Old Forum-Wide Announcements for Reference

[Isis]

As a handy-dandy reference, I'm going to put all old forum-wide announcements that might be useful to peruse in this topic.

[Isis]

I'm tweaking the rules for signature images slightly.

Regarding the "one line of small text under signatures" statement I made, i've decided that this is not a viable exception to the rules.

To comply with the maximum signature length which has been in place for several years regarding text-based signatures, the following will now apply:

If you wish to have a line of text beneath your image, the maximum height it may be is 140 pixels.

The maximum height for images without text beneath is still 160.

I have created "signature guidelines" which can be enabled via the "Edit Options" in your usercontrol panel. These are set at 160 pixels height and should help you judge whether your signature is over the limit.

I'll instruct the staff to inform anyone they see with their signature at 160 with 1 line of small text to send a PM informing of the rule change. Any signatures found like this after a week will be removed, but not warrant a warning.Signature Image Rule Amendment

[Isis]

Alright, Vash and I somewhat convalutedly agreed that we should explain this before it just becomes a tumbling Katamari ball of "you have an outside link in your signature!"

Xbox-Live has announced that they're going to have dynamic gamercards for users who have Xbox-Live and Xbox 360. Because of this, and at the suggestion of Nicodemus, I put a BBtag together for this.

Ben Talbot

Xbox-Live username

This can be used in your signature, although you're still expected to comply to the 500px by 160px rule. Each gamercard is 204px wide by 140px high.

Now, you may notice some links in there. This is what a lot of people have been complaining about, claiming they're outside links. The following quotes are from a series of e-mails between myself and Al, the owner of the site.

Hey Al,

I wanted to ask you something. Xbox-Live has recently launched their gamercard thing, where a players stats and such are displayed in an iframe on the internet so they can show off about things. Now, forum members are more than likely going to want to be able to use these things in their signature, and I wrote up a BBcode tag that as far as I've tested, can't be abused.

However, there's one problem. The gamercards inherently have links to the xbox live gamer profiles in them, and thus would count as outside linking by definition. I need to know whether you're okay with this, or whether I should scrap the tag alltogether?
Hi Ben,
I think that's a great idea. Although it is technically an outside link, it is not linking to a standalone site of their own, but more of a profile (and a gaming-related one at that), so we can make an exception. Thanks for thinking about implementing that -- I'm sure it'll be very popular.

So, please don't report these as being outside links. They're perfectly fine.

[Isis]

If you have enough warnings you could have your post count reset, be blocked from a forum, temporarily banned, or permanently banned. This is why you should check your usernotes daily to make sure you don't have warnings stacked up against you. Usernotes can be found via your User CP OR by clicking the "Quick Links" option at the top of any page and selecting "My Usernotes" OR by viewing your public profile and viewing the usernotes.

So, this happened to you, what do you do now?

Forum Blocks
This is when you are blocked from viewing a forum. If you get forum blocked from a forum the forum will disappear from your forum listing and/or you will get a page saying you can't access the forum.

Things to know about a Forum Block:
You are required to stay away from the forum for at least 3 months. After 3 months you can PM the moderator of the forum and ask for your block to be lifted.
If you create a new account to get around the forum block, the new account and the old accont will be banned. This isn't retroactive, so if you've already done this you won't be banned at this time - unless of course the account is breaking rules.



Temporary Bans
Temporary bans do not allow you to post in any of the forums except the GW Court. It is less severe as a permanent ban as you will get back your name, posts, rep, etc.

Things to know about a Temp Ban:
When you access the forums after being temporarily banned, you should first find out the length of your ban.
Temporarily Banned users should be able to view their usernotes and use PMs so you should have adequate resources to find out when your ban will be lifted.
If you make a new account while you are temporarily banned to access the forums, both accounts will be banned. Temp banned allows you to keep your post count, rep, and username - don't abuse the fact that you got a lesser punishment than a permanent ban.



Permanent Bans
Oh noes. You got banned. You should've kept up with your usernotes and/or followed the forum wide rules. If you are permanently banned you will not be able to access the forums and will instead see a message stating why you were banned. You have just lost your name, rep, posts, PMs, etc. Now you have to make a new account.

Things to remember about permanent bans:
You can make a new account unless you are told you are Ban On Sight and/or you know you've had 3 accounts banned in the past.
If you think your banning was unfair, you can post a court case within the guidelines of GameWinners Court.
Yes, your name is gone. No, it won't be deleted so you can get the name back.
Yes, after a reasonable amount of time (think 6 months or more) it is possible for a ban to be lifted. Contact the admins or smods.



