Hello all, and welcome to the benheck.com forums created by portable enthusiast Benjamin Heckendorn. This bulletin board was created to discover a new and interesting environment based on the intriguing world of electronics and video games. To maintain a valuable forum, we all must follow and understand various guidelines.
1. No trolling, flaming, or spamming. The reason this forum came to be was not for you to put down or be put down. Respect is a completely necessity here, and anyone that decides not to show proper respect does not belong here. As for spamming, every member here should have a general knowledge of what spam is and what the effects of spam are. For those who do not know what trolling is; trolling is a slang word meaning the act of arguing and offensive controversy intentionally, just to create havoc. If followed, these generic rules will keep users content and comfortable with other members.
2. No advertising or blogging. Following spamming, advertising your own site or forum is one of the most useless and obnoxious acts existent. If you are to do any advertising, it will reside in your signature, nowhere else. Too clear ideas up, the word blogging is derived from the digital web log (blog) and is defined as the act of creating topics that no one can discuss. Please do not post threads of your day at school, what you found under the sofa, or how you scraped your knee skateboarding.
3. No politics or religious talk. Past threads have proven the majority of benheck.com too immature to maintain a calm conversation about controversial issues and debates of religion and politics. Said topics constantly conclude with several hurt feelings, and a lock. Do not force or suggest your views and ideas upon others, this is not the place for it.
4. Mind your vulgarity. Or, keep it PG. We have a language censor to block a large portion of vulgar words, but there are obviously countless ways to bypass this filter. If you really cannot come up with a better word to use, please censor your obscenity appropriately. This still means you are not to change your "i" to a "!" or anything along those lines. Of course, any pornographic material or hateful content will result in severe punishment.
5. Legality is cruise control for cool. This rules speaks for itself; don't cross into the dark gray area by discussing and exchanges warez (illegal software and media). We're not here to punish you and get you in trouble with the law - but it's not worth risking!
6. No excessive complaining about advertisements or anything else Ben does to monetize his site. The forums of Benheck.com consume 50% of the total bandwidth and thus are a major part of the monthly expense. The shiny new server is also an added expense to speed things up. As such, you will see a variety of ads around the benheck.com as you do with any other popular site. These pay for the site that you enjoy to be online, so as Trent Reznor suggests "don't bite the hand that feeds".
1. Search before posting. If you're about to hit that new topic button, please think twice. Run through a search or two to make positive that your question has not been answered. However, if you think that the possible discussion of your topic has changed over time, then it's up to you to judge whether or not it would be appropriate for you to create a new thread. This brings us to our next formality...
2. Do not bring up old topics. Dusting of a thread is only acceptable under a few conditions; the main one being that if you have something new and intelligent to add to a previously discussed topic, it's probably fine to bump the topic for discussion. Please do not bring up a year-old topic if you have nothing useful to add.
3. Be specific in your thread titles and posts. If it ever occurs that you do post threads after reading this topic, please be kind enough to add a detailed description to your post and a themed topic title to go along with it. This will not only help you, but help others help you.
4. Grammar and spelling. Honestly, no one wants to read a truckload of letters that were misplaced in attempt to create some sort of words. With that said, please try to keep somewhat of a structure to your posts. This does not mean you have to be a perfect typist or an English professor, it just means that you have to be able to type across your ideas so others can understand them. If typing in all lowercase is your thing and occasionally using chat lingo - that's fine. Just as long as you're sure others have no problem with it. Please do not moderate grammar and spelling as if you're a major or something. No one cares how well you can catch other people's errors - and it makes you look arrogant - not worth it!
5. Don't back-seat moderate. The only thing that the moderation can't stand at all besides spambots are those who play moderator. This does not just mean suggesting or reminding other of these rules, but also those who order around moderators by saying "someone lock this" or "move this topic." If you seriously think that you have better judgment than the moderation, you need to rethink your position. We know our jobs, and we will act when it is necessary.
6. Signature and avatar sizes. Please consider others' computers when creating avatars and signatures. Not everyone has a 1960x1024 resolution monitor and a fiber-optic internet connection. Try to keep avatars lower than about 150px by 150px and signatures under 450px by 200 px. Think of the 56K!
7. Do not post in abundance. Before you post a new topic, think of the number of topics you've created in the past week. If you can't count them with your fingers, you're posting too much topics. Try to keep your reply ratio under ten posts a day. We all know it's fun to add three senseless words to a thread, but people will get sick of you.
Order subject to change depending on severity of offense.
1st Offense: Warning
2nd Offense: Warning
3rd Offense: Two week temporary ban
4th Offense: One month temporary ban
5th Offense: Permanent ban
The moderation and administration is able to do the following to any of the following:
1. Lock threads
2. Delete threads and posts
3. Warn users through PM or other system of messaging
4. Distribute bans
5. Inform internet service providers
6. Get creative otherwise - we're good at this
1. Moderator rules
2. Posting and you animation
3. Guidelines to success
4. Rule Thread 4.0 SuperLite
Thanks for reading, enjoy your stay at benheck.com!
-The Management
Revised September 09, 2007
These rules don't really mean anything; mods lock whatever they don't like, whether there's a rule about it or not. I'd also like to point out that none of the moderator rules have ever been enforced, no matter what.
