Guideline to This Forum – Shoujo Kakumei Utena

This forum is for discussion, fanworks, great ebay/merch finds, and analysis of the collected works that make up Shoujo Kakumei Utena. It doesn’t have to be deep, it doesn’t have to be great, but it does have to be about SKU. Personal information (anything you don't want the world knowing) and NWS (not work safe) pictures are not to be posted in here; you may link them but please mark the link as NWS. Text is always worksafe. Remember that this is a public forum, and use discretion when posting. Please, no low-content threads in this forum.

If you're seeing Chu Chus instead of hyperlinks, you're not signed in.  (It's a long story involving bandwidth leeching.)  Make an account and join us!
If you made an account but have never posted, and now you can't sign in, most likely you got pruned.  (We like to keep our user list manageable.)  Make an account and come say hi on the Welcome Thread!


General Rules

1. First Rule, Read the Rules! – If you don’t read the rules, you won’t know what’s in them. Admittedly, most of it is common sense stuff, but some of it isn’t; if you break a rule and try to defend yourself with ignorance, we’ll pretend like you broke the rule on purpose.

Why? Because not reading the rules means you don’t care about the community, and if you don’t care, we won’t either.

2. Tolerance – We’re often an opinionated group, from our favorite characters down to our philosophical beliefs. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. You should never have to apologize for your opinions, and while others may want to discuss them, you should never be attacked for them. As mods, we will uphold this for everyone, no matter how different their opinions may be from yours, or ours. We expect you to use common sense and politeness in dealing with those opinions; even if you are offended, there is no reason for personal attacks. Remember, that same umbrella of politeness and tolerance protects you too.

If you are offended by a member of the forum, we have specific guidelines in place to help you here. Please note that these guidelines are not for debates; they are to help us deal with drama on the forum without it making everyone insecure. These guidelines are a part of the rules and are required reading.

3. Abuse – Abuse of other forum members will not be tolerated. If someone is abusive to you while you are on the forum, let the mods know immediately! We will ban forum members for abusive behavior while on our territory. We can’t and won’t police your IMs or Facebook, but you can do that yourself.

Anyone not on the forums is fair game. We won’t ban you if you abuse people who aren’t our members; that’s just foreplay. But remember, no one likes it when you kiss and tell, so it might not be the smartest thing in the world to talk about it.

4. Swearing/Internet Lingo – We swear. You probably do too. Don’t worry about it unless it’s excessive; we may ask you to tone it down if you’re swearing so much that we can’t figure out what you’re saying. Internet Lingo, however, should only be used for comedic purposes. We’re above that shit.

5. Introductions – Introduce yourself in the appropriate thread, located here. We do want to know who you are—we just don’t want to clutter and derail other threads with introductions.

6. Thread Necromancy and Redux – We encourage thread necromancy!  We'd rather see an old thread brought back from the dead than see a duplicate topic, especially in the case of analysis threads.  Check to see if your thread idea has been posted. If you've got a new topic, or if you're bringing a fresh perspective to an old topic, go ahead and post a new thread.

7. Thread Derails – Don’t derail threads—what’s in the topic should be what the thread is about. If you find yourself derailing and you think it’s worth a discussion, create a new thread and link to it. If it’s not worth a discussion, try to put the thread back on topic.

8. Respect your Mods! – We’re putting in our free time to make this place awesome for you, and we do the best we can. REMEMBER, we can’t do a good job without feedback, so if you have questions or comments for us, feel free to pm us and ask—but if we’re laying down the law and you have concerns, please comply with our requests and discuss your concerns in private with us. We are trying to make sure this place is safe and sane for everyone; being able to question us is a big part of that, but so is doing it privately.

9. Commercial Spam – We will ban spammers on sight and with very little provocation. Having a personal website in your sig is okay; talking about/showing off your own personal businesses or sites is okay; registering specifically to fill the forum with that sort of thing is not. We may even ban you before you post if this is the case; we’re good at recognizing spammers. In the event that we do make a mistake, contact us by email so we can clear it up.

10. Hate Speech – We will ban people for hate speech (nigger, faggot, etc.), but that is up to our discretion and the context of the post. If it is clearly meant to be a joke, we will take the action we believe to be appropriate. If it is clearly not a joke, it is a bannable offense. Keep in mind that your interpretation may not line up with ours, and feel free to ask us about any decisions we make.

11. Catchall Rule – Please don’t try to circumvent the rules. If we run into a situation not covered in the rules, it will be left up to the mods’ collective discretion.

