Welcome to Gaia! ::

(Notes:

i. I reviewed everything with Dark Tanuki before posting this - so for "I", please read "we". smile

ii. If anyone finds anything in this post that they have serious problems with, feel free to send me a PM.)

On the whole, folks, I'll be happy if you all just follow the TOS.

Rules about not bashing, refraining from personal attacks, not posting anything too lewd or unpleasant and keeping to roughly PG-13 (although of course, I'm English, so I'm having to use my own judgment from what I know of US film ratings and online experience to figure out what the boundaries of that are) are the sort of things I'd ask for anyway.

But I'll make a few specific requests outside that.

I'm not likely to go screaming off the deep end and/or ban people unless something starts happening in every post, but I'd appreciate it if you'd bear the following in mind:

i. Please try to post something more than "X/Y/Z rules/sucks!", or any other one-liner.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned when it comes to discussing things, but I think that the more you tell people about why you think something, the more they can respond to you, and the more everyone benefits from having something to talk about.

I'm not asking for an essay on the subject (although if you want to write one, feel free!) - but even one reason gives people something to react to.

There's no need to be shy. Don't worry about taking abuse or personal attacks for sharing your opinion. I don't plan on standing for that. smile

Just keep it clean and keep it civil.

ii. Please don't simply post polls for the sake of posting polls.

If there was any option to remove the ability to post polls from this forum, I confess that I'd probably take it.

I don't see the point in them - whether it's just as something to cream a couple of extra gold or just to ask a question, I view polls, like one-liners, as simply a discussion killer.

If there're more potential answers to your question than there are options on a poll, then it's just pigeonholing people.

You might not get answers from some people, some of those you get may be from people who're choosing from the options in the poll rather than what they actually think - and in sort, you're not going to get a representative answer to a question that you're presumably interested in getting an honest answer to, or else you wouldn't have asked it.

Even if you can fitr all of your options in, post a poll and all that you're requiring of people is that they click a button and wander off.

All that leaves you with is a bunch of numbers and a graph. This is a discussion forum - why not just ask a straight question, and let people discuss? smile

iii. Please don't post "I am the great, all-knowing Sonic guru - ask me anything!" threads.

To anyone who might be thinking about it, I say with all due respect:

You may think you know it all, but you don't. None of us do.

I've lost count of the number of people I've seen proclaim themselves as the font of all Sonic knowledge, only to be reduced to looking like a rabbit in headlights when asked who Julie-su is, what a Drakon is or similar.

You could work for Sega, Archie, TMS or Egmont Fleetway and still not have a grasp on every continuity in every country. On the other hand, if you concede that possibility and listen to what everyone else in this little melting pot has to say, you might learn something new.

In my experience, it just gets people's hackles up and gets everybody off on the wrong foot - and we're all here because we've at least one interest in common and we want to have fun. If people do have any genuine questions, they'll probably ask without any prompting.

iv. Please refrain from formalised RPing.

Don't misunderstand me - I like RP. I play in everything from tabletop to LARP, even in RL. I admin at a Sonic RP board away from Gaia, and have done for about five years now.

But I suppose that's all probably made me a bit of an RP snob. I'm just so tired of seeing threads described as RPs that're little more than one random, picaresque one-liner after another, with no particular plot, character or structure to speak of.

It's nothing personal - I just want to keep the spam quotient around here to a minimum. There're plenty of Sonic RP guilds already out there on Gaia for anyone who's a serious enough RPer to want to put something together.

v. This is a pet hate of mine, but I don't hold with the use of the word "gay" as an insult.

Since it seems to be allowed as an insult around most of Gaia, I fel the need to be specific. You can feel free to call me a loony liberal if you like, but I just don't understand it.

You wouldn't call someone "so black", "so female" or whatever any more, and "That's so straight!" isn't even in the language.

So what makes the word "gay" so different?

At the last count, one in four people was at the very least bisexual, you wouldn't necessarily recognise them if any of them were posting on here, and I'd like this guild to come across as welcoming.

If it's a term you regularly use, I respectfully ask that you use a little restraint whilst you're posting in this particular spot. smile

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. If you like what you see, tell your friends - if you don't, tell us!

Happy posting!