Guide:STEP Community Citizenship

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Intro

Welcome to the STEP-Community Support Website! As of this moment, we have many relevant forums and are in the process of building out a wiki that will articulate and integrate to some degree with these. Within the site, you will find many helpful resources voluntarily provided. Many of the questions that you may have will likely have already been answered by others.

We humans are composed of personalities that fall along a continuum of positive to negative, and fortunately, the majority tend to associate with the more positive pole of this continuum. Unfortunately, there is a minority that aligns with the more negative --not necessarily pessimistic, but more truly negative. While these individuals are not necessarily "bad" people, they can nonetheless be a damper to the rest, and like a wild yeast, can have a tendency to sour an otherwise perfectly good batch of home-brewed mead. This monologue and the guidelines that follow are intended for all, but necessitated by these less "enlightened" of us.

TheCompiler and the other STEP-Community site administrators ask that you, as a registered member of this site, participate and/or contribute in a manner of good spirit and common courtesy. Adherence to this simple ethos will head off any unpleasantness before they are manifest. Let the guidelines outlined herein serve as a reference for our members, so that the community may evolve to its maximum potential.

The STEP Community Mantra:

Let us foster an environment that leverages your enthusiasm within a culture of good humor ... and rigorous analysis!

General Points of Etiquette

Posting

• Use your common sense when posting. If you are inexperienced with internet community life, have a read through a few pages to get an idea before posting. Be polite and friendly on arrival!

• Use your judgement when choosing a username. Don't start out on the wrong foot by choosing something offensive.

• New users on a forum are often upset when they receive a seemingly curt reply to their post. This will often occur if the question or comment has already arisen (often repeatedly) in recent posts. Even the nicest communities tend to get irritated by this. Make good use of the search feature, and always read back a couple of pages before posting.

• Once you've made your query, comment or request, don't keep repeating it. Sometimes you won't get the response you hope for, but constant repetition is a form of spamming, and won't be appreciated by the community.

• If in doubt about the tone of your post, pause, grab a hot cocoa, a coffee, a beer, a glass of wine or a shot of tequila. Then come back and PREVIEW your post, read it, and ask yourself: "is this offensive or needlessly provocative?". If the answer is anything but "of course not!", then please don't post it.

• Always try to cite your sources when stating information.

• Don't plagiarize content, or post material from other sites. Always give credit where it is due.

• As a general guideline, most NSFW (Not-Safe-For-Work) content is prohibited. This is a very open-minded community, but graphic content that suddenly appears on users' screens can cause real life problems. Use good judgement. Also, please make sure to state if a link you've provided contains NSFW content.

• Linking to any harmful websites/software, virus, referral sites, etc. is also prohibited and will be removed without warning. We will not tolerate this sort of abuse, and offending accounts will be deleted.

• Always try to find the correct sub-forum for a new topic. Threads made in the wrong places will be moved by a moderator into the right location and a post will be made explaining why.

• Always maintain the original topic in a thread. No derailing topics, hi-jacking threads, starting flame wars, or posting purposeless inflammatory posts.
• Debating and discussion is always encouraged, but rudeness and personal insults aren't. Keep any arguments about the topic not the posters.

• Utilize the Search function before posting, especially if you're looking for support, your question may have already been answered.

• Each person is allowed to have one account only. Posting with multiple accounts is known as 'sock-puppetry', and is totally against the spirit of honest and fair discussion. We'll delete all of a user's accounts if we discover multiple sign-ups.

• The posting of anyone else's personal information is not allowed.

Signatures

• All rules and guidelines for the forums also apply to signatures. This means keep it Safe-For-Work, no adverts, etc.

• Although the amount of images/text in signatures is not explicitly limited, the overall signature must be within 800 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall.

• Individual images must be under 150kb. Please be respectful of those with less bandwidth.

• Excessive animation or otherwise annoying images can really clutter a page, so we may remove such images if they prove distracting.

