Site rules - please read before posting

[RK9]

General rules

• Please be polite. Respect other members, respect the staff, and don't flame or bash other people - not even if they flamed or bashed you first. If you are having issues with another member, please settle them privately over PM, don't drag everyone and their mother into it. If you cannot settle it by yourselves, then PM a staff member, and we will help you.
  
  
• This site is PG-13, in order to respect the younger members who might sign up, so please do not post any mature, graphic, racist, sexist, otherwise prejudiced, or adult content here. This includes (but is not limited to) statements, images, and other expressions. Posting of any such content will result in a month-long ban without warning.
  
  
• No chatspeak/leetspeak. This site is for discussion and shared enjoyment of the show Criminal Minds, and it's rather difficult to discuss anything when tH3 s3nt3nc35 3nD uP L00K1ng l1k3 th15. It's also difficult when they are incorrectly spelled, or short forms are used, so please refrain from doing so: I hayt sentenzez tat r speled lyk dis, they annuy me 2 death!!1!!
  Get the point? Proboards has a built in spellcheck, do make use of it as much as you can. We can overlook the occasional typo, but please don't make a habit of it.
  
  
• Please try and keep swearing to a minimum. I can overlook the occasional 'darn' and 'shoot', but there might be younger members here, and even if there aren't, there are people (like me) who don't like to see four-letter words in every sentence of a post. If you must express yourself so colorfully, at least be kind enough to censor your words with asterisks - though proboards does have a built-in word censor, you might be using one even proboards haven't heard of...
  
  
• Please try not to spam or double-post. If you are having posting/connection problems, that is one thing, but to repeatedly post the same thing for no apparent reason is annoying and just plain dumb. Have you nothing better to do with your time? We'll simply delete the posts and knock 5 posts off your total for each time you double-post.
  
  
• Do not take out RL issues on the other people here on this site. If you've had a really bad day, that's no reason to take it out on the nice, innocent folks here. We probably won't mind talking to you about it or cheering you up, but don't bite people's heads off just because you're in a bad mood.
  
  
• No one here, not even the staff, needs more than one account per person. Unless you are sharing an IP address (in which case you should notify an admin so we don't think you're the same person) you should have exactly one account per IP address. If we find you having two accounts, then we will give you a warning and probably delete one of the accounts.
  
  
• Some of us love to have signatures with images or sig banners, and I have to admit they look pretty. However - please don't have too many of them, and please don't make them too big. Some of us have slower connections and we can't handle it when the images are too big. Use your judgment - if you have a big image, then you should only have one in your sig. If your image is small, then perhaps you can have a maximum of two.
  
  
• Same goes for custom fonts - I know some people like to have their posts in their favorite color to distinguish theirs from the crowd's. There is no rule against that, but please don't use unreadable font colors or fonts - it just annoys or upsets people when we can't see what you posted, so don't do that.
  
  
• There may be no discussion of the illegal downloading of episodes anywhere on the site. It is different, when sharing a vid you made or a music vid from, say, YouTube. However, please do not start threads asking where to download the episodes, or offering episodes for download. Your thread/post will be deleted and you will be given a warning.
  
  
• No trolling, please - this is an internet term used to refer to someone who is not posting to contribute or participate in a discussion, but simply for the purpose of annoying or angering another member or group. If you see and want to report a troll, please PM a staff member and we will take care of it. Do not feed the trolls, they bite - which means try and restrain yourself from responding to the trolls, it will simply encourage them. Tell a staffie instead.
  
  
• Discussion or posting of materials that contain of mention slash relationships - means relationship between two characters on the show that are of the same gender, such as Hotch/Reid or JJ/Emily - is not allowed on this site, because there are minors here. Mature fiction will be allowed, but you need to PM the moderator of that board for the password, and if you are below a certain age we will not give it to you.
  
  
• IMPORTANT - regarding spoilers. Now, there may be some people who wish to discuss upcoming episodes, but not everyone will want to hear spoilers - that means information from the episode that has not been aired yet, or which has not yet been watched by certain members of the boards. For example, I come from Malaysia, and the fourth season of Criminal Minds will probably not start until it has ended in the US. I have nothing against spoilers, but there might be others who do. So, please, use spoiler tags when discussing episodes from the season that is currently airing (at time of posting that would be the fourth and latest season). Or, you can discuss the episode or any spoilers for upcoming seasons/episodes, etc, in the Spoilerboard that we have, which people who want to stay spoiler-free should avoid like the plague. Avoid posting with titles that reveal spoilers, though. For previous seasons, it should be relatively safe to avoid spoiler tags, but if you feel you need to use them, then please do.

Those are the general rules. Thanks for reading!

[RK9]

Suggested guidelines for posting
(Quoted and modified from the TalkCSI Files forum rules)

These are strongly encouraged, but not compulsory guidelines for when you post.

• Credit the people you quote. Especially in longer threads, keeping track of who said what can be extremely difficult if random quotes are taken.
  
  
• When referring to a member, please write their nick in bold. This is so people can clearly see who you are referring to.
  
  
• When quoting another poster please don't quote the whole of another message, but only the relevant parts. As a general rule, posts should contain at least 70% original material.