Usernotes
They are mostly used as a way for moderators, supermoderators, and admins to keep track of things you have done. They may be warnings or they may be notes like “Hey, this member is great”.

Things to remember about Usernotes:
CHECK THEM OFTEN.
If you have a question about a warning you have received via your usernotes, you can contact the mod that posted the usernote.
Usernotes that are longer than 6 months old may be eligible for review and removal by the admins. Contact an admin or smod with any questions.

[Isis]

This is an announcement for those morons out there who like to post enormous and/or offensive images in people's reputation comments. It's also to those of you who ram sizetag after sizetag down the throat of whoever you don't like to stretch out their UserCP.

I'm here to tell you to stop it. Period.

If you do something stated above, or simply harrass someone through the reputation system, they are entirely within their rights as a member to take it to the questions forum, or directly to an administrator, and have it investigated.

If you're caught posting offensive images, stretching out someone's UserCP, or just being an asshat, you're going to have a warning logged against you. This warning will also count towards any situations leading to your banning or other punishment at this forum (3 warnings, etc, etc).

So, let's summarise:
1. Don't post large/offensive images in reputation comments.
2. Don't stretch out someone's UserCP.
3. Don't harrass members.

Because:
1. The admins can and will read any offending comments reported to us. Reputation is not 100% private.
2. You will be warned, and possibly punished further at the discretion of the administrator.
3. It's just really dumb.

[Isis]

From this point on, we're going to start banning people who're sharing accounts.

We don't appreciate members giving their passwords to anyone. It makes it a pain in the ass for us to keep track of trouble makers, and I'm pretty sure that you're told not to share your password when you register at the site.

So, stop it.

The only exception to this rule is joint accounts in clubs & clans, which must post in the sticky thread and will be blocked from everywhere but that forum.

[Isis]

Yeah yeah, I know. Sucks for you.

However, even removing over half of the posts in the Gamewinners database doesn't stop the server from crashing.

As far as I understand, the server crashes when the database gets choked. When a lot of queries are being run, or in other words, a lot of people are posting or whatever all at once, things tend to bottleneck and the database'll lock up.

That's when the forums go down.

So, in an attempt to cut down on the strain a little more, the admins agreed to turn editing back off in pretty much all of Real Life. A few have retained it, out of logic, but we'll sit it out and see whether there's any improvement in the server's lifespan now that this has been put into effect.

(Note; pruning all those posts did have a purpose. It'll greatly speed up the forums in how long it takes to do things, it just sadly doesn't effect how sturdy the server's legs are, though.)

[Isis]

As you may have noticed, we've moved things around a bit in the Real Life section and moved some forums out to a Forum Assistance section. A few small kinks like forum descriptions still need to be worked on, but for the most part everything is settled where it should be. We hope you like the new changes. Besides the obvious shuffling around we've also:
<ul><li>Moved Blogs into Current Events.</li>
<li>Merged Languages and The Queen's English, then expanded them to make one large International Forum.</li>
<li>Changed Homework Help to the new School forum and expanded it to include everything about your education.</li>
<li>Split up the Tao of Healthy Living. Part merged with the Martial Arts forum to create Healthy Living & Martial Arts. The other part merged with Mysteries & the Supernatural to make the new New Age & the Occult forum.</li>
<li>New Electronics forum for all your electronics needs.</li>
<li>Military has been merged into the Politics & Law forum.</li>
<li>Stupid Picture has been made a subforum of the Jokes & Riddles forum - at least until the mods decide if they want it made into one big forum.</li>
<li>Mixed Media & Creative Writing have been merged to now house all your creative outlets - writing, art, flash, games, etc.</li>
<li>Musician's Corner has been moved to a subforum of Music & Radio.</li>
<li>PC Troubleshooting and HTML & Programming have been merged to better take care of your PC and programming needs.</li>
<li>History and Girls are two other new forums - History was passing experimental, Girls is a brand new forum.</li></ul>

We're hoping to increase discussions and make the forums a more user-friendly place. Explore the expanded categories and have fun!
<br><br>
(On an ironic side note, the other announcement said Blind Guardian and I would be doing this rearranging because Vash needed his beauty sleep - a joke only, we just hadn't been able to get in touch with Vash yet about what time he wanted to do this - and guess what BG and I did? We fell asleep watching TV and started this rearranging an hour late. Go go instant Karma!)

