To help encourage the growth of the forums and make them a better place for everyone, the following rules have been made available. The GameServe team moderate these forums regularly and attempt to ensure these rules are applied equally and fairly across the board.

Failure to comply by these rules may lead to your posts being nuked or deleted, and your account being temporarily or permanently suspended. Please note that these rules have been developed over several years, and we strongly feel that they encourage the best community participation possible.

The GameServe Forum moderators enforce these rules at their discretion. Any complaints or concerns can be addressed to the GameServe team at complaints@gameserve.com.au DO NOT EMAIL INDIVIDUAL ADMINS. These rules are subject to change at any time and without notice.

We hope that everyone that participates in the GameServe Forums has a good time and finds them a useful resource. Enjoy!

• General Behaviour
  • Don't ever abuse admins for locking, deleting, or nuking your post. In fact, don't ever abuse them ever.
  • Don't complain about being moderated/nuked/deleted/banned. If you think you've been really harshly dealt with, please feel free to email complaints@gameserve.com.au and explain why you think you've been hard done by. DO NOT EMAIL INDIVIDUAL ADMINS. Frivolous, childish or silly emails will result in harsher penalties.
  • If you are banned, accept your punishment and wait for it to wear off. If you try and evade the ban in any way, you will be rebanned for an even longer period of time.
  • If you relay a message from a banned user to the forum, it will be nuked and you risk banning.
  • Don't ever post "why was my thread locked/deleted?"
  • Don't call the admins names for enforcing these rules.

• New Post Rules
  • First, check to make sure no-one has posted what you're about to post before. Use the Search facility or just check back a few pages.
  • Try not to start debates that have been covered ad nauseum (CS vs Q3, etc).
  • Do not ask questions that can be instantly answered by someone else with a simple Google search. It is annoying to everyone else when you're not prepared to put in even a brief effort to solve your own problems or answer your own questions.
  • Don't use one word/non-descriptive/useless subjects.
  • Don't make subjects like "Does anyone know..." and leave it at that - learn to summarise
  • Don't use swear words in subjects
  • Try not to make spelling mistakes in your subjects
  • Try not to use kiddy abbrevations in your subjects like "u r smelly" or "roffle" (other abbreviations are fine)
  • Don't start threads about your post count, or post just to improve your post count.
  • Don't start threads about some topic about which you wish to start a discussion without including some sort of meaningful overview and your own opinion, preferably backed up with some actual evidence.
  • Don't start threads that won't be of interest to anyone, like a thread about your new shoelaces.
  • Don't use all capital letters in your subject, unless it is really, really, really, REALLY exciting and interesting.

• Posting Rules
  • Don't revive old threads. That is, don't go searching for old threads and post in them just to bump them.
  • If someone is dumb enough to revive an old thread, don't exceed their dumbness by posting in there saying "ROFFLE" or anything. It is just as dumb.
  • Don't assume people don't have a point because they've made a typo in their post - saying "omg, u sux becoz u cant spell proper" is the single lamest rebuttle on the Internet and it actually makes you look stupider
  • Don't make wild, outrageous, crazy claims without backing them up. In fact, try not to make any claims without giving them some sort of substance.
  • Don't get into an debate or argument with a one-off post with a radical idea or concept that you're not prepared to follow up on after everyone has shot you down in flames.
  • Don't be racist, a bigot, a homophobe, or a communist (get it?)
  • Don't abuse other users.
  • Try not to talk about politics until you have the faintest idea what is going on in the world and have a remote understanding about current events, history, and general human psychology
  • Don't say "old" in response to posts - its only old if you've seen it before. Lots of other people haven't.
  • Don't first post just for the sake of first posting. Repeated first posts that are silly or useless will be deemed abuse of the system and you'll be banned until you learn not to do it.
  • Don't post in threads that you know are going to get locked or deleted - posting things like "in before the lock/nuke/delete" will get you banned.
  • Don't ask how to block ads, or discuss it, or talk about it in any way - ads keep websites (like this one) free to access. Blocking them will result in having to pay to access them. Its that simple.

• Legal stuff - for obvious reasons, some discussion is not allowed.
  • No warez discussion - no talking about where to get warez or anything to do with warez (including CD keys and no CD patches).
  • No discussing anything about where to get any copyrighted material.
  • Linking to any sites that encourage, promote or facilitate the above is not tolerated.
  • Freedom of speech is not a right that extends throughout every single medium. If you don't like these rules, then you are free to start your own forum and say whatever you want. This forum is run with these rules to try and encourage a fun, active, interesting forum in which people can discuss a variety of interesting topics and ask questions covering a huge range of issues. If you do not like the way these forums are run, Go Here and make your own.

• Illegal Links - links to any of the following are not allowed under any circumstances
  • Warez/mp3s
  • Any copyright software or media at all
  • Pornography
  • Disgusting or foul pictures
  • Anything intended to humiliate another forum member
  • Links to illegal or inappropriate activities
  • Links to stupid websites that play "you are an idiot" really loudly, or count the number of people that have been recruited, or whatever. They're not cool.

• Images, media, linking, sigs and HTML in general
  • HTML is enabled on the forums. Do not abuse it.
  • Don't include images in your posts that are bigger than about 800x600 - use thumbnails.
  • Don't include auto-playing sounds or movies in your posts. Link or ensure autoplay is disabled if you embed a media player.
  • Don't make your text size really big or use horrible colours unless it is being done for specific emphasis.
  • Try not to make HTML mistakes that break the forum. Broken posts will just get deleted.
  • Don't have stupid sigs. This includes sigs that break any of the rules above, sigs that are excessively large in size (either display size or file size), or sigs that have audio.
  • Attempting to break the forum or circumventing the normal order of forum posting by getting creative with HTML - full HTML is left on to allow people to emphasise certain elements within their post. No special formatting is allowed in subjects. Anyone breaking the forum with broken sigs will have their sig removed - permanently. Anyone breaking the forum intentionally will be banned - permanently.

• Commercial posts
  • If you wish to post anything of a commercial nature, such as promoting your own business, please contact sponsorship@gameserve.com.au to ask permission first.

Permission granted by the QGL admins for the use of their forum rules 27th February 2006: Visit QGL at qgl.org

Last updated 1st March, 2006.