Be friendly
While you don't have to be overly polite, you should take into account that other members are not bits and bytes behind your monitor, but are real people that can be offended by harsh tone.
Read other threads
Before starting a new thread, you should look around first to find any recent thread that already addresses your topic. If you are engaging in discussion in an existing thread, you should read it entirely first in order to match up on what has already been said.
Thread titles
When starting a thread, the title should give sufficient indication on the subject of the post. Titles such as Problem, Help or Question are not sufficiently self-descriptive.
Write clearly
This includes writing full sentences, paying attention to capitalization where it's due, and using commas and full stops where required. Internet slang such as 1337 or SHOUTING is not permitted.
Quoting the most recent post
In general, you should not quote from the most recent post in a thread (the one that will be directly above yours). In a discussion, it is natural to relate to what was said before, thus you should directly say what you want to say. However, in some cases, it might be beneficial to quote a single sentence or a single phrase if you want to specifically relate to that part of what as said before.
Quoting older posts
With posts other than the most recent post, you can quote the particular phrase you want to relate to, so that others can follow to whom and to what you are relating with your post. However, it is not the idea to quote entire posts. Quoting other quotes (and thus ending up with nested quotes) should be avoided as well.
Emphasis
If you want to emphasize something in your text, you may make use of bold or italic markup. However, this is only meant for individual words or short phrases, not for entire sentences or entire posts.
Decoration
If you need to convey your emotional status, you may use smileys, but only very occasionally. You may also use different font colors or sizes, but only if it helps reading your post. For example, in longer posts, it might be helpful to include headings to split up your post into multiple sections. However, you may not use decoration in order to try getting other members' attention.
This is an English-only board
To make it short, please post only in English on this board.
Read your post again
It can be very disruptive if a post is full of orthographic or grammatical mistakes. You should always read your post again before finally submitting it. If you find any mistakes, correct them. The Preview button next to the Submit button should come in handy for that purpose.
Expect answers from anyone
This is a public forum, not personal email. If you have something to say, you should expect an answer from anyone. If you want to say something to someone in particular, consider writing a PM instead.
Avatars and Signatures
Avatars should not include animated images. Signatures should not contain images whatsoever - they are considered disruptive to the flow of reading.
Posting copyrighted material
While material that is in the public domain is always acceptable, we cannot tolerate any kind of copyrighted material hosted on this forum unless you created it yourself. This also includes material that is distributed under licenses such as GPL, CC and the like. You are free though to host such material on an external server and place a link to that material on this forum.
Vandalism and spamming
For any form of vandalism or spamming, users may be banned indefinitely from this forum without prior warning. Vandalism is anything deliberately aimed at disturbing the integrity of the forum or its community, including the addition of obscene material, insulting material, clearly off-topic material or purely nonsensical material. Spam is anything aimed at advertising a product, company, site or service unrelated to openBVE or clearly irrelevant in the context of the thread.
Before asking about installation-related problems, please read the Getting started section on the homepage carefully. For any further kind of problem, please see the Troubleshooting page first.
If you post about problems you have encountered, it is vital that you give additional information so that others can try to reproduce the problem. Additional information can include:
- your operating system, processor, RAM, graphics card, sound card,
- the route you were using, including the exact route file name, and the download location,
- the train you were using, including the exact train folder name, and the download location,
- and most importantly, a complete description on how to reproduce the problem, including the exact steps you took.
Try to apply common sense on finding out what kind of information is needed when. You might be asked to give further information if necessary, and you are expected to give it then. It is very annoying for those who are trying to help you if you are unwilling to cooperate by just leaving and not coming back. As feedback, you are also invited to report when any attempts to assist you were eventually successful or not.