[Isis]

We recently had the issue of when it's acceptable to edit a members posts brought up in the moderator forum, when I had to punish a moderator for abusing the power that they've been granted.

The staff would like to remind you, the members, that you have certain rights regarding when and why your posts are edited.


As a rough rule, a moderator should not be editing your posts unless:
You, the poster, specifically requests it be edited.
Spoiler tags need to be added to what you posted, to avoid ruining things (like movies) for other members.
You made the title crazily huge and it is stretching the page.
The post or thread title is an outside link, advertisement or homosexual slur.
The post contains an offensive/detrimental image.

If a moderator is messing with your posts for any other reason, say to edit your font, or make it look like you said things you didn't say, please don't hesitate to contact an administrator.

We place a lot of trust in our moderators, and when they do things that we don't approve of, we take that very seriously.

If you do need to contact an administrator, you can be sure that we'll leave your name out of any proceedings to ensure confidentiality.

[Isis]

Some of you might have noticed the forums were offline briefly to "update counters". Why you ask?

We created a new usergroup. All members who have been here 1825 days (that's roughly 5 years) are now part of the Veteran Members usergroup. By default, Veteran Members can edit their own posts anywhere in the forums.

Just our little way of saying thanks for sticking around.

Any questions or concerns can be discussed here (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6967884#post6967884).

[Isis]

The forum wide rules have been re-written and reformatted. No new rules have been added, just made some things clearer and added some things that had been floating around for a while (ie getting usernotes removed) but hadn't truly been brought up to speed in the rules. We hope the rules are clearer to avoid any confusion.

To see the newly revamped rules, simply click that bright red bar at the top of any forum, like always. If you have any questions, feel free to PM a staff member or post it in the Questions forum.

[Isis]

Starting this very batch of moderator nominations, the upper-administration, with input from the current moderators of GameWinners have to decided to institute a new policy to ensure that only the best, brightest, and most mature members become (and most importantly MAINTAIN) their positions as moderators of this website.

This will entail numerous things.

A: All new moderators are instantly put on a 90-day probation. To ensure that our new moderators are fully capable and mature enough to handle their position, they will be immediately placed in a 90-day probationary period, where their actions may be extra-scrutinized. Moderators on this probationary period will be looked upon to ensure they are following the rules, as well as associating well with the moderator team, and not being generally immature throughout the rest of the forums.

B: All new moderators must pass a short quiz relating to moderating at the end of their probationary period. The rules of GameWinners aren't hard to learn. To ensure that our moderators have the ability and where-with-all to remember these rules (or at least where to find them), and utilize them. The tests will essentially be "open book", as they will have access to the forum-wide rules and other helpful material. We are simply testing to make sure these moderators know where to look if they find a questionable post, and how to act about such an occurrence.

C: All new moderators will be "mentored" by the moderator who recommended them. Any moderator who makes a recommendation will be asked to "mentor" their new recruit. They are asked to be available as often as possible in the event the new moderator has a question, or needs help in making a decision. Hopefully the mentors will also suggest/remind/recommend the new moderators make a fair bit of use of our moderator forum. Be it asking questions, keeping up to date on the latest news, or merely interacting with their fellow moderators.

All in all, we really hope this system will guarantee us a well oiled moderator team capable of providing the best and most mature service possible!

Thanks for reading!

[Isis]

Welcome to bizarro Gamewinners.

I kind of got bored yesterday and started tinkering with things. This wound up with the postbit being overhauled and the profile being completely redone.

There's going to be some small things I have to fix for this beige theme, since I built this on my blue/gray one, but all in all everything is functioning.

I'll expand on this announcement in a minute, I just wanted to get it out there so you don't freak out.

What I changed:

Most noticeably, any post made by a moderator, super moderator, or admin will have its header appear in their username color. My aim was to make it very obvious when a staff member has posted, so that there's less chance of them being overlooked. (Note: Yes, I know the moderator red is bright as holy christ, but I didn't want to wreck up the forums AND recolor all mods pink just so that bar was dimmer. As I said, I still have to play with some of this, so maybe I'll darken the red a touch, or see if the mods want to pick another color.)

In the same vein, I also added every member's usergroup to the postbit. If you're a New User, you'll see that above the postcount. If you're a Moderator, you'll see that.

The order and phrasing of the postbit information has been changed. It should hopefully be a little more organized now.

The "(+/-)" reputation link no longer kicks you to the top of the page when you click it.

