Forum welcome, registration tips and forum rules (updated 20/03/08)

Pottsy · 10th April 2006, 09:30

Welcome to the new Honda Civic discussion forums. These forums are independent of Honda and totally unofficial. Please visit Honda (UK) if you wish to view Honda's website. This site was created in frustration with the other Blog site, where censorship and poor facilities spoilt the experience.

When you register, an email is sent immediately (it should get to you within a second or two). If you don't get it, the odds are your junk mail filter has trapped it - so have a look in your junk mail folder. You need this email to click on the link in it, to complete the registration process (this is to verify your email address). You are only permitted one account per person.

Rules:

I don't like rules (!) but we have to have a couple to keep things in order.

1. Language. You must agree to keep your temper cool and your language suitable for a general readership (from young child to OAP). So no swearing, and no trying to get around the swear filter.

2. Be polite. Under no circumstances will personal insults nor impolite comments nor antagonistic remarks be tolerated. It is also considered impolite to register under multiple usernames, so that is also not allowed.

3. Nothing personal. When you have a clash of opinion, make sure you argue the point, and never make the argument in any way personal.

4. The bin. Pathetic flame wars will be moved to a "bin" forum. As will requests for information that can very easily be found by either just looking around, or failing that, searching.

5. Grammar. Please spell new topic subjects correctly, and try to make them informative (avoid "Should I" or "Help" or similar). Please use English only (apart from in the Greek forum), and not text speak (m 8 , g r 8, u r etc, but without the spaces).

6. Nothing illegal. No illegal stuff please. Whilst I am the first to admit that many of our laws are useless and wrong, I am trying to steer this forum into being a useful and deep resource for many types of person. Many forums deteriorate into places where kids and idiots will brag and argue about road racing and the like, so in order to deter this behaviour I ask that everything here be kept legal, however trivial. This should stump the fools at the starting gun, with luck.

7. Graphics. Please limit avatars to small, non animated pictures, which are non-offensive (you can get the Civic ones from the gallery - have a look at the bottom of your profile page), signatures must not contain images (and must be no more than 5 lines deep), and any links must not be referral links (those are the ones trying to make money - like spam) to other organisations or companies. Linking to anything else, including similar forums, is absolutely fine. If you link to a picture, I reserve the right to host it here (you can still delete or change it if you want). This is to ensure that they are always available, and not reliant on your host or a slow old imageshack or whatever.

8. Libel. Under UK law both the poster and the website owner are liable to prosecution if libellous comments are published. A libellous comment is an untrue one that is damaging to the person or business. Anyone doing this will be banned instantly.

9. Commercial. All selling is to be done in the For Sale and Wanted forum and is subject to the trading rules. "Gauging Interest" threads will be edited or deleted by Mods, either you're selling something or you're not. The trading rules do not permit you to promote your ebay auction, but you may post a link to your auction in the ebay section (replies are not permitted, because we do not want to encourage members to start selling ebay stuff on the side here). A link to an ebay auction is fine in any forum if the auction is not yours, and is posted to help direct a member to a useful product. If you are a commercial organisation and want to promote your product, then this can be done in the Commercial forum. If a dealer has his own forum section, then he may use this, but may not promote his dealership in any way on another dealer forum, nor may he PM a member who has posted a question on another dealer forum.

10. PMs. Although the above rules are for public posts, it is not permitted to send a PM that may cause significant offence to the recipient. It is the responsibility of the sender to gauge what "significant offence" may be, but it normally includes personal attacks combined with use of poor language. The recipent of such a PM would have to forward it to a moderator to have any action taken.

I will try to warn rule breakers first, then issue a temporary ban, then a permanent ban. I reserve the right to skip any of these phases!

Moderation guidelines in use on this site:

Moderation will be the very rare exception, and not the rule.
Poor spelling and poorly worded thread titles will not be edited (though you'll look much better if you put a little effort in). Incorrect spelling in thread titles may be edited, just to help people who search with words spelt correctly.
Hopeless thread titles (like "Question", "What is the", "eh?" and so on) will be expanded.
All edits will be shown, in line and in context.
Personal insults, unnecessary language, clearly libellous claims, (in other words, the very exceptional clearly unacceptable posting) will be moderated – but the post will show where and what has been removed, and maybe why.

An example:
My speakers sounde terribl. Pottsy is a w***ker.
Becomes:
My speakers sounde terribl. [Edit by Pottsy 1/7/06 – personal insult removed – please refrain]

Privacy.

