can I request/post information from a site like IGN insider?

The answer is NO.

Do NOT REQUEST reviews/information from a site where you MUST PAY TO VIEW IT. This is DIRECT copyright infringement, and will NOT be tolerated. Anyone who POSTS any of this information (reviews, partial reviews, etc.) will ALSO be banned. It makes the site liable, and that is a headache we do not need - so please don't ask why.

Point form, in case you didn't get it:
 - DON'T REQUEST MATERIAL FROM PAYSITES
 - DON'T POST MATERIAL FROM PAYSITES
 - EXAMPLES OF THIS: IGN INSIDER

Additional Rules:

1. No asking about release dates.
This is not the psychic hotline. No one here is going to know what group will release what and when till it happens. We do not know retail release dates for games. There are plenty of other websites for that.

http://www.ebworld.com
http://www.ign.com
http://www.gamershell.com
http://www.gamespot.com
http://www.almost-every-generic-game-site-on-the.net

So please stop asking here, we just gave you guys 5 links to check for these things, quit cluttering up the forums with threads like this.

And as far as patches go, most of the time the game developers don't know when they're going to be out. So don't ask about this either as it is equally annoying.

We also don't know when cracked patches are going to be released, or the latest nocd patch.

2. How to play games online.
Buy it.

There is no way to bypass the CD Key protection, stop asking. Of course there are cracked servers floating around, but they suck, and there are like 3 of them.

If you want to play online so bad, then buy the game, support the developers so they can bring you better titles to play.

Games that you must buy to play online:

Code: [Select]

Quake3
Battlefield 1942
Soldier of Fortune 2
Unreal Tournament 2003
Half Life / Counterstrike
Neverwinter Nights
All the EA sports games
Aliens vs Predator 2
Warcraft 3
Diablo 2
Swat 3
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Tribes 2
The Sims Online
Most, if not all, MMORPGS.I'll add others when i think of them. I realize some games have methods to bypass the CD Key protection, regardless these methods are not that widely known.

Please stop asking how to play pirated software online, it's really annoying to close/delete all these threads. You can't. Get over it.

3. Do not ask for filenames.
When something is released don't ask what the file names are, we aren't here to help you find stuff on eDonkey, anyone we see doing this will be banned, simple as that. If you can't find it, tough, buy the game. Anyone seen giving the file names will have their post removed, second offense is ban.

4. Do not post NFOs in threads.
If people want to see an nfo, they can go to the release list, and click the link there. Not only is it an issue when people don't bother to edit out the serials, it's also spam. No one needs to see a screen and a half of ASCII art, group greets, and "we don't fill missing files, we don't blah we don't blah". Some of you do it on really rare occasion. Others do it constantly. In either case, please stop. We're going to be deleting these posts when we see them, and if we see someone repeatedly doing it, they're going to find themselves banned.

5. It is not a race to post a thread on a new release.
All this does is give us more work to do by locking or deleting dupes. Use your eyes before you post, and if you post about a new game, provide a link for information on the game and don't post: "It's out, w00t, downloading!!!!". Don't care if you are downloading or how fast. Any thread for a new release without a link will be closed. So if you repeatedly bitch to a moderator for locking your useless thread, you will be banned.

6. Do not post links to magazine scans.
Enough warnings have been handed out. If you get caught posting a link to magazine scans, which are copyrighted material, you will be banned.

7. Usage of authority you don't have.
You are not the grammar police, you are not the dupe police. Nor are you the lame post patrol. You don't have any authority over users here, so don't pretend you do. All it does is add clutter to the board and piss people off. If there is a serious issue with someone's post, keep your mouth shut and don't reply. Just use the link labeled "Report Post". It's there for a reason and yes reported posts are generally addressed within minutes.

8. Don't repeatedly repost your deleted posts.
If your post disappears, it obviously wasn't wanted. If you keep reposting it, you're probably going to find yourself banned.

9. The realization that you have no "civil rights" here.
This is a privately owned and operated website. You do not have freedom of speech here. So don't post that you do. We have every right to delete your posts and ban your account on whatever whim we choose. Making a new account and posting how your rights were violated is not only just going to get that account banned as well, but to anyone with any sense who may have seen it, you'll look like nothing more than a total retard.

Freedom of speech means you have the right to open your own forum, not to post whatever you want on someone else's.

10. Do not assume which moderator did what.
Unless we make a post informing people who it was that locked or deleted a thread, or banned some user, don't make assumptions as to who it was that did it. If your thread disappears and you make a post telling some moderator to fuck off or suck your dick or whatever, thats a pretty damn good way to get banned, especially if you blamed the wrong moderator.

11. Inappropriate use of BBCode and other misuses of text.
Ok, you have the ability to make size 10 fonts and change the colors and so forth. Don't abuse it. No one wants to see size 15 "YUO = FAG0T". Also, knock off the 20-carriage-return-in-the-middle-of-your-post garbage. Not only is it a waste of space, but it's pretty damn aggravating to have 1 reply in a thread take up 2 screens in 1024*768 just because someone decided to be an ass.

