General Terms Of Use.

[Shockwave]

..Forum Guidelines..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


You should take this as part of the terms and conditions for use of the DBF Interactive website.
This forum was originally created on July 3rd 2003, it seems like an eternity ago now but the board was originally intended as a meeting place for members of the Dark Bit Factory demo team.
As our demo gained support, the forum became busy and it turned into something else.

Basically you can see this place as a halfway house between some of the code help forums and the demo scene. The forums are perpetuated to give people learning demo effects somewhere to learn where they won't be called a Noob or otherwise disrespected and also as a place for more advanced coders to exchange thier ideas and tweak thier code, for those who just want to post thier products for feedback on them, and also for people like helping others.

If you fit into any of the above categorys you'll enjoy it here.
The forum is pretty much self governing, the core membership has been with us for years, since before we moved to this whizzy new forum, usually everything runs pretty smoothly. If you're reading this, you are probably new so here are some of the things we'd like you to keep in mind if you want to share our place with us.

Newbie bashing.. On most boards there seems to be an ugly tendency to go after people just because they are new.
Everyone is welcome here, no matter what level of experience they have or what their post count is. Nobody is to be victimised and have their experience of the forum spoiled by another user. If this is happening to you, please PM an administrator and/or report the topic that it has occured in (there is a link in each topic to let you do this).
We will then look into it for you and take appropriate steps if we deem them necessary.

Trolling.. Don't even bother signing up if it is your intention to post flame bait, we will not tollerate inciteful posts. Let's keep it nice here Again, if you spot this happening, please report the post or PM an administrator.

Manners.. You will notice a lot of posts on the forum that are simply saying "Thanks", good manners cost nothing, please take the time to thank the person that gave you a hand, better still give them some good Karma People who are generally rude will not fit in here. ALWAYS credit the person who wrote the routine or drew the artwork or made the tune if you are using someone elses work in one of your own productions.

L337 5P34K.. If you post messages like that or ALL IN CAPS or all in bold text your post will be edited or deleted without warning.

Topic titles.. please give your topics a meaningful title, you'll get more replies that way.

Advertising your site. You are permitted to have a small link in your signature and if your site is in some way helpful to the community or provides good humour, you can post a link to it in the links forum. Other forms of advertising are frowned upon... If you post a link that does not comply with these guidelines it will probably be removed and you will most likely receive a warning for it.

Signatures.. You can have a graphic sig, please don't be silly about it, excessively large sigs in terms of file size and image size will be removed, or re-sized. You will be warned about this.

Avatars.. Feel free to link to an off site avatar or upload one to our server, avatars should be 65*65 Maximum, not animated and as small file size as possible so that the board loads fast. Again, abuse will result in you losing your avatar or having it re-sized by an admin.

Uploads.. You can attach files to your posts, this is ok and don't feel bad about doing so. It is intended for you to be able to upload your latest pic, tune, source or demo. The current file size limit is 250kb per post. Please compress your file with winzip or winrar first!

Illegal content.. Things such as Warez, pornographic material or anything that is agains UK law, if your avatar, sig, posts or anything you upload contains anything of this nature you will be banned immediately and reported to your ISP and if appropritate to FACT.

We cannot guarantee the validity of any links or files posted on this message board, although we do our best to try and make sure everything is ok, we accept no responsibility for any damage that may result from and links or files on this message board.

Get rich quick schemes and other scams.. Not wanted, find another board to post this sort of stuff.

Leeching bandwidth.. If you externally link to images and content on our site, we will know about it, please ask first.

Trying to mess up the whizzy new board.. Please don't try to stretch the tables or fuck up the database, it probably can be done but don't ruin it for everyone else.

Off topicness.. Please try to stay on topic and it's good manners not to hijack someone elses topic to post your own stuff inside, it's just as easy to create a new topic.

Moderation.. The decisions of the Administrators are final and there are several steps that can be taken against users who take the piss.
Usually the first measure is a PM warning you of your conduct.

As you use the board and your post count increases you'll find that more and more features become available to you, if you persist in disrupting the forum you will have your post count removed which will remove the extended features that you had earned.

As a last resort you may be banned permanently.


That's probably about it but please use your common sense and enjoy the board.

[Shockwave]

Additions to terms and conditions.
Sorry to have to add these here but people will say that we are being unfair if they get PM's and these fairly obvious things weren't in the guidelines.

In addition to the guidelines above, please take note of the following;

Please do not post uncredited source code on this board. For example "I found this source on the internet", unless you have permission from the author. And if you don't even know who wrote it there's no way that you can know it's freeware / shareware right?

Please only register ONE account on this forum. Sadly I've identified several multiple account holders, I don't know why people sometimes register multi accounts, please don't do it, it's very easy to track you and you might get banned for it.

On uploading. Please respect the bandwidth but don't let that put you off uploading your stuff. However, if anything you upload does not work, you will be given chance to fix the problem, if you can't fix it then your topic will have to be removed and you can upload it again when you get it fixed. This board is a private venture, none of you are asked to fund it but we can't afford to have files that do not work taking up valuable space and bandwidth as people try to download them.

ALWAYS put a full and meaningful description of your upload in the post, again if you fail to do this, your post will be removed sorry.

Thanks.

[Shockwave]

Ammendment and clarification needed on a few points here.

Aggressive posts : Aggression in posts is not welcome, please do not put any threats, joking or otherwise into any post on this forum. Any future incidents of this will result in an immediate and permanent ban. We will not tollerate bullying here.

Disputes with admin staff : Sometimes a decision may be made that you do not agree with, if you would like to discuss anything like this, the way to do it is by PM or Email.

I will re-iterate that the use of this website is a privilage and not a right and you agree to adhere to these terms of use and keep up to date with them when you register for an account here.

Again, this is not an exhaustive list, please use your common sense. Thank you.

[Shockwave]

After several dozen personal messages from new users, I am going to add this to the guidelines.

It is frowned upon to join this forum and solicit code help from the admin team via personal messages. Previously these requests have been answered with help, but we find that users who do this kind of thing generally don't go on to be productive and actually hardly post anything at all.

Soliciting help in this way not only denies the forum of a possibly useful post that would help others, it seriously limits the help you get.

If you post your question in the right forum you will get a variety of help from several people which has to be better than just getting one persons view.

Speaking personally I would much rather be answering code questions in the forum than via PM.

New users, please don't be afraid to post your questions and thanks for your understanding!

[Pixel_Outlaw]

When I was a new member I think I did this once but then it was pointed out how beneficial public discussion can be. I agree with this notion because the more discussion we have as a forum the stronger the sense of community is. As Shockwave says, it is important to discuss ideas publicly.

Why?

-The person you PM may not have the best solution and there is no way of knowing this without public discussion.
-Threads encourage a sense of community.
-People may elaborate and really help you get a better foundation for understanding the solution.
-Another person may have the same or similar problem.
-One may build upon your problem and grow as a programmer.
-It avoids extra clutter in the mailbox of in your friendly neighborhood Mods and Admins.
-It may inspire new thought and open up new possibilities for those neat demo effects.


I've often asked some very basic questions and I was never talked down to or treated as an infant. We are all here as valuable members of differing ability. This forum is really a place to have fun and show your skills while developing as a programmer and person.

Good post Shockwave.