A note about privacy (I personally always like to know how data is used). All the information you see here (including posts, registration info, PMs, poll votes and so on) is held on a database. Only I have access to this database. If I could be bothered to delve into the database (which I can't) I could read the text of PMs (but it takes a while to work out the sender and recipient). I do reserve the right to inspect PMs in the event of illegal activity or serious rule breaking. Whenever you use any website (including this) the site records your IP address, what you're looking at and sometimes words you used at a search engine (to show how you got here). I will not give or sell your personal registration information to anyone other than the police, and will not spam you with emails, unless it's really important (moving the site, or major downtime for example).

Passwords are not held on the database here. When you enter your password, a bit of complex maths is done on it, and the result stored here. To verify the password, the maths is done again and the result compared with the result held here. You cannot convert the maths result back into a password (double MD5 hash with seed).

Stuff to do if you've just registered:

Go to your control panel, and enter your details (including your location, and why not chose an avatar - the little pic that appears by your name).
Post a hello in the introduce yourself forum.
Post some pics of your car in the gallery.
Become acquainted with the search facility - if you ask a question that has already been answered, people will shout at you!

Thanks, and have fun,

Pottsy

basegreen · 30th June 2006, 08:21

A note about editing.

Posts may occasionally be edited to remove or mask swearing. [Edit by Pottsy 1/7/06 - comment about spelling corrections removed to bring post in line with the new guidelines above]

Finally, if there are broken tags or links, we will do our best to fix them.

If there are any comments on this, please PM myself or Pottsy.

Pottsy · 20th September 2006, 07:54

Total beginners might want to watch this:

http://albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting.php

And some advice from another site:

Critically analyse every word you've written first before punching SUBMIT REPLY and think about how people will see it from various angles, not just yours.
Attack the argument and never the arguer. This will give you credibility in anything you wish to counter whatsoever.
Where possible don't react. Instead respond.
Never bull*****. If you don't have hard facts to back up your claim then just don't say anything at all, because if your statement is entirely subjective or proven false you'll get mauled.
If you do get ganged-up on, take a step back and shut up for a while. They may or may not have a valid point. Review your posts and look at them critically. If you feel the protagonists are wrong, give sound unemotional reasons why you think so with no name-calling. If you feel they are nonetheless right, pull your head in and apologise. No harm done and everybody soon forgets the outburst. People might recall the good guys but they sure as ***** never forget the arseholes.
And be very careful when you've had a drink or two.

basegreen · 27th September 2006, 13:16

Please note that comments admitting illegal speeding are not welcome on this site.

basegreen · 27th October 2006, 08:22

Please note that padding* is frowned upon, on this site. For chat/long threads that do not relate to the civic, try the off-topic forum.

* Padding is posting off-topic messages in high volume, so as to raise the users post count.

Pottsy · 14th November 2006, 22:12

Bump!

For new stuff added into the first post today.

Pottsy · 10th July 2008, 14:17

I am really bored with those that come on here and decided to have a round of slinging personal insults at each other.

From now, if this happens, the first action will be a one week ban.

Pottsy · 25th August 2008, 08:32

A quick note about the Thanks system:

It's designed to allow someone to express thanks without having to clutter up a thread with a one word post. It also is nice for those posters who may not post much or often to get a high thanks count for the good stuff they do post.

Unfortunately the system is open to abuse. Colluding with your friend to thank each other for random posts is not what the system is about, and anyone doing this will have the ability to place thanks removed. They will, of course, still be able to receive thanks.

There is also a limit on the number of thanks you can give in a day, and certain forum sections do not support the thanks feature at all.

Moderators can and will also remove thanks, if it's clearly a mistake or abuse (like thanking the auto posting bot, who is a PHP script and just doesn't need thanking).

Finally, as rmh999 says, there is no "groan" option, because I don't think we need a mechanism to communicate negativity. Poor posts are best just ignored.

Pottsy · 28th February 2009, 13:02

New rule added covering use of the PM system.

