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

[Pottsy]

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.

If you are an experienced forum user, read this!
No images in sig, no personal abuse, posts will be moved to a read-only "recycle forum" in preference to deletion, post edits will be annotated. Good manners please. Write in English - no text speak. Nothing illegal please.



If you are a relatively inexperienced forum user, read this!

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).

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

1. You must agree to keep your temper cool and your language suitable for a general readership. So no swearing, and no trying to get around the swear filter.

2. Under no circumstances will personal insults nor impolite comments nor antagonistic remarks be tolerated.

3. When you have a clash of opinion - walk away! Even if the other poster started or is wrong...

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

6. No illegal stuff please. Whilst I am the first to admit that many of our laws are useless and wrong, I am trying 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. 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 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.

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]

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 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 would have trouble working out the sender and recipient). Passwords are stored using encryption that I cannot retrieve. When you vote on a poll, only I can see how you voted. 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 information to anyone, and will not spam you with emails, unless it's really important (moving the site, or major downtime for example).

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

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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]

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

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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]

Bump!

For new stuff added into the first post today.