12. Do not bitch about bandwidth limits, transfer speeds, and so forth.
Quit complaining about your ISP and limits. Every time a game comes out threads are flooded with this shit.

NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR LIMIT.
NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR ISP.
NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOU WHINE ABOUT DISC SIZE.
NO ONE CARES IF YOU ARE GETTING IT OR NOT.
NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOU COMPLAIN OR BRAG ABOUT SPEEDS.

I'll be removing these kinds of posts, and if the same people will repeatedly post this kind of shit, they'll find themselves banned.

13. Search before you ask.
Unless a game has just come out. If you have a question regarding gameplay help, troubleshooting, whatever. Search first, odds are there is already a post somewhere discussing your issue, or at least a gameplay help thread or something similiar for you to ask in. There's a lot of games that get released, and a lot of people want to discuss a lot of different things. cluttering up the forum with five or six threads asking various walkthrough type questions about the same game makes things worse. I hear people come up with this a lot: "But that thread is six pages long, I don't wanna go through all that", well that's what the search is for. You can show results by posts instead of threads. It doesn't matter if it takes you half an hour to read it, you'll probably get your answer faster than posting, and waiting all day for someone to answer. Unless you're illiterate, it shouldn't be an issue, because you shouldn't be here in the first place if you can't read.

14. Thread naming guidelines.
1. If you start a thread about an upcoming game, do not put anything other than the game's name in it because otherwise it would make it harder to look for that particular thread using the search option. Examples of this:

Right way: Far Cry, Doom 3.
Wrong way: Far Cry - Crytek, Doom 3 - ID Software.

2. When you start a thread for a release, make sure you remove the periods (i.e, dots, colons, slashes, underscores) in the release name. Again, it makes it harder to look for things using the search option. Keep the group's name, though, separated by a hyphen (spaced) after the release name/before the group. This is all that is needed. Examples of this:

Right way: Far Cry - FLT, Doom 3 - DEVIANCE.
Wrong way: FAR.CRY-DEVIANCE or; Far Cry (insert developer/publisher here, how many rars, etc.).

3. Do not put: General discussion, conference, debate, interview, review, preview, trailer, announced, publisher, developer, demo, and some such. It's not needed, whatsoever, and can be stated within the specific thread.

15. Don't bring back old threads without a good reason.
Just for clarification, reviving an old dead thread just to post "that was leet" is not a good reason.

16. Reporting threads.
If you see a thread that should be locked, don't post stupid shit in it. Just report the thread, and don't reply.

17. Do not advertise websites.
If you start a thread for the sole purpose of advertising your website, don't; you'll be banned without a warning. Also, don't advertise websites by putting them in your sigs. ISONews isn't your personal advertisting space.

18. Useless posts.
Do not post crap such as; "Woot, i'm a locked thread", "Woot, I'm in a moved thread", or "in before lock". Just report the thread, and don't bother replying. Also, if a crack/serial/keygen isnt out, well its obviously not out, right? No need to broadcast to the forum how mad you are because its not out yet. For example, bumping a thread just to say "wtf no teh crack been released yet?". Obviously not, right? Not only are these posts annoying to look at, but makes you look retarded in the process because you already know its not out, so why bitch to the forum about it? Keep these annoying comments to yourself. There isnt a damn thing this site or its users can do about this kind of thing, so just a get a pillow and pound on it until your anger has subsided. These posts also may hint at a user requesting or someone having a hard time trying to find a crack/keygen he heard about, in the hopes a person will provide him what he's looking for. Some poor soul may decide to 'help' the person and link to a site where the crack/whatever he wants is hosted. Nice try, but we know all the tricks in the book, so dont waste your time. Posts like this will be removed and if the user continually makes posts like this, he will find himself on vacation.

19. Do not alter quotes.
Don't alter the posts of other users when quoting them (example: quoting someone and changing his quote to; "I'm a fag", "I suck dicks", and so forth.). This kind of shit will not be tolerated. Those types of posts will be deleted and the poster will be warned, if the specific poster will continue to do so after being warned, he will be banned.

20. Do not shit in threads.
If someone decides to shit in threads (i.e; post non-topic related shit, or just retarded posts in general). He will get a warning, and if he will continue doing so after that warning, he will find himself banned.

21. Do not link to torrents or sites containing torrents.
This rule specifically applies to warez torrents, linking to torrents of demos and such is allowed. However, any user seen requesting, linking, or even mentioning a name of a torrent site, will be banned.

22. Newsgroups
Mentioning names of Usenet groups, indexing sites, nzb sites, and so on, is frowned upon. Doing so well result in immediate termination of your account.

23. Use common sense.
It's obvious that spamming, thread-shitting, trolling, and other types of unaccepted netiquette will not be tolerated here, so please use common sense when posting. It's impossible to include every bannable case-scenario in the rules, so if you know you're doing something retarded and it's not mentioned here, don't be shocked if you get banned for it.

