The All Important Rules

Now for the topic you've all been waiting for, the rules! These are important, because even a democracy needs them to avoid complete chaos. If any of you are caught ignoring or disobeying them, it could earn you a warning, or even worse, a ban if it's necessary.

The paragraphs below each section elaborate on the reasons behind our rules in further detail, should you have any questions. If you have common sense, there may not be a need to read them beyond the what is put bold tags.

The Rules : Version 0.4i

1 . No warez, porn, illegal content, mature content, or sexting are allowed.

If putting all of the above in bold wasn't enough for you, I'll elaborate. This is a web forum built around catering to fans of a video game series that is family-friendly, so we want this community to be as equally readily viewable by kids and teens.

If you consider posting porn, smut, fetish art, mature fan art, or racy content, you will be in hot water. Posters of illegal content, and spam bots especially, will wind up banned on-site, no questions asked. tl;dr, no romz, cracks, pr0ns, keygens, serials, or mp3s please.

2 . Religion, politics, and controversial topics are unfortunately not allowed. Sorry.

We all come from very different walks in life, and have very diverse views, faiths and interpretations of life. Sadly, this difference can be enough to split up entire internet communities, so let's avoid chancing that here. If you have a need to air your thoughts on such things, there are plenty of other places for that kind of discussion, such as deviantART's message board.

3 . Hate, racism, instigation, and trolling are also not allowed. Sorry trolls.

All of the above are never needed in a web community, or in real life. We're here to share our love for Shantae and Co., not make racist comments or death threats. If you have no intention of being a serious part of this community, don't sign up, because you will be banned for trying to put raisins in our muffins.

4 . Plagiarism of another creative's work is considering a bannable offense, no exceptions.

If you are not above stealing other people's work, there's no telling what else you are capable of. People put a lot of thought, heart, and soul into their best creations. Don't ruin their work by merely putting your name on it for attention.

5 . Please keep specific topics to their respective forums if you can.

Whether you're a clean freak or not, it really helps to keep things organized. Guests and members should be able to find what they're looking for, so please keep topics that belong in Video Games in Video Games and not Shantae Fan Art, for instance. It's not a bannable offense at all, but it might annoy the staff to have to frequently move topics to more appropriate forums.

6 . We can't expect perfect grammar from any of you, but please use correct English spelling and grammar whenever possible.

It is impossible to expect anyone, especially foreign speakers, to have perfect grammar and spelling 24/7, but please do what you can. We don't want any real human or zombie members of the community being mistaken for spam bots.

7 . If you criticize a fellow member's work, do so constructively. Don't berate them.

There are times when you'll have to give it someone straight, and tell them how their art looks; but you don't have to call them names to get your point across. You can tell them exactly what they did wrong and why without insulting them.

This rule also applies to those receiving criticism. Sometimes it's going to hurt when people point out the mistakes you made, and you might feel upset about it, and that's okay. If a fellow member is honestly trying to help you improve, don't be disrespectful and brush it off. Listen closely and take their words to heart, if it's helpful. One of the keys to improving is listening to others and having an open mind.

8 . If you were banned, don't try to work around it.

The staff can see your IP address, if they're suspicious. It's not that hard to tell when somebody is trying to work around their ban through an alternate account. If you feel that you were banned wrongly, email us about it, or contact members of the staff via social media. Don't try to smear your reputation more by pulling a newbie stunt like this.

Anyone trying to speak for banned members will also land themselves in a spot of trouble. The member in question may have been banned for a good reason, and you're enabling him or her to speak without posting privileges, negating the whole purpose of the ban.

9 . Please keep all advertising in your signatures and the Shantae Fan Sites Forum.

If it's not about Shantae, there's a good chance we either aren't interested, or don't like seeing the forums cluttered with advertisements for non-Shantae websites. Any posts or topics falling under this category will go straight into the Trash Bin. (It's okay to advertise your creative stuff in General Discussion, however.)

Otherwise, it's perfectly acceptable to advertise in your signature, and if you're a regular poster on the forums, it's better for gathering attention than a single topic.

10 . Our standing on mature or pornographic content also applies to fan art and fan fiction posted on these boards.

While you do have the freedom to post that kind of art on the Internet, it's not something we want in our own channels, given our goal of making these forums accessible to all ages. It's not anymore complex than that.

11 . Avoid using lude or obviously adult images in your avatars and signatures.

This one should be self-explanatory. The rules apply to what it is in your personal space too, and it will be removed upon inspection if your images fall under this category. Save those pictures for more mature communities, okay? And if you keep trying to use lude images in those places, after repeated "cleanings", I will personally strip you of your avatar privileges, and replace your old avatar with a pretty pink pony princess.

12 . Have a problem with the staff? PM us or send an email.

I've watched the smallest problems flare up into mushroom clouds fast on web forums over the years, and I've also seen it tear communities apart time and time again. Anything you have to talk to us about can be handled quickly and quietly, in private.

The reasoning is that it's simply easier this way than if it was public, where everyone in the community can play the peanut gallery as it happens.

13 . I personally apologize to some of you for our curse filter of over 80 words, but it is necessary.

Once again, I must emphasize that this is a family-friendly forum. If Shantae doesn't need it, then this community will be fine without it too. Granted, I may not know every vulgar curse or racist term out there, so if it comes out accidentally and the filter didn't cover it, don't worry, we'll take care of that instead of yelling at you.

