Rules template

General Forum Rules

Welcome to the lastlegacy.us forums! These are the universal rules that are in put into place to manage the togetherness of this community, for the people’s benefit.

This thread contains the official rules on top, with the “TL;DR” parts being extra highlighted, but it’s highly recommended to read everything.

Don’t think that you can mischievously bend rules just because you’re a respected community member (or staff member). Rule enforcement is applied to everyone on the same basis.


1. Basic interaction with eachother

1a. Be nice and respectful with each other. Don’t flame or harass anyone. Everyone deserves respect. Don’t insult people and try to not be hateful towards anyone, instead try to settle conflicts in a civil manner. Try to be nice to people. Attitudes of bitching and displaying airs and graces or always being rude/blunt aren’t welcome as well.

1b. Don’t be rude or condescending to people who break some rules or otherwisely do something off. If you find a post that doesn’t comply with the rules, use the report button. Don’t berate the person about what they’ve done wrong (this is called “backseat moderating”). If you want to help and assist them, do it in a respectful way, and consider doing it in private. Also, don’t request punishments in public.

1c. There’s no room for bullying, teasing and overreacting. Joking and sarcasm is allowed, but it should never be stretched and continued to harass others just because of their comments or actions, be them bad or not. Generally, do not mischievously make jokes on costs of someone else. If someone refuses to take a joke, don’t escalate it further. At the same time, avoid overreacting and being too sensitive. If nothing else helps, contact staff to make a judgement.


2. Special case: Handling arguments / drama

Arguments and drama are a natural part of life. People who never have drama are good. People who have drama at times and deal with it constructively are better. You can go mad, but you should not take it out too much on the people involved. One can fairly write an own oeuvre about the right way of discussion and arguing. This is a list of the most basic and important aspects.

2a. Don’t overly scream or rage. Screaming gets in the way of communicating effectively and it’s not providing helpful expression. Keep your words respectable and civilized. This coincides with other general rules such as to not swear excessively or abusing all-caps, BBcodes etc.

2b. Don’t call people names, and don’t deliberately put anyone down. Deliberately saying things to hurt another's feelings is downright malicious and oppressive, see Rule #1. You don't have to be cruel to be correct. Being gentle and understanding with eachother over disagreements will get you a lot further.

2c. Listen out your counterpart, but don’t make loose assumptions on their feelings. Try and figure out what that person was thinking and feeling when they said it. Read words multiple times if necessary. You wish to be heard, so you should do the same for them. On the other hand it doesn't do any good to exhibit your “aptitude” for mind-reading. If you’re wrong, it tends to aggravate people a lot.

2d. Think about your expression and writing. Just a simple missing point at the end of a sentence can make up for a lot of difference already. Typing professionally and accurately is your best technical way to get your point across.

2e. If you’re insulted, it’s best to not insult back. Report any rulebreaking incidents to staff. If you insult back, both of you have broken rules and you may both become subject to punishment.

2f. Don’t add any salt through disparaging shitposts. This is especially important if you’re not directly involved into a conflict of others - do not bother “commenting for the lulz” and showing amusement on the cost of those who have gotten into an argument and need to settle it out. This is tangent to rules 1a) and 1c).


3. Spam

Spam isn’t tolerated and we keep the forums clean of it. Spam can take many forms - the obvious one via advertizing or posting junk, or less trivial ones via posting abuses. You can mesmerize spam as “Stupid, Pointless, Annoying Messages”.

3a. Only use your signature and Website profile field to advertise for other sites or products. Advertising rude material is strictly prohibited. If there’s a website or game that you genuinely want to recommend and make a thread about, ask staff first and you may be given permission. Advertising rude material will result into draconic punishment, see Rule #9.

3b. Don’t make very short posts, don’t be off-topic, don’t post nonsensical messages. No matter if attached to a quote or not, posts of very few words or just smileys are usually meaningless, thus they’re also considered as spam. Being off-topic should be pretty self-explanatory - in a topic about a certain video game, don’t post about how your day was.

