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Author Topic: NOTES FOR NEW MEMBERS  (Read 56688 times)

pwhodges

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NOTES FOR NEW MEMBERS
« on: 20 Sep 2011, 07:24 »

This forum is provided for our use by Jeph Jacques.  It's his place, and he wrote the rules - read them!

Jeph is busy writing comics and stuff.  He doesn't come here often these days, so addressing him in the forum is not a sensible way to contact him; try his Tumblr, where he answers questions from time to time, or the email address on the Contacts page of the comic.

The management of the forum has been delegated to a number of administrators and moderators.  At present the active ones are Is it cold in here? (admin), and Method of Madness, Neko_Ali, Thrillho, Welu, and Detachable Felix (global moderators).

pwhodges was admin until recently (and still is, but now mostly takes a back seat and doesn't visit so regularly).

We do our best to ensure that the forum is the sort of place that Jeph's rules imply - we also squash spam.  You can PM one of us if you have any specific concerns; if you see a post that seems way out of line (either spam or bad behaviour) you can press the "Report" button, which emails all  the admins and moderators.

The busiest part of the forum is the QC Discussion, as you might expect, and you will find a couple of stickies there which mention dos and don'ts for that specific sub-forum - in particular: no shipping.  See the welcome message and the discussion of conduct for more about this.

But there are also other forums for hanging in, whose names are reasonably self-explanatory; you are encouraged to go there.  Some of them you cannot see unless you register and log in (also, you cannot post without being logged in).  The DISCUSS! forum has a sticky message about its local rules.
« Last Edit: 15 Aug 2018, 14:50 by pwhodges »
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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."  (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

pwhodges

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Re: NOTES FOR NEW MEMBERS
« Reply #1 on: 20 Sep 2011, 10:19 »

Here are a few notes, in no particular order, which expand on or explain or just reword Jeph's rules, or simply remind you of good practice:

1- Respect the rules; in particular, don't try arguing that "the rest of the Internet" allows things - Jeph pays the bills here, and what he says goes.  And meanwhile an admin's or moderator's word is final.

2- Respect each other.  Jeph's rule says "please be civil"; this can be expanded to avoiding discriminatory speech or remarks that are based on stereotypes.  Taking our cue initially from Jeph's comic, we have become more sensitive in the areas of gender and sexual speech and terminology than most places on the Internet - please take note of this (and see the following post for more explanation).

3- Lurk a bit (or maybe you did that before registering) - see how things are done before jumping in, check whether someone has just said what's in your mind before speaking.  Don't post too much until you can see how you're fitting in.

4- If you want to add to your thoughts you can edit your post; this is preferred to making a new post immediately below it.

5- If you are replying to the last post, don't bother to quote it - we can work it out, it's like a conversation!  If someone else gets in while you were writing, you can easily edit in a quote.  And if you do quote, don't quote the whole of everything - just enough for context; people will appreciate your posts more if they are easy to read.  And don't quote pictures.  Please.

6- Write English.  There are many non-native English users here, so we don't expect grammatical perfection and consistency of spelling.  But please, no 1337-speak, ALL CAPS, or excessive use of smileys :evil:, marquees, fancy fonts and colours and such; and please try to spell people's (and characters') names right - it's only polite.  Oh, and Internet memes or image macros?  Passé. There is nothing exciting or new about any of them, and they just make people sigh when they see them.

7- Please, no religion or politics.  They just lead to people getting all het up in entrenched positions with consequent unpleasantness, so we don't allow it in general.  However, there is one sub-forum (DISCUSS!) in which serious discussion of things like that is permitted - but it is correspondingly more heavily moderated, and you should read the sticky there before joining in. 

8- Also, no pictures focusing on guns or violence, and no porn; if that's your thing, there are other forums you can use.

And a couple of technical hints:

1- Make pictures a sensible size; the forum software displays them with a maximum width of 800 pixels in any case, to avoid distorting the forum layout, but if the original is big it still slows down the loading of the page.  Equally, text should be legible; the forum software will force font sizes outside the range of 5pt to 36pt to the nearest of those values.

2- URLs in the [url=<URL>] tag do not have "quotes" round them, unlike on some other forums; putting quotes breaks them.  It's sensible, and easy, to check your links after posting them, to be sure they're OK.

3- For mobile browsing you have a choice if you find browsing the normal view too difficult: you can use WAP2 (there's a link at the bottom of each page); or you can use the Tapatalk forum browsing app (cheap or free, from any app store near you) - search in the app for "questionable" and you'll find the forum there.

Finally, remember that we're all here to enjoy ourselves.  Be nice to other people, and they will normally be nice in return.  If any unpleasantness should arise (and we can't pretend it doesn't happen) either ignore it or take it to PMs if it's personal, or leave it for an admin or moderator to deal with if it's public.  We will be firm when necessary.
« Last Edit: 07 Oct 2014, 06:00 by pwhodges »
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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."  (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

Is it cold in here?

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Re: NOTES FOR NEW MEMBERS
« Reply #2 on: 26 Nov 2013, 17:12 »

Speaking of civility, there are a lot of things to know about transgender and other trans* people. This set of rules is incomplete. See http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/03/how_to_talk_to_a_transgender_p.html for deeper information as soon as you have time (but be careful about their "keep asking" advice).

"Trans", as an abbreviation, and "trans*", which is shorthand for transgender/transsexual/etc., are the polite and neutral terms for people whose internal identity doesn't match their bodies. "Cis" and "cisgender" are the neutral descriptive terms for the majority of people who feel like the sex they look like.

The principle to keep in mind is that the trans*  people are male, female, or other as they report themselves to be. They have spent their lives grappling with their identity and are the world's leading authorities on it. Next is that they have always been that gender even when their bodies didn't match. Remember those points and you'll see a lot of the etiquette for yourself.

Don't argue "biology" unless you have a specialist post-secondary education.

Private parts and pronouns: use pronouns people tell you to use for them. And don't put them in quotes. Don't ask about medical status. Natural general curiosity you should satisfy with online resources such as http://www.cakeworld.info/transsexualism/, http://transwhat.org, and  http://glaad.org/transgender but don't pry into someone's life. You wouldn't ask any other woman "Do you have a vagina"?, so don't do it to a trans woman.

That includes Claire. Yes, really. It took a while to persuade the moderators but it turns out that speculating about Claire's downstairs hurts real people. Further,
Quote from: The owner of the forum, on his Twitter feed
Dear everyone who ever asks about Claire’s junk: it’s none of your business what’s in somebody else’s pants. Stop it.

That word you saw online is a toxic slur. "Shemale", "tranny", "trap", and anything you've seen on a porn site will be treated like ethnic slurs by the moderators.

Want to know more?. There's a lot to learn. There's a lot of introductory explanation at one place in http://www.healthline.com/health-news/caitlyn-jenners-debut-in-vanity-fair-spotlights-transgender-issues-060915#1. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/health-family/article76580862.html Is also good. ZoeB's website, aebrain.blogspot.com, will leave you knowing more than most doctors. Be cautious asking in the forum: make sure you don't sound like you're entitled to answers. We have some generous educators but don't overuse them.
« Last Edit: 11 May 2016, 16:47 by Is it cold in here? »
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Thank you, Dr. Karikó.
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