Welcome to the Robomiko forum! Your all-powerful miko overlords today and for all time are Tenchi Kaze and Iggy. We hope you enjoy your stay. :)

However, before you venture out and start posting, I must impress upon you that this is NOT a typical forum. Unlike other online hangouts, this forum will not, under most circumstances, tolerate certain kinds of posts and behaviours. So here are a few rules that everyone must heed:

1) Spelling and grammar will be enforced heavily.
There is a "Check spelling" option under the text field when you make posts, as well as a "Preview post" button. Make good use of both.

Make sure your punctuation is at least somewhat correct. I've had to correct too many run-on sentences and words that need apostrophes.

I will be keeping tabs on all threads and posts, keeping an eye out for glaring errors. If I find any, I will correct affected posts by hand and highlight the edits in red (idea taken from Mr. Period of the Front Row Crew forum). It will look like this. If you notice that a significant number of your posts have red marks in them, that's not good. If I feel I've had to edit too many of your posts, either Iggy or myself will issue a formal warning. If that warning is not heeded and the frequency of blatant errors does not decrease, you will be out on your ass. As it says in the Terms of Service for this forum, "We reserve the right to terminate any membership for any reason or no reason at all." You agreed to those terms when you joined, thus you have no right to complain if you get banned.

By the way, try to cut down on excess punctuation as well. Every now and then, multiple question marks and exclamation marks are okay, so long as the context makes it funny. But come on, most of the time you really only need one of each.

In any case, we are not totally evil bitches here at Robomiko. We will of course make allowances for popular Internet shorthand and purposeful misspellings (eg: lol, gtfo, teh), and the occasional typo is barely worth mentioning. Also, there is plenty of room for silliness around here, so long as you're smart about it. ;) So don't be freaked out if you see one red mark in a post you've made - those marks don't mean anything unless you get a lot of them, either all at once or frequently over time. Their other purpose, aside from alerting members to keep up post quality, is just to keep the overall readability of the forum in tip-top shape. :)

2) Keep on topic
"Thread hijacking," as it is sometimes known, will not be tolerated. A brief meta discussion within a thread is fine. If it gets too long and way off-course from the original topic of the thread, though, take the conversation to whispers. Again, if you get pegged for going off-topic too often, a warning will be issued, and if it is not heeded, then you're just done. Out.

3) HAVE a topic to begin with!
All threads must have some legitimate topic, and not just be a hotbed of spam and posty-posts. Example: "What is your favourite anime?" Good! "I like toast!" Probably bad, unless your post is either hilarious or is genuinely informative about the subject of warmed bread and the process of making it.

Also, if you find that you start up a bunch of threads and nobody ever responds to any of them (and the board is not just dead all around), chances are you're not posting topics that interest most people. Try holding back a little bit and only post a new thread if you have a really good idea/reason for one.

4) Be excellent to each other.
That's not to say that everyone should be super-happy-fun-fun-plastic nice to everyone else all the time (although it doesn't hurt to offer your friendly neighbourhood admins flattering comments every now and then ^_~). This rule just means that all debates and arguments should be kept civil - no mindless insults, flames, or slurs against race/gender/orientation/etc. Again, use your common sense. If a flame is bad enough (like KKK bad), you won't even get a warning. You'll just be gone.

5) No graphically violent or tastelessly explicit sexual content.
Keywords here are "graphically" and "tastelessly." Hilarious as Riki-oh, Ichi the Killer, and Boku no Pico are, this is not the place to post that wonderful crap. There will, however, be exceptions made for legitimate art with tastefully-done sexual content or strong PG-13/mild R-rated violence, so long as they are clearly marked with NSFW (meaning "Not Safe For Work"). Judgment on what is tasteful and what is not is up to the discretion of your all-powerful miko overlords. Oh, and also up to the laws of Canada or whichever country you happen to reside in; I shouldn't have to say that any clearly illegal content should not be posted.

6) No links to significant portions of media licensed in North America.
This mainly relates to licensed anime. Do NOT link to illegal streaming, download or torrent sites that host anime that has been licensed for distribution in North America (as that is where this forum and website are based). The rule applies to any television and movies that are licensed here as well. Again, I shouldn't have to tell you guys not to post things that are blatantly illegal.


TL;DR? Here's a quick video that summarizes many of the points I just made:

How to Behave on an Internet Forum


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That should be it for rules. Now for a brief FAQ on some of the features of the forum itself:

What are the rules for avatars/user icons?
Avatars should be 50x50 pixels or smaller. I recommend actually uploading your avatar to the forum rather than hosting it. This is done by clicking on the "User" tab, going to "Account Pictures" on the left sidebar, and then uploading your images from there. More instructions can be found on that page.

Where is my post count?
The only place you can see your post count is in your own profile. This is just how Lussumo Vanilla is set up, but even if it weren't set up that way by default, we would probably keep it that way to discourage users from worrying about it. ;)

What are whispered comments and whispered discussions?
Whispers are this forum's version of private messaging. If you want to send a message directly to another member without anyone else seeing, click "Start a new discussion" and enter that member's name into the "Whisper comments to" field.

As well, if you are participating in a forum thread and want to have a side conversation with someone else in that thread, you can find the "Whisper comments to" box above the regular text field for replies. Then the two of you can whisper back and forth within a forum thread, with no one else being able to see it. Nifty, huh? :)

I don't want to see all the threads in the forum at once. Is there any way I can just see certain kinds of threads?
Glad you asked! That's a job for the Categories tab. Just click there, and you'll find a list of all the various categories that the forum sports. There is also a drop-down menu on the left sidebar that lets you just select category views there.

Definitely make use of categories when making new threads, by the way. If all the threads are posted in the default "General" category, then that just makes the category listings useless for everyone. :( So make sure that when you create a new discussion that you select the appropriate topic from the menu provided.

How do I make an embedded video?
There is a video button that looks like this in the editor bar: . It currently supports the embedding of YouTube, Myspace, and Google Video. To use it, you have to enter the name of the service you're using and the ID number of the video. The posted code should look like this:

<video type="youtube">insertvideoIDhere</video>


I'm sure there are a bunch of things I've missed, but I'm tired. ^^;; If you have a burning question about the rules or the forum, post it here, and if it's a good question or point, I'll add it here.

Anyway, happy forum-going, forumites!

Before signing this, should we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors to uphold these rules? :)

Nah, pledges of allegiance and loyalty are totally voluntary (thanks, BTW, Ciel). I only ask that everyone be cool and not piss Iggy or me off by posting like an ass. ;)

I forget. When do we consider a thread to be dead?