3c. Don’t abuse capitalization, smileys, letter multiplication or BBcodes. Don’t abuse memes or images for provocative or inflammatory purposes. These are extreme cases of spamming via not following common posting habits, and these cases can quickly be grounds for punishment, so refrain from that. (If you want to make experiments with BBcodes, use the Preview button)

3d. Do not reply to spam as well. The obvious case is spambots, which are computer-generated accounts with the sole purpose to advertise or post junk. Do not interact with those. Use the report button, so we can handle it quickly. Also, for your own safety, don’t click any link contained in such posts.
For most other cases of spamming, it’s encouraged to not reply to these as well and report instead.


4. Posting habits

This is also referred as “use common sense”, and it also means that you should usually double-check what you’re writing - try to catch typos, think about how others might interprete your message, make use of the Preview button etc, and follow basic guidelines of proper posting.

4a. Speak English only, and speak as proper as possible. This is an English-speaking community. If you’re not a native speaker, you should have at least decent English skills in terms of both articulation and grammar. Your English must be legible, no matter if you’re native or not. It’s not recommended to use Google Translate, use a dictionary instead.

4b. Don’t double-post unless permitted. There’s an edit button if you need to fix something on your post. There are some exceptions. In Mafia games, you’re supposed to multipost instead of editing. In personal topics like your Art topic, or Level Collection, you can double-post if noone answered for a while (at least a day, rather a week) and you have new content to share. The same goes for wide-ranged topics such as “Site Discussion thread” or “Things you want to say”.

4c. Don’t postcount (don’t make effortless posts just to increase your postcount). It’s totally fine if you post in many topics, but the point of this rule is to not make lots of effortless posts (or anything else considered spam) with the sole intention of raising your postcount. You get a high postcount primarily from stickying around for long.

4d. Be careful with bumping old topics. Bumping an old topic is posting in a old topic where the last post is at least a month old - this will make the old topic appear on the top of its subforum again, and you should only do it if you have some contributive content. You also don’t need to ask for an old thread to be locked. Just let it die, or lock it yourself if you own it.

4e. Don’t make overly large quotes. If you quote the post right above yours, it’s sufficient to put an empty quote box just with the name of the poster above.


5. The Report feature

On the top right corner of any post, you find a shiny “!” button, called the Report button. Use this form to notify staff of a post that breaks rules, or has otherwise something off that can/should be fixed by staff (e.g. a broken BBcode).

5a. Don’t abuse this form. Obviously, don’t put anything spammy into the form, and don’t report posts that inarguably don’t have any need to be reported, i.e. don’t make joke reports.

5b. Keep your reasoning concise, and don’t make them sound condescending. You should avoid expressing your consternation about the offense, or berating someone behind their backs. You don’t have to be emotional. Just keep it to the factual reason and nothing else. Also don’t be demanding for staff taking action on the post. If you think it is a controversial case on what action should be taken, just give a nice recommendation.

5c. Handle more complicated issues with a user through PM. If you want staff to deal with a specific user, you have to PM staff. It’s best to name your PM “User report” so we know what to think about it. Again, don’t be demanding. Include as many means of evidence as necessary - screenshots, quotes, links and alike. Any user reports without tangible proof can’t be handled.


6. The chat

6a. Forum rules also apply on chat. A few relaxations compared to the forum’s rules exist (you can often make short messages and multi-post). However, don’t make meaningless messages or abuse caps etc. on chat either, have an apropriate username and avatar, and don’t spam multiple lines or links.

6b. Name changes are allowed as long as you’re recognizable. This can be as simple as using your forum avatar.

6c. Punishment on chat: If you commit chat-only related offenses, you’ll usually be kicked or banned from the chat without a forum-related punishment. However, since our Discord channel is an official outlet of this community, being banned on the forums also means being banned on the chat.


7. Account settings

7a. If you want to change your name, just PM an administrator. Your name change will be logged here. You must stick with a name change for a while. If your new name is completely unrecognizable compared to your old one, you must keep your new name for at least half a year.

7b. Your username cannot contain any rude words. If your registered username is odoriferous, we will just delete your account. Same goes with your avatar. If you have an avatar with e.g. nude breasts, it will be deleted. Both are prosecutable offenses. Besides that, remember that the choice of your username and avatar can influence your

7c. Stick to the signature limit. Put videos or animated GIFs into spoilers.
There’s a 250px limit on your signature; if it exceeds that by a little (say about 300px) we’ll still tolerate it. Anything larger is considered overboard and the board’s administrators can edit/delete signatures. Spoilers exist, though you shouldn’t go overboard with these as well. The latter rule is to avoid annoyingly high loading times, this also means to not put many videos or GIFs into the same spoiler. You won’t need many of them in most cases anyway.


