There are people of all ages at these forums, and as such this kind of material is strongly discouraged. Explicit content, meaning pornography (visual or written) or gruesome images/written descriptions, is not allowed and will get you permanently banned.

Each member may only have one account at the forums, and should not share that account with anyone else. If you have a friend who wants to post, they should make their own account. If you want to change your account name you may do so in your user CP page; though be aware that you will have to wait six months before you can change it again.

"Flaming" means "insulting," and alludes to a person attempting to win an argument by literally burning his or her opponent to death (which isn't very productive). Posting anything with the intent of insulting another member will not be tolerated.

Trolling is when a member tries to provoke a fight, either by flaming another member, or by making a post on a sensitive issue just to rile people up. Trolling is regarded as equivalent to flaming and is also not tolerated.

This only applies to when a moderator is acting as a moderator. So, lying about what someone said to you in a PM gets you an infraction; telling a moderator that blue is your favorite color when it's really red won't.

Spamming basically means useless or unwanted posting, such as repeatedly making off-topic replies; posting excessively about the same thing (eg: asking people to visit your site), persistently making short or one-word replies, replying to your own posts or making multiple polls in a single forum in one day. It annoys most other members and makes it difficult to have conversations. As such it is against the rules.

When someone works hard to create something, be it art, writing, animation, or anything else, it's not nice to see another person take credit for it. Remember to credit others for their work or as a source for any close imitation of it that you make, and please do not claim these works as your own, as it is deceitful and misleading, and upsets those you have stolen from.

Discussion about ways to obtain illegal materials is not tolerable here. Posting direct links to any pirated content will get you instantly banned.

This is not to be confused with discussions about piracy or about illegal material. These are allowed, so long as they do not provide links or means of obtaining any pirated content.

Many members on ZU have their own music band, or website, or webcomic, or similar. Quite a few of them want others to know about this band/website/webcomic/whatever. This is fine, ZU has a specific section for you to post ads for these things. However, posting advertisements outside of the Advertising Forum clutters up the rest of ZU and annoys most of our members. As such doing so is against the rules.

As mentioned in the entry on explicit posts/text, ZU is a family forum. This means that stuff that you might say all the time to your friends may not be appropriate for posting here. This includes talking about sex (outside of any threads designated for that, which must have moderator approval) or similar.

The best rule-of-thumb here is this: Could you get away with saying that on prime time TV? If not, then you can't say it on ZU.

Moderators do make mistakes and poor judgment calls, no one denies that. However, that does not mean that you are allowed to drag other threads off topic to yell at them about it. If you have a complaint with a moderator then follow the steps in the "complaints" section above.

This means making a post reprimanding a member for breaking the rules. It is not your job to police the forums, and doing so just annoys people without fixing any problems.

Now, it’s perfectly fine for you to help a new member “learn the ropes” by dropping a friendly hint when they break a rule, but just making a post to point out that they’re in trouble for doing what they just did is not.

So, posting: “Hey, I know you’re new here, so you should probably know that spamming isn’t allowed.” And then discussing the topic is fine.

Posting: “WTF are you doing? That’s against the rules!” is not.

ZU has a built-in swear filter to prevent certain words from being posted. Of course, no software is perfect and there are ways around the filter. However, actually using any of those ways to get past it is against the rules.

Your avatar (the picture displayed under your name) can be a maximum of 100x130 pixels and 25KB in size. It cannot contain any material banned elsewhere in the forums (no explicit images, no swearing, etc.) You also may not pretend to be a moderator by adding a moderator banner to the top of your avatar.

Your signature may have a maximum of three lines (at 1024x768 monitor resolution) of text plus images that total to no more than 400 pixels wide, 150 pixels tall, and 200kB in size. So, if you have 4 images all 100 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall all next to each other you are fine. If you have one that is 200 tall and 450 wide, you are not.

If you have no text in your signature you can make your image slightly larger, and vice-versa. In addition, your signature (and avatar) cannot contain any material that is banned elsewhere on the site (no explicit images, no swearing, etc.)

There is no point value listed for breaking the signature rules because normally no points are given for violations here (save anything in your signature that violates other forum rules.) However, repeatedly breaking the size rules will get you an infraction for general stupidity.

If you can't put together a sentence without cussing, perhaps you could pay a visit to dictionary.com to expand your vocabulary. The occasional usage is acceptable, though be aware it will be censored.

If you're going to get heated about an issue, be sure to remain polite and civil. If it turns into a bash fest or flame war (ie: A big argument), the topic will be locked and those involved may be subject to punishment. Keep it clean and respectful of those involved, please.

The mods and admins are here to try to keep the peace. If we see an argument brewing, a difficult situation or a rule violation, we'll make the members involved aware of this and try to resolve the issue. If you're asked to stop arguing, stop. If you're told that you've broken a rule, re-read the rules and remember not to do it in future. We're not here to be a pain, we're here to try to keep things running smoothly and for that we require your co-operation.

Not everyone can be a mod and certainly not an admin. We have enough messages to deal with, without people begging or volunteering to mod. If more mods are needed, we will decide upon that, and who should become a mod on our own.