Image Rules

1. Avatars - They're hosted on the forum server, but you're responsible for making them. 100x100 pixels max, 10KB max. If you're really hurting, PM Giovanna or Yasha with a request image and one of them will probably help you out-- or post in the Icon thread!

2. Signatures - Please keep images to a max of 500x75 and a max of 25KB. Remember, we’re gonna see these over and over and over whenever you post; keep them small so that they’re not getting in the way of your posts. Really, we’re more interested in what you have to say.

3. Images in posts - You're responsible for hosting (try http://imageshack.us and http://photobucket.com), aside from images from our gallery. Feel free to directly link to anything on your webspace or on our gallery, but do not leech images. Also, do not put images wider than 800 pixels in your post! Please link larger ones so you don't break tables; breaking tables can screw up the code of the page the broken table is on. Many pictures in the gallery will break tables, so keep that in mind when using those images.

4. BBCode - If you don't know how to use BBCode, read Bio's FAQ.


Information

Mod Decisions
If you don’t like a decision we’ve made, feel free to politely ask us about it in pm or email and explain your point of view. We try to be as fair as possible, but being human, that’s not always what happens. If you have been banned and you think it’s unfair, we will be happy to discuss the circumstances of your banning and possible reparations; we care about everyone here and want everyone to be happy, and if that’s possible, we’ll try to find a way.

Transparency
We will provide explanations for any moderation decisions we make (bans, drama, whether we went to McDonalds, whatever you want). Furthermore, we will provide explanations for times we are wrong/have changed our minds/any other circumstances regarding reversed decisions. We reserve the right, however, not to post explicit evidence in the public forums as in some cases it does more harm than good. In private, with the permission of all involved parties, it is a different matter. The forum is for you, and you deserve to know what's going on. If you made a mistake, though, you also deserve not to have it paraded in front of everyone else. Our mistakes are fair game-- we'll post whatever you want about them.

These Rules Suck!
If you don’t like our rules, don’t register an account. Most of the forums are still visible without an account. Or, start your own forum. We’ll come by to check it out.

Posting Habits to Watch Out For
This is just a list of things we see from time to time that would be bad habits to form. They are not bannable or disciplinary offenses, but they don't reflect the kind of place we want the forum to be.

Prejudice Against New Members – this can be a very tricky one to catch. A new member is going to feel like they don’t have much to contribute just from the sheer amount of stuff on here. Don’t help that impression! We were all new and nervous here once, and look how many great things have come out of hanging around! If you feel tempted to talk about how long you’ve been here, you might be about to scare someone away from the forum, so consider it carefully before you do it.

Low Content First Posts – Unless a news article, story, or other link really speaks for itself, please at least give a little description or excerpt of it and your reason for posting it. It’s more interesting when we know what it is and why we should click the link!

Plagiarism – It should go without saying, but please don’t claim other people's material as your own. They might sue you, and there can be consequences for the forum in general such as trolls and drama. Credit other people for their work, and please remember, if we are notified of plagiarism, we will ask you to take your post down. Remember, quoting more than four words in a row without credit is plagiarism; use that as a guideline. Cracks, rips, and warez fall under this—don't distribute them in our forums. We'll let you know if we think you're crossing lines.

I Don’t Know You People – This is a distancing technique sometimes used in heated debates, and while it is true that it’s hard to know people over the net, it has the effect of stopping discussion and insulting members who felt they knew you. It isn’t a good habit to get into because it breaks trust and makes communication harder to achieve.

Backseat Modding – It doesn’t come up often, but please don’t moderate unless 1) the rules are very clear on the subject or 2) you are a moderator. Things like 'please NWS that link' and 'don't derail the thread' are fine.


Mod/Admin Contact Directory

It is best to contact us by email or pm, as we don't often use AIM.

Yasha                                                      satyreyes                                                      Giovanna
Email – yasha!_REMOVE_!@ohtori.nu          Email – satyreyes!_REMOVE_!@ohtori.nu          Email – giovanna!_REMOVE_!@ohtori.nu
AIM – YashaDear                                      AIM – blackbirdfugue                                      AIM - MrsAkioOhtori

Administrative Functions
We will delete inactive accounts at some point after a year, if we get around to it. We will update the forums as needed for your security. Should a virus infect our server, we will post an announcement and shut down the forum until the virus has been removed. Please bear with any down time we experience because of things like this; we will attempt to notify people of any planned downtime. If you are experiencing unannounced downtime or other issues, see below.

Forums Tech Support
Post your issue in this thread. We will update it with fixes and look back there for feedback on whether our fixes worked properly or not. - Report layout glitches, bugs, and forum meltdowns here!