8. Check out specific rule threads on certain subforums.

Some subforums like e.g. Mafia and the Level Portal contain rules related to their specific use. These rules are just as official as the general ones and you should give them a read (recommended even if you don’t use these forums); usually they’re announcements or stickies. Also pay attention to “Forum Rules” bars on top that contain special rules for said subforum (e.g. don’t bump topics older than a week in Welcome).


9. Intolerable content and ideologies

9a. Never ever post any pornographic or other criminal or NSFW content. Also don’t post flashing images that can cause seizure (or have that in your signature).

Posters who deliberately post criminal material will be permanently banned, no mercy. If you obviously do this out of lacking knowledge, there could still be some lower punishment, depending on the case. The latter one should be self-explanatory.

9b. All kinds of racism, political extremism, rabble-rousing etc. are absolutely forbidden as well.

All kinds of these incidents will be avenged with an instant ban, or even a permaban depending on the case (e.g. for denying holocaust, this is a criminal act by law). Making jokes with these matters is also easily grounds for punishment.

This rule doesn’t contradict your right on freedom of speech. You’re absolutely fine as long as you express non-extreme political views in a moderate way. Not tolerating any extreme ideology is no matter of political stance anyway, it’s a matter of good judgement. It works the same way as in real life.


10. How punishment works

The basic method of rule enforcement for staff is leaving notes on posts, deleting posts that directly hurt guidelines, and approaching people through PM. All of this is NOT considered punishment.

The first step of punishment after blatant rulebreaking, or repeated mild rulebreaking despite being told, are board warnings. You’ll be notified about a warning through PM, with a reason given. Warnings expire after three months.

For continued rulebreaking despite warnings, or otherwisely severe rulebreaking, there will be a ban (you can’t login and lose all your permissions on the board). If you get three warnings, the usual measure is a 1-week ban. Further board warnings and bannable offenses can lead into bans of increased length. The ultimate resort is a permanent ban.

You’ll sometimes get a chance to make a case for yourself and explain your actions before a ban is handed out. Keep in mind that punishments are never a pleasant thing for us to do.


11. Reregistering for whatever purpose (especially ban evading) is strictly forbidden

If you’re banned, don’t try to evade it by registering again. This will give you an increased ban (plus a permanent ban on the new account). Generally, reregistering is strictly forbidden. If you rereg just for fun’s sake (trolling), you’ll get at least a warning. Innocent reregs (e.g. coming back after a long time / having forgot that you already registered) will not be punished, you’ll be just told to get back to your old account and to use the “I lost my password” feature if needed.

Adding to the rule of not reregistering: If a relative or friend of yours wants to register on your own IP adress, inform us beforehand so we don’t happen to mistakenly punish you.
At last, remember that you’re fully responsible for your account. Have a safe password, and don’t let others manipulatingly use your account (as this also might be a way of ban evading).


12. How to correctly appeal punishment

If you feel like you were given an unfair / unnecessary warning, contact a staff member in private. Be polite and constructive about it. Your case will be reviewed, and if your attempt is not successful, you can at least expect better explanation. Do not dwell too much on an appeal, though.

To appeal a ban, you can do the same via writing a mail at [insert adress]. If you believe our reason for banning you was not good enough, please tell us why. Again, don’t abuse this right.

If a friend of yours was banned, don’t complain on it in a cheap way of “they did nothing wrong” just because they were your friend. You can privately bring up a genuine pladoyer to unban someone else, though.


13. Disclaimer from staff

Us staff are here to run things peacefully, and keep things in order. We’re not here to rule with an iron fist, and we’re also bound to these rules like everyone else. We’re in no way entitled to bend the rules and make arbitrary judgement. If you genuinely feel that a member of the forum staff has made an inaccurate judgment / action, don’t hesitate to notify us.

We don’t want to go among the lines of “what the staff does is always correct”, but you should always use constructive ways of saying what we’re doing wrong and what issues you see. If you conduct yourself apropriately, we’re absolutely willing to listen to you.

By being a member of this forum you agree to follow these rules and accept the consequences of not following them. These rules are also open to modification at any time, should that be necessary.