Avatars

• Avatars follow general forum guidelines as well.
• Images must be less than or equal to 100x100 pixels.

Posting Guidelines

General Posts

For the most efficient, useful and enjoyable experience for all visitors to the forums, PLEASE make your contributions in accordance with the following guidelines:

• SEARCH the forum for the mod of interest BEFORE creating the thread
• Screenshots and Video are welcome, BUT they should be hosted elsewhere with links embedded here
• Use the available codes (quote, code, spoiler, etc.)

Use a spoiler tag to hide your text, useful if your making an extremely long or highly technical post.

[spoiler]

Use a code tag to put your text in a scrollable box that ignores all codes (except of course /code). Codes are used as follows:

[code]text[ /code]

Use a quote tag to put your text in a quote box. Quotes are used as follows:

[quote]text[/quote]

[/spoiler]

Posting Mod Reviews

Make reviews easier to track

• OP should be titled EXACTLY according to Nexus mod name
• For non-mod apps or mods that do not exist on the Nexus, use the dev's/mod author's given title

Avoid redundancy and excess

• SEARCH the forum for the mod of interest BEFORE creating a new review thread
• If the mod thread already exists, POST ANOTHER REVIEW within the existing thread :thumbsup: ... we will merge it with the OP if it is a good one!

Enhance quality and usefulness of the review

• OP should be in poster's OWN WORDS; PLEASE do not paste the description from the Nexus or ReadMe
• Provide in game examples before and after mod installation along with your personal opinions and practical experience
• Mod authors, PLEASE do not write your own review, but please DO provide input to qualify others' reviews of your mod(s)

The STEP Community expects that you have used the mod enough to post a quality review ;)

Spamming and Advertisement

• Any form of spamming or advertising is explicitly prohibited and will be removed without warning. Any users in violation of this rule will also be banned immediately.
• This includes spamming through the use of the forums directly or any other methods related to this site, such as private messages, emails to users, etc.

Post Content

• The use of "Leet-Speak" and chat lingo is very unfriendly to foreign-language speakers, or those unfamiliar with these conventions. They are a shibboleth (there's a word for the day!), and are not in the spirit of this community. Such posts may be edited or deleted.
• In addition, when one punctuation mark will work, please only use one. ("!" vs. "!!!!!!")
• Please don't use Caps Lock or all capitals for any substantial part of a post.

• Wait a reasonable amount of time (more than 24 hours) before "bumping" your topic.

• Refrain from "Double Posting". Please use the EDIT button to correct this when done accidentally.

• When editing or modifying a post, please add your new message on a new line starting with "Edit:" It is very confusing, and sometimes unfair, if a post to which another user has responded mysteriously changes.
• On guides, how-to's, or anything else in that realm, a basic edit changelog is acceptable, just make sure to state what you changed.

• Any post with the following will be immediately removed. DO NOT:
  • Discuss or assist in illegal activities such as software and music piracy, warez, cracks, serials, etc. This includes linking to other websites with said material.
  • Re-create a deleted or locked thread for the purposes of trying to keep it going.
  • Post flashing or strobing images or text.
  • Reply to a thread without anything to contribute. (E.g. "First" or "/signed")
  • Use excessive amounts of large, colorful, or otherwise annoying text just to emphasize your words.

Moderation

• Moderators do not want to ban you. We don't have "Dirty Harry" moderators here, who enjoy kicking people out with a stinging rebuke for good measure. Please listen if a moderator asks you to reconsider something, and don't force them to act.

• Please keep any communication regarding Moderator action private, in the first instance. If you feel something was done incorrectly, please contact the Moderator responsible first, and if really needed then explain the situation to another Moderator or Administrator.

• Don't attempt to impersonate a Moderator, or falsely claim authority over other members.

• Although we always try to be tolerant and work with our members, we will act immediately in the case of abusive language, malicious trolling, hate speech, or anything of that ilk. Those making such posts will be banned permanently.