I didn't want to have to do this, because I'd hoped that by placing just a few brief notes stating what we'd LIKE as a standard, people would pick them up and follow them. Due to forum debates and complaints concerning how things are handled here I must take the initiative and place some definitive rules that must be followed and enforced.

1. Search before posting your questions or ideas.

This is now a requirement that will be enforced due to UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE amounts of same-topic threads/posts that are constantly popping up. If a question or idea is posted in a new thread or hi-jacked thread that is relevant to an existing thread or post, your postcount will be manually edited by myself and your post will get merged into the relevant thread. Note that this is more work on my part, now... work that will take up time that I could have spent working on finishing up the Middle-Earth Mod. It'll take longer to finish, now. Your loss.

2. Read all the pinned threads in each MEMod board.

If you post a new thread or post to an existing thread concerning information that is covered in a pinned thread that is not locked, your post will be manually merged to the relevant thread and your postcount severely altered manually by myself. You are more than welcome to "bump" any existing thread that is not locked as long as your post contains relevant data and adds to the content of the thread, rather than being classified as spam.

NOTE: If you believe that the subject was not covered fully to your liking in the existing thread, and wish for more information on the topic, DO NOT post a new thread. Instead, post a new reply to the existing thread and state your misgivings and concerns, and pose your questions or comments to us in relevance to the thread's content. This will NOT be considered as "Necromancy".

3. No Spam.

Spam will be severely dealt with. Spammers will loose posting abilities to the MEMod boards after 3 instances of spam. I will manually edit your ip restrictions to only allow you access to read the MEMod boards, and not post to them.

4. Don't be a Forum Vigilante.

This is pretty self-explanatory. I find that Forum Vigilantes tend to lash out at members, especially new members, rather than use the "Report" feature as instructed by the forum Terms of Service and Rules and Regulations. Instead of a Moderator or MEMod team member correcting the deed, standard forum members are lashing out and causing inflamatory posts and threads which create even more stress and hassle to deal with than the initial post/thread created.

From now on, if you do not have a "Moderator" designation by Dark0ne, or are not enlisted within the ranks of MEMod Devs or Teamsters, and you take it upon yourself to instruct another member:

1. In how to use the forums according to the Terms of Service or Posted "Rules"
2. Inform them of something they have done wrong in accordance with the Terms of Service or Posted "Rules" (INCLUDING: Necromancy, double-posting, general noobishness, etc)

Then I will personally resolve the issue with the original offender, and then take measures to resolve your own mis-guided attempt at authority.

This is required now since individuals that are NOT designated to have to deal with these issues are taking matters into their own hands and becoming frustrated and causing "bad blood" and a general air of "hate" in these forums. Instead, they should be using the small "report" button in the upper right-hand corner of each post, and allowing those who have been given authority to resolve the issue.

These guidelines and restrictions should (from what I can discern) cover most of the issues we're running in to recently. They ARE subject to change at any time. If you have thoughts concerning these rules, place them in the new "Rules Requests" thread in the MEMod Requests Board.

-- D