10th April 2006, 09:30	#1 (permalink)
Pottsy Administrator Car: 09 CRV and 07 Accord SportGT Join Date: 10th April 2006 Location: Leics Posts: 7,480 Thanks: 53 Thanked 555 Times in 254 Posts iTrader: (0)	Forum welcome, registration tips and forum rules (updated 20/03/08) Welcome to the new Honda Civic discussion forums. These forums are independent of Honda and totally unofficial. Please visit Honda (UK) if you wish to view Honda's website. This site was created in frustration with the other Blog site, where censorship and poor facilities spoilt the experience. When you register, an email is sent immediately (it should get to you within a second or two). If you don't get it, the odds are your junk mail filter has trapped it - so have a look in your junk mail folder. You need this email to click on the link in it, to complete the registration process (this is to verify your email address). You are only permitted one account per person. Rules: I don't like rules (!) but we have to have a couple to keep things in order. 1. Language. You must agree to keep your temper cool and your language suitable for a general readership (from young child to OAP). So no swearing, and no trying to get around the swear filter. 2. Be polite. Under no circumstances will personal insults nor impolite comments nor antagonistic remarks be tolerated. It is also considered impolite to register under multiple usernames, so that is also not allowed. 3. Nothing personal. When you have a clash of opinion, make sure you argue the point, and never make the argument in any way personal. 4. The bin. Pathetic flame wars will be moved to a "bin" forum. As will requests for information that can very easily be found by either just looking around, or failing that, searching. 5. Grammar. Please spell new topic subjects correctly, and try to make them informative (avoid "Should I" or "Help" or similar). Please use English only (apart from in the Greek forum), and not text speak (m 8 , g r 8, u r etc, but without the spaces). 6. Nothing illegal. No illegal stuff please. Whilst I am the first to admit that many of our laws are useless and wrong, I am trying to steer this forum into being a useful and deep resource for many types of person. Many forums deteriorate into places where kids and idiots will brag and argue about road racing and the like, so in order to deter this behaviour I ask that everything here be kept legal, however trivial. This should stump the fools at the starting gun, with luck. 7. Graphics. Please limit avatars to small, non animated pictures, which are non-offensive (you can get the Civic ones from the gallery - have a look at the bottom of your profile page), signatures must not contain images (and must be no more than 5 lines deep), and any links must not be referral links (those are the ones trying to make money - like spam) to other organisations or companies. Linking to anything else, including similar forums, is absolutely fine. If you link to a picture, I reserve the right to host it here (you can still delete or change it if you want). This is to ensure that they are always available, and not reliant on your host or a slow old imageshack or whatever. 8. Libel. Under UK law both the poster and the website owner are liable to prosecution if libellous comments are published. A libellous comment is an untrue one that is damaging to the person or business. Anyone doing this will be banned instantly. 9. Commercial. All selling is to be done in the For Sale and Wanted forum and is subject to the trading rules. "Gauging Interest" threads will be edited or deleted by Mods, either you're selling something or you're not. The trading rules do not permit you to promote your ebay auction, but you may post a link to your auction in the ebay section (replies are not permitted, because we do not want to encourage members to start selling ebay stuff on the side here). A link to an ebay auction is fine in any forum if the auction is not yours, and is posted to help direct a member to a useful product. If you are a commercial organisation and want to promote your product, then this can be done in the Commercial forum. If a dealer has his own forum section, then he may use this, but may not promote his dealership in any way on another dealer forum, nor may he PM a member who has posted a question on another dealer forum. 10. PMs. Although the above rules are for public posts, it is not permitted to send a PM that may cause significant offence to the recipient. It is the responsibility of the sender to gauge what "significant offence" may be, but it normally includes personal attacks combined with use of poor language. The recipent of such a PM would have to forward it to a moderator to have any action taken. I will try to warn rule breakers first, then issue a temporary ban, then a permanent ban. I reserve the right to skip any of these phases! Moderation guidelines in use on this site: Moderation will be the very rare exception, and not the rule. Poor spelling and poorly worded thread titles will not be edited (though you'll look much better if you put a little effort in). Incorrect spelling in thread titles may be edited, just to help people who search with words spelt correctly. Hopeless thread titles (like "Question", "What is the", "eh?" and so on) will be expanded. All edits will be shown, in line and in context. Personal insults, unnecessary language, clearly libellous claims, (in other words, the very exceptional clearly unacceptable posting) will be moderated – but the post will show where and what has been removed, and maybe why. An example: My speakers sounde terribl. Pottsy is a w**ker. Becomes:* My speakers sounde terribl. [Edit by Pottsy 1/7/06 – personal insult removed – please refrain] Privacy. A note about privacy (I personally always like to know how data is used). All the information you see here (including posts, registration info, PMs, poll votes and so on) is held on a database. Only I have access to this database. If I could be bothered to delve into the database (which I can't) I could read the text of PMs (but it takes a while to work out the sender and recipient). I do reserve the right to inspect PMs in the event of illegal activity or serious rule breaking. Whenever you use any website (including this) the site records your IP address, what you're looking at and sometimes words you used at a search engine (to show how you got here). I will not give or sell your personal registration information to anyone other than the police, and will not spam you with emails, unless it's really important (moving the site, or major downtime for example). Passwords are not held on the database here. When you enter your password, a bit of complex maths is done on it, and the result stored here. To verify the password, the maths is done again and the result compared with the result held here. You cannot convert the maths result back into a password (double MD5 hash with seed). Stuff to do if you've just registered: Go to your control panel, and enter your details (including your location, and why not chose an avatar - the little pic that appears by your name). Post a hello in the introduce yourself forum. Post some pics of your car in the gallery. Become acquainted with the search facility - if you ask a question that has already been answered, people will shout at you! Thanks, and have fun, Pottsy

