Forum Basics
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Important Forum Information
Community Posting Primer
Every forum is different and the Heroes of Newerth forums are no exception. This document will serve as a guide to the basic forum fundamentals and will cover everything from. Every forum user should have a sound understanding of what is described here so whether you're a new user or an old-timer, make sure you read this.
Before you go posting or even looking at any of the new threads in the section, first take the time to read the sticky posts in EVERY section you go into. These often contain information on how that section works or how to make good posts there. Other times, it's just helpful information overall. In fact, the Forum Rules are stickied at the top of General Discussion!
The first thing you should do is see if the topic you want to talk about is being discussed. For this, we'll use the search function, located at the top of the forums, near where the Log In bar was.
Type in what you want to talk about here and a list of every topic on that subject will pop up. Pick an active thread a Make sure that the thread is currently being used. Older threads will often contain outdated information and not be a good place to discuss what you want to. In the case that the only available threads are from a month ago or more, start a new one.
Before you write anything, you should make sure you're familiar with the Forum Rules, which can be found by clicking here and are located as a sticky post in General Discussion.
Make sure that you present your views of the topic and tell people why you think this about that so that they can in turn tell you why they think differently or why they agree with you. Asking a question is a great way to keep a discussion interesting!
Remember to format your post too! Make sure you use the enter key! Nothing is more painful than reading a big wall of text because the poster decided not to press enter a few times.
The first thing you should do is create an appropriate title for your post. This can be very important, as it will determine if other users read your post at all and if they take you seriously.
Since you are looking for good discussion, take the time to think up an attractive title that describes what you want to talk about. If you want to talk about why certain heroes are better in the middle lane, a good thread title would be something like this:
“Middle lane heroes: What makes them good?”
Or maybe you want to talk about a recent competitive HoN match. For this, your thread title should contain the names of both teams participating and look something like this:
“Tournament A: Team X vs. Team Y”
Here are some examples of thread titles we don't want to see:
“Dear S2”
“READ NOW”
“WTF OMG!”
“BROKEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Several of these have the unnecessary addition of asking people to read it, others don't have the point of thread in the title at all while one has so many punctuation marks on the end that it makes it hard to take the user seriously.
Threads like these may be renamed by the moderation team to something that accurately describes the thread or simply be removed completely.
Next up is the actual text of your post and, obviously, this is the most important. Before you write anything, you should make sure you're familiar with the Forum Rules, which can be found by clicking here and are located as a sticky post in General Discussion.
Make sure that you begin your discussion in a good way. This usually will involve explaining the topic at hand and then getting the other members started off with something interesting or thought provoking. You need to present your views of the topic and tell people why you think this about that so that they can in turn tell you why they think differently or why they agree with you. Asking a question is always a great way to start a discussion!
Every forum user is allowed to have their own signature appended to each post they make. This is a space set aside for you to personalize your forum experience and make your posts stand out or give information that is important to you.
To edit your signature, first you need to go to the Forum Actions drop down box at the top of the forums and select “General Settings”
On the left hand side, you'll see tons of different options for your account but the one we're looking for here is “Edit Signature” so click that!
You'll be brought to a screen that's very similar to the screen you see when you're trying to post in a thread. This is where you put what you want to be your new signature. There are some restrictions on what you can put here so make sure you hit “Preview Signature” before saving it. That way, you can make sure everything looks good!
Signatures for regular forum users are available with the following limitations:
- Maximum total height: 200px
- Maximum lines: 9
- Maximum total characters: 1000
- Allowed BBcode tags: [b], [i], [u], [color], [size] (max=4), [font], [link], [quote], [img]
- Maximum images: 1
- Emoticons: yes
Users with 1 or more active infractions will have more restrictions placed on their signatures:
- Maximum total height: 200px
- Maximum lines: 9
- Maximum total characters: 1000
- Allowed BBcode tags: [b], [i], [u], [size] (max=2)
- Images, Fonts, Colors, Links, and Emoticons are not available
- Please review the Forum Rules for additional information in infractions.
The Community Posting Primer is intended to serve as a guideline for productive forum discussion. It should serve as an introduction to the Heroes of Newerth forums and the type of posts that are most welcome here. We want the forums to be a lot of things, the most important of which is a place for interesting and constructive discussion about HoN.
If you have questions or suggestions regarding a subject for this section, please PM a moderator.
- Please treat all staff members, moderators, game masters, testers, new users, old users, good players, bad players, people who are able to manually dodge a Pyromancer ultimate with a quick Take Cover, people who still haven't figured out how Pebbles’ combo works - in short: all community members - with respect and consideration. This boils down to a very simple concept: Don't act like a jerk. Be nice. People will disagree with your proposals, opinions and suggestions. This is natural. That's how discussions work.
- Name-calling does not serve any purpose other than to aggravate another person. It does not contribute to a discussion. Instead, it hinders discussion. It is not acceptable in any way or form - yes, this means that in this particular case "baddie" is no better than, say, "idiot" or any other slur you can imagine. It does not help the poster to bring across his opinion, nor does it help the thread starter promote healthy discussion.
- Every forum user is expected to write all their contributions in a polite and civilized manner. A disagreement is an opportunity for all participants to learn something new, maybe even change the way they looked at an issue entirely. It is something positive, because it allows for people to come together and combine a multitude of different opinions in order to form a whole new entity. For this to work there is one paramount condition: the aforementioned mutual respect.
To close, an excellent practice to follow is: before posting anything, reread what you've written and think about it. First of all, what purpose does this post serve? What purpose are you trying to achieve? Is the post even necessary?
Please use the Report Post function to report any inappropriate content to the forum moderation team. This tool is the most effective way for you to help us keep the forums clean.
When you’re unsure about the legality of anything pertaining to the forums, contact a moderator or staff member directly via PM. To find them, scroll down to the bottom of whatever forum you have a question about and there's a little box called “Moderators” there.
For General Discussion, it's usually best to just contact a Global Moderator. In all other cases, use the box at the bottom of the page!
Email the forum administrator with your account name and reason for appeal. Abuse of the appeal system will result in all appeals related to your account being ignored. Excessive abuse may result in permanent loss of forum or game play privileges.
Posting Permissions
