Read this first!

Your eyes are not decieving you, nor is this any where near the month of April; Serious Discussion has indeed returned to Zelda Universe.

This is the forum, as many of you know well, to discuss anything too serious for General Chit Chat. Politics, current events, and moral issues have their place here, and discussion regarding religion -- banned in all other parts of the forum -- is permitted in Serious Discussion.

For those of you groaning in disappointment, and the few of you perhaps frothing at the mouth in excitement, it is important to point out a number of changes to how this section is run:

We have a new moderator on the team for this forum forum. Bobslob has proven worthy of this position through his conduct in this section's past life and throughout all of the forums. He can be considrered the primary leader of this section, if you will.

Flaming and trolling is never accepted in these forums, as the existing general rules make very clear. Due to the sensitive nature of the discussions which have their place here, there will be a very low tolerance for flaming or trolling of any kind. Rather than just giving strikes (which we will still surely give), we will ban users from this specific forum for misbehaviour.

The definition of flaming is extended beyond simple insults of other members to include racism and general intolerance to any religion or minority groups. You have the right to be xenophobic, homophobic, or sexist -- not the right to spread propaganda of that nature. There may be a fine line between an expression of beliefs and an expression of hatred or prejudice; don't cross it. If in doubt about creating a topic or even whether you should say something in your post, feel free to consult a moderator first.

Remember that although religious discussion is permitted, there are other things to talk about. If there are a few other religiously oriented threads, perhaps yours can wait. Talk instead about the importance of the recession on Mulroney's government or about the quality of your drinking water

Update (21/01/07): In the interest of diverse and more fulfilling discussions, there will now be instituted a limit on the number of active threads allowed to discuss the Judeo-Christian God.

There can be no more than one thread at a time with the specific purpose of discussing the existence of said God, and there can be no more than one thread at a time discussing the nature of said God.

This rule extends to topics discussing the validity of christianity as a religion and the validity of the Bible.

You are welcome -- indeed, encouraged -- to make additional threads discussing other religious traditions, and threads on entirely different topics.

Just as a heads-up, it has been decided that ban periods from Serious Discussion will be three months in length - longer, and possibly permanent for repeat offences.

A grievious oversight on my part, information regarding the quality of writing -- especially when creating a new topic -- was omitted from the original post here.

In order to encourage better discussion and to avoid very ambiguous postings, we must enforce an even higher standard upon your usage of english and in your overall writing in this forum than in the rest of Zelda Universe.

If you open a topic without effectively presenting information or an argument, it will likely be locked on sight.

Post something with any of these issues: ALL CAPS, a complete lack of capitalization, a lack of punctuation, terribly incorrect punctuation, many spelling errors, or any other issues in your writing that hinder communication, and the post may well be deleted. Do so repeatedly and you will lose your privilege of accessing Serious Discussion.

This doesn't mean zero tolerance for errors; I would bet that at least one of you can spot an error in this very post. I'll even let major repeated errors of syntax slide: I worry that rule number 5 will never catch on. Colloquialisms in moderation are allowed as well, else I would be gone by now.

In the end -- congratulations for surviving my ramblings so far -- remember to put effort into your posts here and you should be fine.

Remember always: A single exclamation mark will do! Does it work the same way for question marks? I think so!

Although Trico has done a more then admirable job in summing up the requirements for I:SB, I'd like to make one point clearer: Post Content should be better then what you see (on average) in the GCC or Zelda boards. I'm clarifying this because a number of recent posts have been rather spammy, and I want to make sure that everyone knows what's expected of them in this forum.

Specifically, this means that:
1. Your posts should almost always be more then one line, unless you can meet requirement 2 in that short a space.
2. Your posts should further the discussion. This means that posting "Yeah, I agree with PosterXYZ" or "Haha that's funny!" is not allowed.
3. Your posts should not cover something that the thread has discussed and moved on from, unless you have something new to add to that part of the discussion or the thread has drifted back that way by itself.

If your post doesn't meet those requirements it will be deleted.

Yet another new rule:

Any thread or post stating that one group is inherently better then any other group, and doing so in a derogatory fashion, will be locked (posts will be deleted) and the person who made the tread/post will be given an infraction. Consider this your one and only warning.