The dropdown menu when you click someones name has been gutted, with all the useless stuff removed. That stuff being "send e-mail to user" and the like. It's all accessible from their profile and doesn't need to be clogging that up. What members will see is just "Profile" and "PM", with a few more options for the various staff members.

For the staff, I've completely replaced vB's default IP search with the dnsstuff lookup that I added years ago, so just clicking on the IP in the post does the same job as the old thing.

"Report this post" has been changed to "Alert a moderator" to help people better understand what it's for.

The number links have been redone to try to make it more obvious that one will link to the post within the thread, and one to the post alone. I don't think enough people utilize the "post inside the thread" one, so maybe this'll help.

All the edit/quote/quick-reply buttons are above the signature now.

The "Last Edited" message (and the like) will now appear above the signature too, underneath the rest of the message. I may have to move this, but for now it's alright where it is.

I think that's everything with the postbit, but there's a LOOOOT of stuff on the profile.

I removed a lot of stuff from the top bar, such as the reputation pips.

The table below is the main change. I did away with all that clunky junk from before and rewrote everything into a clean simple table.

I've also added 5 new profile fields, which will add the relevant gamer contact information to your profile. Those being Xfire, Live Gamercards, Playstation Network names, Wii Codes and DS Friend Codes. If there's anything I missed or named wrong, I went to each of the console forums looking for threads, so blame those mods. These profile fields are in your userCP under "edit profile".

For staff, there's a quick-usernote form below all the other information. It's collapseable, so if you don't want it you can hide it easily.

The signatures are below everything, and more or less out of the way, while still being there.

All in all, the profile should barely stretch the page or make you have to scroll to see anything.

I think that's everything, but I'm trying to write this list up after the fact so eh.

I've posted a thread in the announcements forum (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=540685) in which you can vote whether or not you like the changes made. If the majority thing this sucks after a few days, I have everything backed up so I can easily revert to how it was before.

Note by Isis: DS codes were not added as they are game specific and this would require waaaaaay too many profile fields.

[Isis]

http://forums.gamewinners.com/rules/index.php#illegalacts

This is to inform you that the rules regarding illegal acts have been made stricter, mainly in regards to ROMS/emulators/etc.

It has long since been a subject of confusion as to what is allowable regarding these subjects, and we've finally decided that rather than have moderators continually wonder whether something is illegal or not, we're just going to err on the side of caution and stop it outright.

Obviously nothing will be punished retroactively, but anything from this point on will likely earn you a straight ban.

Update to rule on illegal acts.

[Isis]

Title: ATTENTION anyone using Livecard.net for their Xbox 360 gamercards.


Apparently that website is closing down, so every one of their dynamic gamercard images now has an outside URL forced into it.

Please remove these broken images from your signature ASAP.

I'm going to tell the smods nuking signatures to cut those with these broken cards a break, but not for long. If there are still Livecard images in signatures after 2 weeks we'll start warning for it again.

Thanks.

[Coleman]

Template Edits: July 20 - August 1, 2007

Welcome to bizarro Gamewinners.

I kind of got bored yesterday and started tinkering with things. This wound up with the postbit being overhauled and the profile being completely redone.

There's going to be some small things I have to fix for this beige theme, since I built this on my blue/gray one, but all in all everything is functioning.

I'll expand on this announcement in a minute, I just wanted to get it out there so you don't freak out.

What I changed:

Most noticeably, any post made by a moderator, super moderator, or admin will have its header appear in their username color. My aim was to make it very obvious when a staff member has posted, so that there's less chance of them being overlooked. (Note: Yes, I know the moderator red is bright as holy christ, but I didn't want to wreck up the forums AND recolor all mods pink just so that bar was dimmer. As I said, I still have to play with some of this, so maybe I'll darken the red a touch, or see if the mods want to pick another color.)

In the same vein, I also added every member's usergroup to the postbit. If you're a New User, you'll see that above the postcount. If you're a Moderator, you'll see that.

The order and phrasing of the postbit information has been changed. It should hopefully be a little more organized now.

The "(+/-)" reputation link no longer kicks you to the top of the page when you click it.

The dropdown menu when you click someones name has been gutted, with all the useless stuff removed. That stuff being "send e-mail to user" and the like. It's all accessible from their profile and doesn't need to be clogging that up. What members will see is just "Profile" and "PM", with a few more options for the various staff members.

For the staff, I've completely replaced vB's default IP search with the dnsstuff lookup that I added years ago, so just clicking on the IP in the post does the same job as the old thing.

"Report this post" has been changed to "Alert a moderator" to help people better understand what it's for.