20th September 2006, 07:54	#3 (permalink)
Pottsy Administrator Car: 09 CRV and 07 Accord SportGT Join Date: 10th April 2006 Location: Leics Posts: 7,480 Thanks: 53 Thanked 555 Times in 254 Posts iTrader: (0)	Total beginners might want to watch this: http://albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting.php And some advice from another site: Critically analyse every word you've written first before punching SUBMIT REPLY and think about how people will see it from various angles, not just yours. Attack the argument and never the arguer. This will give you credibility in anything you wish to counter whatsoever. Where possible don't react. Instead respond. Never bull***. If you don't have hard facts to back up your claim then just don't say anything at all, because if your statement is entirely subjective or proven false you'll get mauled. If you do get ganged-up on, take a step back and shut up for a while. They may or may not have a valid point. Review your posts and look at them critically. If you feel the protagonists are wrong, give sound unemotional reasons why you think so with no name-calling. If you feel they are nonetheless right, pull your head in and apologise. No harm done and everybody soon forgets the outburst. People might recall the good guys but they sure as *** never forget the arseholes. And be very careful when you've had a drink or two.

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This thread is about: Forum welcome, registration tips and forum rules (updated 20/03/08), it's in Site suggestions, feedback and rules at the Honda Civic forum Civinfo; Welcome to the new Honda Civic discussion forums. These forums are independent of Honda and totally unofficial. Please visit Honda (UK) if you wish to ...

30th June 2006, 08:21	#2 (permalink)
basegreen Super Moderator Join Date: 15th April 2006 Location: noitacoL Posts: 2,927 Thanks: 0 Thanked 13 Times in 5 Posts iTrader: (0)	A note about editing. Posts may occasionally be edited to remove or mask swearing. [Edit by Pottsy 1/7/06 - comment about spelling corrections removed to bring post in line with the new guidelines above] Finally, if there are broken tags or links, we will do our best to fix them. If there are any comments on this, please PM myself or Pottsy.

27th September 2006, 13:16	#4 (permalink)
basegreen Super Moderator Join Date: 15th April 2006 Location: noitacoL Posts: 2,927 Thanks: 0 Thanked 13 Times in 5 Posts iTrader: (0)	Please note that comments admitting illegal speeding are not welcome on this site.

27th October 2006, 08:22	#5 (permalink)
basegreen Super Moderator Join Date: 15th April 2006 Location: noitacoL Posts: 2,927 Thanks: 0 Thanked 13 Times in 5 Posts iTrader: (0)	Please note that padding* is frowned upon, on this site. For chat/long threads that do not relate to the civic, try the off-topic forum. * Padding is posting off-topic messages in high volume, so as to raise the users post count.

10th July 2008, 14:17	#7 (permalink)
Pottsy Administrator Car: 09 CRV and 07 Accord SportGT Join Date: 10th April 2006 Location: Leics Posts: 7,480 Thanks: 53 Thanked 555 Times in 254 Posts iTrader: (0)	I am really bored with those that come on here and decided to have a round of slinging personal insults at each other. From now, if this happens, the first action will be a one week ban.

25th August 2008, 08:32	#8 (permalink)
Pottsy Administrator Car: 09 CRV and 07 Accord SportGT Join Date: 10th April 2006 Location: Leics Posts: 7,480 Thanks: 53 Thanked 555 Times in 254 Posts iTrader: (0)	A quick note about the Thanks system: It's designed to allow someone to express thanks without having to clutter up a thread with a one word post. It also is nice for those posters who may not post much or often to get a high thanks count for the good stuff they do post. Unfortunately the system is open to abuse. Colluding with your friend to thank each other for random posts is not what the system is about, and anyone doing this will have the ability to place thanks removed. They will, of course, still be able to receive thanks. There is also a limit on the number of thanks you can give in a day, and certain forum sections do not support the thanks feature at all. Moderators can and will also remove thanks, if it's clearly a mistake or abuse (like thanking the auto posting bot, who is a PHP script and just doesn't need thanking). Finally, as rmh999 says, there is no "groan" option, because I don't think we need a mechanism to communicate negativity. Poor posts are best just ignored.

28th February 2009, 13:02	#9 (permalink)
Pottsy Administrator Car: 09 CRV and 07 Accord SportGT Join Date: 10th April 2006 Location: Leics Posts: 7,480 Thanks: 53 Thanked 555 Times in 254 Posts iTrader: (0)	New rule added covering use of the PM system.