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Lead Moderator
LCS
Underboss
1928 Posts
    
 | | 02/06/2007 2:24 AM |
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Guidelines for User Avatars and Signatures
Avatars and signatures are an important part of the Maxminis forums, since they allow each user to personalize the posts they make and create a sense of identity here. At the same time, we need to ensure that avatars and signatures don't take the focus away from the discussion, which is supposed to be the primary content of these forums.
Avatars and signatures need to follow the basic rules for acceptable content that apply to posts in the forums and to chat.
We want these forums to be welcoming to anyone who might visit, so please avoid using images or text that others might find offensive, including things that might not be acceptable at work or be acceptable for a minor to view. Profanity is not acceptable, and neither is any slang or slur that would offend or exclude any group of people from being part of our community.
Avatars may be up to 20k in file size (smaller is better), and up to 100 by 100 pixels in dimension. Using an animated image for your avatar is acceptable, but you may be asked to change your avatar if it proves to be too disruptive (animated or not).
Signatures should be kept to a reasonable length, and should be designed to keep the disruption between posts to a minimum.
Images are not allowed in signatures, and in general signatures should be relatively simple and not contain any html other than links and adjustments to font size, color, and style. Your signature shouldn't take up more vertical space than 100 pixels (the same size as most user avatars) and shouldn't require an excessive amount of horizontal space to avoid line-wrap. The box below shows the maximum amount of space your signature should take:
Keep the size of the font in your signature to equal to or smaller than the standard font size. You can decrease the size of the text in your signature using the html font tag.
<font size=1>size 1</font> = size 1
<font size=2>size 2</font> = size 2
If you want more absolute control (to make the text smaller than size=1, for example) you can also use the style attribute to ask for a particular point size (like you would in a word processor).
<font style="font-size: 8pt">text at 8 point</font> = text at 8 point
<font style="font-size: 10pt">text at 10 point</font> = text at 10 point
<font style="font-size: 7pt">text at 7 point</font> = text at 7 point
Note that the examples above may correspond on your browser (size 1 being 8 pt, size 2 being 10 pt, etc), but they may also be different depending on what browser is being used and how that user has the preferences set.
Please don't try to include a complete list of your successful trades in your signature unless you only have a few. Many users like to include their total number of successful trades in their signature, along with a link to a separate reference thread where they keep the complete list.
Your avatar or signature may not contain paid advertising. Banner ads are not acceptable avatars, and text ads or "affiliate links" for which you receive any type of financial compensation or credit in return for clicks or purchases are not allowed.
You may post links to your own store, online merchants you recommend, or your favorite sites -- this prohibition isn't intended to prevent you from providing information of benefit to the community, only to prevent abuse of the site for paid referrals, affiliate links, and the like.
There are some online games which provide in-game benefits to players based on the number of people who click on a link, using a process similar to the affiliate links used by advertisers. Links for those games will be allowed in signatures as long as no financial compensation or prizes are involved. This "exemption" might go away if we have problems with users posting these game links in inappropriate places or sending them to other users unsolicited.
If you have any questions about whether or not a particular avatar or the content of your signature would be acceptable, feel free to contact me by email and ask.
If it becomes necessary, your avatar or signature may be disabled until the problem has been corrected.
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