The number links have been redone to try to make it more obvious that one will link to the post within the thread, and one to the post alone. I don't think enough people utilize the "post inside the thread" one, so maybe this'll help.

All the edit/quote/quick-reply buttons are above the signature now.

The "Last Edited" message (and the like) will now appear above the signature too, underneath the rest of the message. I may have to move this, but for now it's alright where it is.

I think that's everything with the postbit, but there's a LOOOOT of stuff on the profile.

I removed a lot of stuff from the top bar, such as the reputation pips.

The table below is the main change. I did away with all that clunky junk from before and rewrote everything into a clean simple table.

I've also added 5 new profile fields, which will add the relevant gamer contact information to your profile. Those being Xfire, Live Gamercards, Playstation Network names, Wii Codes and DS Friend Codes. If there's anything I missed or named wrong, I went to each of the console forums looking for threads, so blame those mods. These profile fields are in your userCP under "edit profile".

For staff, there's a quick-usernote form below all the other information. It's collapseable, so if you don't want it you can hide it easily.

The signatures are below everything, and more or less out of the way, while still being there.

All in all, the profile should barely stretch the page or make you have to scroll to see anything.

I think that's everything, but I'm trying to write this list up after the fact so eh.

I've posted a thread in the announcements forum (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=540685) in which you can vote whether or not you like the changes made. If the majority thing this sucks after a few days, I have everything backed up so I can easily revert to how it was before.

X-Box Live Gamercards at Livecard.net: October 22 - November 22, 2007

Apparently that website is closing down, so every one of their dynamic gamercard images now has an outside URL forced into it.

Please remove these broken images from your signature ASAP.

I'm going to tell the smods nuking signatures to cut those with these broken cards a break, but not for long. If there are still Livecard images in signatures after 2 weeks we'll start warning for it again.

Thanks.

[Isis]

Recently it was brought back to our attention that Photobucket and possibly other free-hosting companies have a habit of altering an image's filesize from that of which it appears on a user's harddrive.

We'd like to remind you that this is not an acceptable excuse. The 25KB image is in regards to what appears on the FORUMS, not what appears on your harddrive. If your original was under 25KB yet over when uploaded to a hosting service, this is not alright. It is your responsibility to check the image's size once hosted and ensure that you're still below the limits.

Thanks.

[Isis]

Premium Memberships

Premium Memberships (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/payments.php) are now available!

For $10 every 10 years (that's the longest we could set it at this point, don't worry, its a one time fee), you'll be able to:

- Create Social Groups
- Upload and use your own avatar
- Use the Lameweiners vB Template
- Search the forums
- Edit your own posts and threads
- Delete your own threads
- Store up to 500 PMs and send up to 25 at a time
- Edit Calendar events
- Edit your profile with fonts, colors, and backgrounds
- Join in games and contests for prizes available only to this usergroup

Join Today! (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/payments.php)

New Forum Wide Rules

The older forum wide rules have been updated with a newer version since we have now gone to the infractions system.

Please review the forum wide rules (red bar at the top of any forum).


We took into consideration the input of members and mods. It is still a work in progress so we may see a few more changes to specific areas, but I'll update you if/when that occurs - plus I plan on posting a thread for member feedback if we do decide to change some sections.

Please see this (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7889208#post7889208) thread for questions, comments, etc.

Happy Upgrade - Pressies for you - Edited 2328ESt

We're still working on fixing everything and we're fiddling with settings, so don't worry, and please post problems in the thread mentioned in the other announcement.

However, we are pleased to announce the following 2 things:

1) With the infractions system, the usernotes logged with warnings and whatnot from before are pretty much obsolete. Thus, Happy Upgrade Day, everybody gets a clean slate. That's right, your usernotes will no longer count against you in your final warning total.

Those people who were BoS before the infractions system can come back too on new accounts.

Of course, we still have the right to ban any accounts coming back just to cause trouble.

2) We'll be opening up the new Premium Memberships soon. For $10 you can have an avatar, a larger PM box, the ability to create and join social groups, and a few other features we're working on. We'll make another announcement when this is fully functional.


Don't forget that we have the Testing Grounds if you're wanting to play with any new features/upgraded features without getting warned for SPAMing up the forums.


Edit: Everyone can now join Social Groups. However, currently only admins and smods can make the social groups. Soon Premium Memberships will allow others to make social groups.

Also, new forum wide rules have been posted. Please see that announcement.

Post-Upgrade

http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7889018#post7889018