[Uncle_Mart]

Some minor updates:

1. Graphics Card Drivers

Dont post new graphics card driver releases in the PC Games forum anymore, post them in the Software & Programming forum from now on. Why? Because its software, not a game, and primarily because it doesnt necessarily pertain to just games. Sure, most of us use our graphics card for games, but there are usually other things that stem from that in the discussion; how they work in a particular Non-Game App, system performace, Windows OS performance, etc.

2a. Release Thread Titles

I thought this should be added here and etched in stone finally, as some people still have a habit of making dupe game-threads for the same release. Its been decided that we dont need two release threads for the same game by different release groups. For example, if a thread already exists for 'Stegg Vs Jesus - The Game - CloneGroup' and then 3 days later a cracked release comes out, dont make another thread for it. It's not necessary, creates more clutter and confusion, and the same things are going to discussed and debated about the game anyway, so one thread is enough. If one thread was to become buried on page 10, yet had some important info that someone needed to know about, well they most likely wont ever know about it because the other thread somehow became more popular. Sure, the person could use the search, but not everyone bothers doing that and having everything in one thread makes it more accessible. If you made the original thread, just add a '/' after the name of the release group and then add the other groups name. For example, the thread would look like this:

Correct Way:Stegg Vs Jesus The Game - CloneGroup / CrackGroup.

Make sure the '/' is separated by spaces too. This makes the words show up in search easier.

Wrong Way:Stegg Vs Jesus The Game - CloneGroup/CrackGroup.

If you didnt make the original thread, just post the release in the thread itself as to make it known, and when the original poster sees it, he/she will edit the thread title soon enough.

2b. Don't put things like ALCOHOLCLONE, EMUDVD, DVD9, MULTI5 in the release thread titles anymore. There is a character limit and some game titles are lengthy. We may need to add another group to the mix and with so many trivial description taking up space, well it wont fit. People can read the nfos or the release thread to find out those specifics, it's not necessary to be placed in thread titles anymore. Also, colons, semicolons, slashes, hyphens, interpuncts, ellipses, guillemets and whatever other forms of punctuation, arent needed anymore to separate the games name and subtitle. Again, they take up character space (2 spaces when spaced). The only thing that is needed is a hyphen to separate the group name, and forward slashes to separate subsequent release groups that are added, as mentioned above. Allow me to give some examples of the correct and wrong way:

Correct Way:[/color] Yoshi Accidentally Kills Mario And Luigi - Groupname

Wrong Way:[/color] Yoshi Accidentally Kills Mario And Luigi EMUDVD BWCLONE  - Groupname

As you can see, the wrong version wouldn't fit in the thread title, and its already being cut close with the correct version.

2c. Just to make this fully known as well, DO NOT CREATE THREADS FOR NON-ENGLISH RELEASES. For example, if a game is only in German (i.e. Die suche nach verlorenem heißem hund in Stegg's arschloch), dont create a thread for it. If you want to make it known that the German version is out for whatever game at the time, post it in that particular game's current discussion thread. If the game is German, but is also playable in English, then you may create a thread for it. But please, be sure that it is, ok? Dont just assume it has English in it, because Johnny Dumbass on Torrentspy said so.

3. Monthly Release Date Threads

An order was recently sent down from above, as to clarify this subject. If you decide to create a monthly release dates thread, here are some things you should know, in order to make them properly. Ill keep this as short and sweet as possible. No need to go all 'Tom Clancy' with this. Rather than actually spell it out for you, i will use real examples.

Correct Way[/color][/url] <click

Wrong Way[/color][/url] <click

Obviously, you want to emulate the thread shown for the 'Correct Way'. This allows for a nice tidy and professional looking release thread, with validity of the games being proven via their links to home pages/gaming sites, etc. You don't have to be extremely anal on the description/overview of each game, but LINKS,  DATES and GAME GENRE are REQUIRED[/color].

Threads not in accordance with this guidline will be locked immediately and another user (or mod) will create a proper one.

4. Children's Software

Please refrain from making threads for this stuff. The Children's Software Forum was closed for a reason, that being, inactivity and for the basic fact there is virtually no one here who plays this tripe. 99% of all posts in these threads too, are people just poking fun at the game or having to let everyone know they are sarcastically downloading it for their 8 kids, 2 nieces and 3 unborn children. They also just clutter up the front page with vapor and take away attention from the general games people are interested in. Use your own judgement on this and think first about posting stuff that looks like its meant for kids. If you are unsure, pm a mod. Yes, i know we are mostly 'big kids' at heart who play video games, but were all kind of past the stage of Barbie Does Fairytopia, Howie Mandel's Duck-Duck-Goose and Charlie Brown and Snoopy Teach Bigfoot How To Reduce Fractions.



Credit to Razor and David for making these posts/rules