As this is my trial article I'm not sure this shall even get published, and even then I'm not sure whether this sentence will be included in the published Times but here goes.
Forum Etiquette. What is it, who follows it and what happens if you break etiquette? Well for starters, forum etiquette can be largely defined by the rules of conduct on the forums. That being, no racist remarks, offensive language (although c**t seems to be the only mute worthy swear, which discriminates against Australian players, IMHO) or pornography may be posted in either the Game Forum or the Trade Forum. However, etiquette doesn't stop with the written rules, the written rules are easy to follow, it's the unwritten rules of the CrimeBloc forums that I am to outline. I am doing this for new players, as well as myself, because this gives me license to push the envelope on the forums and hopefully increase awareness of what not to say to whom.
Let's talk about rule-breaking first, because I already have some experience with rule-breaking on the forums. So far I've been muted for spamming, offensive language and racism. I'll go through them one by one. First, spamming. Now I wasn't spamming links to websites or anything, the forum was dead quiet for like an hour or so, and so I decided to spell out T H E C A D (my account at the time) P W N S one letter at a time by creating threads with one letter titles, T, H, E etc. This was the cause of my first mute (although I did manage it for about a minute before some bastard bumped them out of order), obviously I had broken rules and etiquette, although it was a fairly minor violation that only earned me a 3 hour mute.
My second mute came about because of my prolific use of the C-word in my forum posts. Now I know there are a fair few Aussie players on CB, so they will understand where I'm coming from but for the majority of non-Australian players, I was just being obscenely offensive. In my defense, in Australia the word 'c**t' is used to refer to friends, family, police officers, the Government, the clergy, one's self and of course, people who are just plain c**ts. Basically, this nation would happily spell country without the 'O'. This didn't stop me from receiving another mute, however, which is understandable as (especially in the U.S) the C-word is not one people appreciate. At least, not one that the HDO's appreciate. Interestingly, the C-word seems to be the only swear word that comes with a mute, despite offensive language being against the rules sh*t, f**k, ass, arse, b*tch and bastard seem to be fine to use (within reason). This is where etiquette comes into it, you can break rules as long as you don't break etiquette as well, however, I came-up with a solution to my problem by calling people 'cnuts' instead.
Finally, my longest (and most ridiculous) mute was for racism. I was posting things like "I F**CKING HATE AUSTRALIANS" and :BLOODY ENGLISH PEOPLE!!! >:O". I may have even made some offensive generalisations regarding white people, I can't remember. What I do remember is going to the GF soon after to find that I had muted for, not 3 hours, but 3 days. Now as I already made clear, I am Australian, so I felt justified in saying things about Aussies, but also, my mother is of English birth and I hold a British passport, so I felt justified in saying things about the poms and incase you don't realise, I also happen to be a big, fat, cracker, whiteboy. So I felt like I could say things about white people. Now I protested my mute, stating my above justifications as well as trying to point out that it was all tongue-in-cheek in the first place, but to no avail. For three days couldn't make my important topics, or make deep, insightful comments in other people's threads. It was torture, and the fact that I wasn't really being racist in the first place made it all the worse. So the lesson here is, if you want to make jokingly racist remarks about your own people, make sure your profile picture is of you, obviously displaying the colour of your skin, draped in your nation's flag. Otherwise, it's breaking rules and breaking etiquette.
Now let's get on to purely etiquette offenses, another thing I have great experience with. I'm sure many of you are familiar with me from the GF, where I regularly impart my important advice and opinions to any and all who dare post (except sport topics, sport is ghey). In my forum whoring experience, here a list of things which, while not being against the rules, will piss people off no-end. First of all, getting into irrelevant conversations or arguments in someones R.I.P topic is frowned upon as disrespectful (except for Josh's R.I.P threads, he just gets blasted). Making inflammatory statements or glib remarks in another crew's recruitment thread also breaks etiquette somewhat, depending on what you say and who you say it to. While it's not against the rules, if you piss off a crew, you're more than likely to log on to a tombstone the next time you play, although this depends on what you said about which crew, really. Another way to break etiquette is to suggest that maybe you should made an Help Desk Operator, as witnessed by my "new hdo" thread. This is an even greater violation of etiquette when you are not particularly experienced, or particularly helpful and you suggest that you will bend rules to suit your own aims. Things like that can earn you a bounty on your head, because most other players are of the (correct) opinion that you are a time-wasting malingerer who should STFU. To them, I say "the TimeHasCome".
These are all examples of what not to do, so now let's take a look at good forum etiquette. First of all, when ever you wish o voice an opinion, make sure it is one shared by most other players, if you're in the minority (and especially if your opinion is offensive) you'll likely be targeted, or at the very least ostracised by CB's major players. Secondly, try to avoid getting into sh*t-fights with the people who make topics just to make people shoot each-other. This will save you bullets, health and not to mention dignity. There's no honour in killing the players who just start accounts to flame people only to die once they rank-up or exit their grace period. We all know the type of people I'm talking about. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you don't have anything nice to say, you'd better be damn sure that what you do say is funny. Humour will let you get away with a lot of things but this can easily back-fire. If what you say just causes offense or is patently stupid, you just broke etiquette and likely made someone's sh*t-list, if not hit-list.
Anyways, I hope this was a satisfactory first article, and I hope to be in the Times again next week.
<33 Much love to all you cnuts :D
THC
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