[Freek]

Welcome to our forums! With over four years of history (as of June 200 and loads of people and posts, we understand all of it can be a bit intimidating. This guide should provide the necessary insight for you to enjoy the forums at their fullest, and prevent any unpleasant encounters with our staff.

Table of Contents

1. Forum Rules
   • Terms of Service
   • Avatar and Signature rules
   • Warnings and Infractions
   • Disagreements
2. Forum Etiquette
3. General usage, about posting, how-to for features
   • BBcode (also: how to post images, videos and spoilers)
4. Forum Ranks and Staff
   • Contact Information
5. FAQ
6. Hidden Forum Features

[Freek]

Forum Rules

Terms of Service
The forum rules are made up by the Terms of Service, available here. If you find a post that is in violations of the Terms of Service (TOS), you can click the 'report' button next to it, to inform the moderating team of the post in question.

Avatar and Signature Rules
Even though we strive to allow our members as much freedom as we can, there are some limitations on the usage of Avatar and Signature pictures. Signatures and Avatars that do not abide by these rules may be removed without notice.

Avatar Rules

• Maximum Avatar Size 80x80px
• Use .GIF .JPG .JPEG .PNG extensions only
• Animated Avatars are allowed.
• No revealing pictures can be used. If a moderator/admin deems it inappropriate, you will receive a warn and your avatar will be removed.

Signature Rules

• Each signature may contain one "main" image that has a maximum size of 400x125px
• Animated Signatures are allowed as long as the file size is under 200 KB.
• Each signature may contain one main image, and one additional "stats signature" like xfire or your windows live! stats, or a userbar.
• No signatures will be allowed which break the site's Terms of Service. "Chick sigs" are allowed but can be removed by a moderator should they feel it is too revealing.
• Please do not include links of a malicious nature, those that crash your browser, trigger popup floods or emulate BSOD's.

Warnings and Infractions
Failure to comply with the Forum Rules and Terms of Service will result in warnings and infractions at the moderator's discretion:

Warnings
Warnings are really warnings in the literal sense: they cannot get you banned, and they do not count for your infraction points. However, a warning is intended to warn you against further behaviour of the kind, and future issues will result in infractions.

Infractions
Infractions are issued for all offences. Infractions have a set amount of points, which may eventually result in suspensions and bannings from the forums. Most infractions expire after a relatively short period. Serious offences however, do not expire.Bannings will be issued a 7 day ban after a member's warn level reaches a 10 points. Bans will be increased in length. A permanent ban will be issued at 50 points. Bans for racism, swearing and spam are much higher then bannings issued for smaller TOS violations.

Disagreements
It sometimes happens that a members feels he/she is treated unjustly or that a post or thread was wrongly (re)moved or closed. In these cases, please send a private message to the moderator in question. If you do not know who this moderator was, please contact the forum administrator, instead. The forum administrator's contact information can easily be found on the staff page.

If you cannot solve your issue with the moderator in question, please contact the forum administrator (see above)

[Freek]

Forum Etiquette
As a member of the Middle-earth Center, you are expected to abide by the forum "Etiquette". What is this? Nothing more or less then a number of guidelines by which to behave. Failure to do so could disrupt the flow of the forums, and might upset people or chase them away. So please, keep these guidelines in mind when you post!

• Be respectful!
  Please refrain from personal attacks and name-calling of any kind. Debating and disagreements are fine, but do not take it to the personal level. We want our forums to stay friendly! Stick to the issues and arguments, and do not stay onto the personal battleground.
  
  Respecting other members also means respecting their rights to post their own opinion(s) and beliefs. Every members has an equal right to voice his or her opinion within the context of the forum topic, so do not tell someone to "get lost". You may not respect their opinion itself, but we do want you to respect the right to post their opinion. If you believe someone is violating rules, or going "off-topic", please report the post to our moderating team by pressing the appropriate icon. Do not respond to the post.
  
  Personal disputes can some times occur, but our boards are not your "arena" to solve them on. If you have a problem with a certain member, please do not use our forum (this includes our PM feature) to press the issue.
• Do not stray
  In the heat of discussion, it is easy to stray off-topic and discuss a related issue. However, please keep in mind the original subject of the topic when you make a post, and whether the post you want to make fits in that subject. If it does not, consider changing your post or posting a new thread concerning the subject you want to discuss.
• Post in the right forum
  Please make sure that the forum you are posting a thread or post in, is the right forum. Nothing disrupts the flow of a forum more then having a topic in the wrong area, and this will dramatically hurt response times on questions you may have.
• Copyrighted material
  Do not post a copyrighted article or other material in its entirety on the forum, without permission from the copyright holder. You can post an excerpt or quotation, citing the source, and a link to the full story if it's available on the Web. NEVER claim a post, story or article by someone else to be your own.
• Illegal downloads, cheats and trainers
  Links to, or attachments of illegal downloads will be removed and may result in infractions.
  Due to the disrupting effects cheats and trainers have on online gameplay (even if originally intended for singleplayer), we do not allow ANY third-party cheats, hacks or exploits to be posted on our boards. If we do find such a post, we will forward it to the game developer(s) for correction in future patches.
• Disruptive posting
  Please refrain from postings that disrupt threads of discussions. Please make your posts readable by using proper punctuation, spelling, grammar and by using paragraps to seperate arguments.
  
  Disruptive posting also includes comments or replies that do not contribute towards a discussion, eg. by saying nothing more then "I agree", "I disagree" or "That's cool!". If you want to voice your opinion or agree or disagree with someone, please use arguments and examples to continue the discussion, and give other users the opportunity to respond to YOUR post in turn.
• Post Count
  Post count is tied into your user rank, which is explained below. Some additional rewards are added for long-time members with higher post count, such as access to the "senior members" section, additional avatars and more.
  