Intentionally trying to evade this filter may start to slowly annoy us, however. I haven't had to temp-ban anybody yet, and I hope I don't have to over some clever maniac testing which obscure slang terms we might've missed.

14 . If you enjoy back-seat moderating, please do it over here, not on these boards.

We don't ban people for having an opinion, although it does get incredibly annoying when normal users loudly proclaim who should or shouldn't be banned, voice when they think a topic should be locked, or tell a member of the Staff to put a sock in it (Usually in less polite wording.) while they continue to rebel. This is one of the many evils of the Internet, please don't it.

Criticism in how we handle things is welcomed. Go start your own forums if you get that worked up over it, however. We the Staff are more than capable of doing our part to keep these forums safeguarded against mankind's less desirable elements, and will proceed to do so whether you barked about it first or not. The loudest creatures are the first ones to be eaten in nature, and in the case of web forums, we have ban hammers. Please don't make us use it, I hate banning people.

15 . More of a word of advice than a rule, but please be careful when you hotlink to certain images; some sites don't like it when you do that.

If you see an epic image and feel like wrapping it in [img] tags in your post, it would be a good idea to hit the preview post button first. Some web hosts hate it when people drive up bandwidth costs by linking to their site, and will redirect you to something lude or offensive instead. I see it happen a lot and don't want that to happen to anyone else either.

16 . We won't ban anyone for abusing smileys, but it can get annoying.

We know some people really enjoy using smileys, and they can be fairly helpful in better communicating the emotion behind a specific sentence. Nothing wrong with them, really. Although some newbies might feel the need to put three or more after each line. You don't need to spam smileys, it clutters your post and sometimes makes it harder to read.

17 . Please wrap embedded videos in spoiler tags, if you have more than five videos to embed in one post.

This rule is simply another simple suggestion for forum etiquette. Some people may be casually viewing the forums from their console, smart phone, (Assuming embedded videos display on these forums for mobile devices.) tablet, or even a low-end netbook, so this has a small chance of crashing their browser or operating system. Covering them in spoiler tags, however, prevents them from loading all at once, and you can still label them however you like.

We are trying to accommodate as many viewing experiences as possible, so please keep this in mind when you need to embed multiple videos, instead of one or two, or we may be inclined to edit your post with appropriate spoiler tags.

18 . There is no need to create alternate accounts for yourself.

I have noticed the key reason for anyone creating alt accounts is simply for a new user name, but you don't have to start fresh on a new account to do that. If you messed up on your user name or feel like changing it, send any Administrator in the staff a private message with your name-change request, or you can post your request in this thread. We can do that very quickly on the Admin panel, so it's no trouble at all.

Outside of that, we generally don't feel right about alternate accounts tied to the same IP, unless it's clearly your sibling, for instance. Any secondary accounts created by a single user will be deleted the moment we see them.

19 . Anyone who opens an account and falsely claims to be Matt Bozon, or any official developer from the series, will be banned on-site. Any account setup through the IP address of the offender will suffer a similar fate.

Huge emphasis on falsely. I'm sure that if, Mr. Bozon or anyone else at WayForward decided to post on these forums, they could validate their presence via their Twitters or other places. (For instance, Matt Bozon has an account on Twitter, so all we would have to do is ask if his posts are legitimate, if we're not sure.)

So, if any of you, heaven-forbid, attempt to impersonate anyone who is currently, or previously employed, at WayForward, we will see right through it. We especially will not tolerate joke accounts of this sort either, whether you make it clear it's a joke account or not. Breaking this rule is far more offensive than breaking any of the others above this one.


Hopefully that should cover it! So we'll see you around, newcomers. Abide by these rules, and I think we'll enjoy your time here.

Also, if there is anything you fellow members or staff feel like suggesting what should change in the current version of the rules, this is the topic to post your ideas! Please do realize that the current rules still apply to you, even if your suggestion isn't considered yet. Don't try pulling any silly stunts until it's declined or merged into the rule-set.

Just posting to say the rules have been updated! The three new rules I have appended to the original post are a must-read.

Revised the rules a bit and added a new one! It's not a necessary rule for everyone, but I just wanted to make it clear to newbies who might crash a few peoples' browsers over a massive animated gif or image; 56k users everywhere, I'm looking out for you!

I added a new rule involving alternate accounts, and revised random bits of text. Should have fewer typos, and be more thorough for newcomers.

Added two new rules that I should have thought to include in the first place! I recommend any newcomers to check out #13 and #4, but I'm sure they're already well understood by the rest of the community, so you seniors have nothing to worry about. =P

I have added another rule that should help clear up our stance on mature fan art and fan fiction in Rule #10; I felt that it wasn't properly emphasized in the original ruleset. We needed to have it set in stone should anyone attempt to post inappropriate content on our fan art board in the future.

Updated the rule set again. The language in a lot of text was old and needed softening up. More words have been added to the mature filter, corrected a couple spelling errors, trimmed over-usage of certain words, and changed how ads are displayed on the forums as well, cutting out the need for one rule about ads. (No ads are displayed at all so long as you're logged in, and text ads are disabled for both guests and members.) FAQs in other topics of this board also have been updated as well.

Revised the rules again! All of them were rather long-winded, so that was addressed. It's more direct, relaxed, and brief.

I removed the one about image restrictions as well, as there was no point to it.