Hello, Midna fan. Wow, you actually took the time to read this. Good for you! This post will outline the universal rules of the WMB Boards, so browse over 'em so you don't screw up .

Do note that if you are a new member, you will only be able to post new threads in this board, and will otherwise only be able to respond to topics created by people other than you until you have 10 posts. This is a measure against spambots.

1) FLAMING - There are a few things we consider flaming on WMB, and our scope is probably broader than the average forum.
A-Blatantly insulting another person.
B-Insulting a faith, race, sexuality, or ideology. Serious Discussion has different rules, but keep politics and religion out of things in general here. We're an open community, and thus our differences should be celebrated.
NOTE: It is not flaming if someone is clearly joking. Before you take offense to something and call the mods, think about whether it's possible that your "offender" was simply cracking some poorly conveyed humor. If you get uptight over a joke, you may be convicted of Drama (see below).

2) SPAM - Spam is, by definition, a Stupid, Pointless, Annoying Message. Here, we have fairly strict regulations on spam.
A-Any post that doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. For instance, "I agree," or "...". Post counts really don't do anything here, so why post things like this? There must be something you'd want to say. As a rule of thumb, anything under two sentences can be considered spam, though we're fairly lenient about that, and as you learned in elementary English, one sentence can actually be two sentences in one .
B-Repetition. Duplicate posts or threads will be deleted on sight and a warning issued.
-Double-posting. This is considered spam, as it's needlessly taking up space. There is an Edit button on your posts - use it rather than double-posting. Double-posting is only allowed when you're bumping a thread, and if this is done it must be done for a good reason (i.e. posting a new song, news, etc.)
C-Poop. This is something that links to something else, or quotes it, and doesn't really introduce anything original and meaningful. For instance, "*link to YouTube video* discuss."
D-Off-topic posts. For instance, if you talk about how awesome cheddar cheese is when the thread is titled "Midna's Hands".

3) TROLLING - Trolling is the act of intentionally offending a member in order to cause drama. Obviously, this is something we don't want in our forums. This is generally done by targeting someone's beliefs, values, or emotions, i.e.:
-Preaching Satanic values to a devout Catholic.
-Linking to a picture of a mangled cat in a thread about a dead pet.
NOTE: Trolls become ineffective if you simply ignore them. Reporting a post is much more efficient than doing so along with giving the troll what he wants by getting angry.

4) DRAMA - The antipode to trolling. This is purposefully becoming emotional or defensive over something that does not warrant it, and is heavily frowned upon both here and in real life. Drama is hard to define, but if a post of yours is one of the ones clearly responsible for taking a thread down the touchy trail, you're in the hotseat.
-Getting angry at someone for joking around
-Bitter response to the polite correction of a behavior or a post.
-Offense towards language used (we now have censorship, so there is no excuse).

5) UNCLEANLINESS - We at WMB like to keep things clean and as professional-looking as possible. To avoid making both yourself and us look bad, follow these rules:
A-Overuse of swearing. Just about every word that doesn't have intent of discrimination is allowed as long as it's censored, but posts full of black bars are not very nice to look at.
B-Speaking improperly. "lol wel i just dont tink u shud do dat u no?" What's wrong with this post? It makes the poster look like he recently incurred a severe brain injury. We're all intelligent people, so act like it. Even if English is your second language, you shouldn't have a problem passing our cleanliness expectations so long as you remember you're not playing World of WarCraft.
C-Pornography. Innuendos are fine. Mentions here and again of genitalia are... Okay. Anything directly pornographic or obscene in nature, however, is strictly disallowed. Keep up the talk and only use of the Anatomically Correct terminology for the male and female reproductive systems will be allowed, and only in the case of talking about what they do. There will be no sharing of Pornographic or Erotic images, photographs or otherwise.
tl;dr:



And that's that, for now. Enjoy yourself here, do what you can for the initiative, and both you and our community will prosper . See you later!

So... I've seen other forums ban people for fun disrespective posts-- Just joking around basically. I'd like to be sure of your policies on this.

Sometimes it's hard to keep a balance between the professionalism we'd like to have on the forum, and the easy-going attitude some of our members would prefer. I don't have any problem with joking around - I think we do a fair bit of it around here - just as long as you make sure people know you're joking around (that's what the is for ). We've only had to ban one person, and what it came down to was that we don't want that sort of person representing us. He used all caps, very little punctuation if any, and swore more than my grandmother. The final straw was a reference to Midna hentai as a "joke", and a threat to members. So we're pretty relaxed here: the baseline is just to at least appear intelligent, and respect your fellow members . Thanks for asking, Cariyaga.

I see that the WMB commandments made it here. I am so honored XD.

I'd like to emphasize #8, as the photoshop stuff wasn't covered by Yitik (Because that hadn't come up when he wrote this) Yeah, I've seen a thread locked because someone just threw some photoshop on some LOLCat pictures, and called it fan art. Sorry, guys, but I don't think you can pull that one off.

That's all I have.

Yup. Well, crappy, five-second photoshopping, anyway . The thread was also locked because of a complete lack of originality; he just replaced random nouns in the original caption with "Midna". I know it's not in the rules already, but it should be; that was more annoying than a triple-post .

Updated. Now with censorship! Yay!

*gasp* A double-post!

Anyway, I have a question about the censorship. Does it apply to fanfics? I mean, can I leave the word uncensored? And if I really need it uncensored, can I just say at the beginning, "Warning, foul language below?"

Yeah, I don't think fanfics should need to be censored as long as it's noted that strong language is used beforehand.

@the part about cleanliness, we need the Mods (please) to clean up ppl's foul language. It isn't very professional to curse a lot. If Big N sees a lot of swearing, they may not see us as professionals, and probably won't take us seriously.
My Opinion.

Midnaroxursox

Oh Midnaroxursox, let me tell you a very short reason why we don't do this. We actually tried to stop cussing one time, and it didn't help at all with one member eventually leaving. Look, we don't encourage cussing, nor we allow excessive and/or those with the sole intention of insulting. We do allow it, though, because it gives a sense of freedom of speech in our forum. We don't like to have limits.

And if Nintendo ever drops by, they would care less about cussing - they'll care about the hard work we're doing in the site as a whole.