  None of the above make your actual posts any more or less interesting. As the saying goes, "Stop worrying about your post count and just make your posts count." Your fellow members (and moderators) won't take it kindly if it becomes obvious that you are posting fluff to deliberately inflate your post count.

[Freek]

General usage, about posting, how-to for features
Most, if not all of the features on our forums are explain in the forum FAQ:
http://www.middleearthcenter.com/forums/faq.php

BBcode
BBcode (or vBcode) is the code used on the forums to change the formatting of text, adding links, images or quotes. Most of these are explained in the FAQ above. There are a few however, that can use further explanation:

[strike]text[/strike]

Produces
text

[youtube]WdgyBzhdPIY[/youtube]

The text between the tags is copied from the URL to the YouTube video:
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=WdgyBzhdPIY

This produces:

[spoiler]text[/spoiler]

Usually used in the Movies/TV section, this tag will hide the text between the tags, forcing the user to click a button to reveal it.

( Click to show/hide )

text

[Freek]

Forum Ranks and Staff

Staff Ranks

Site administrators, responsible for new features and the day-to-day operations of the site and forums.


Forum Administrators, responsible for the daily integrity of the forums and staff.


Forum moderators, will make sure members follow the forum rules, and cleans up forums from spam and flaming.


In charge of specific content on the website, as well as newsposting.



Member Ranks

Starter rank


125 posts


750 posts


1500 posts


2500 posts


Hall of Fame (selected by senior members)


Contact Staff
Feel free to contact staff about any forum-related issues. Please do not contact staff regarding questions not related to the forums or website itself. This includes any questions about the games, demo's etc. To contact staff go to our staff contact page.

[Freek]

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

I have an image on my local computer, how do I post it on the forums?
There are a lot of ways to do this. You can either upload it to a third-party service like imageshack or photobucket, or, you can upload it to the forums using your personal album feature, or as an attachment to your post.

I have a really cool signature image, but its above the size limit!
We're sorry, but we are enforcing this limit to make browsing the forums easier and more pleasant. Signatures or avatars that are too wide could stretch the lay-out out of proportion, and signatures with a large height would only increase scrolling time.

Why is my post count suddenly going down?
Your post count can go down if any of your posts are deleted. Once in a while, forum maintanence may also update your post count to go up or down, as it triggers a total recalculation of all posts.

My posts/threads are disappearing, why?
A moderator may some times delete your posts or threads, or move them, without notifying you. Why try to notify our members as much as possible, but during busy periods it can some times occur that you are not notified of this. If you think that your post might have violated forum etiquette or the rules, please do not re-post it.

There are so many forums! How can I keep track of all the new posts?
To get a list of all the new posts since your last visit, click the "New posts" link on top of any page. There are also additional features, like subscriptions and RSS feeds, that let you subscribe to updates on indidual posts or forums. Please see the forum FAQ for more information on how to use these features.

Whoa! What do all these strange abbreviations mean?
LOL - Laughing Out Loud
ROFL - Rolling On Floor Laughing
ROFLMAO - Rolling On Floor Laughing My *** Off
IIRC - If I Recall Correctly
IMO - In My Opinion
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
FWIW - For What It's Worth
J/K - Just Kidding
NP - No problem
TY, THX - Thank You, Thanks
Nub, Nublet, Noob - Stands for a new, generally inexperienced or "young" person
OMG - Oh My God
ZOMG - Same as the above
OMFG - Oh my ******* god
WTF - What the ****
TYVM - Thank You Very Much
TTYL - Talk to you later
Lulz - Just for the "lol" (lolz) generally used as an excuse, eg. "I did it for the lulz"
PM - Private Message (a forum feature)

I want to change my forum username, how do I do this?
You can contact a forum- or site-administrator (not a moderator!) to request a name change. Note however, that administrators are allowed to refuse your request. This is usually only done in cases of a large history of rule violations and infractions, or too frequently requested changes. Pick your name with care. You'll be stuck with it for a long time!

I want to reply to a thread, but it's really old, is this OK?
It is OK to post in an older thread, but only do so if you feel you can contribute towards a revitalized discussion. Posting "thank you" messages or otherwise non-incentive posts in old threads is generally not appreciated.

[color="red]A better option is to post a NEW thread about the subject you wish to discuss. A rule of thumb is to stay away from topics that are have had no replies for over two months.[/color]

[Freek]

"Hidden" forum features
I often get questions from members asking for features or tools that already exist on the forum. Its fairly easy to keep track of new posts, for example. Here's a few "hidden" features that we think will help you greatly.

Subscribing
You can subscribe to threads or even entire forums. What does this mean? It means the forum will keep track of new threads and/or posts in the area you subscribed to. You can choose to be instantly notified of new posts via email, get a daily update on all the updates, or get no email notification. You can keep track of your subscriptions via your user control panel. The User CP can be reached by clicking that link in the top part of every page, next to your avatar.

To subsribe to a forum, on the page of the forum you're in. Click 'Forum Tools' and then 'Subsribe to this forum'. To subscribe to a thread, open the 'Thread Tools' dropdown in the thread view instead. Both options can be found near the top of the page.

If you want to automatically subsribe to threads you post in, you can set this in your User CP "Options" section.

New posts
If you don't want to subsribe to all the forums and threads, there's an easier way to see all the new posts since your last visit. Simply click the 'new posts' link on top of the page, and the forum will automatically list all threads that've been updated since your last visit. If you are not logged in or do not have an account, it will show all posts from the last 24 hours instead.