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The State of the Forum Address Good evening 343i.org. This is your president typing. I come before you today to address the state of the unio... forum. On the whole, I'd say we are doing great. We have tons of new members, a site format that is awesome, and a bunch of features that the other Halo forums could only dream of having. We have some of the finest members that we've had in a while, some of the nicest moderators in the history of forum mods, and have completely obliterated the spambots, with the exception of one or two here and there. The environment of the forum is one of fun, rather than one of frustration like previous Halo related forums. A lot of our members came here not realizing that this was a community forum, but stayed because of how friendly the people here are. I have to say, we are doing pretty good for ourselves. Before I go on to how we can improve ourselves this upcoming term, and my part in it, let's have a little review of the goings on in the history of the forum. At first, there was darkness. No, really, the site format used to be really dark. It was black and green, like the original X-Box. Then there was light. The newer format was a white one. Similar to that of the mobile site. With this new format, though, came war. War like we had never experienced before. This was known as the "Pre-Captcha War". Spectral Jester still has flashbacks of this terrible war. Seemingly endless waves of spambots and trolls attacked our forum. We as members could do little to help except call-outs as they appeared and tried to get us to buy phallic growth pills and pirated goods and infect us with spyware. This was a time of great stress on our moderating team, and important posts were quickly buried by bots spamming their illicit goods. Even the shoutbox wasn't safe, as trolls were ban-evading and harassing our members. We lost a lot of good people to this. The came the golden age of "Big Blue", which is the format we use now. With Big Blue came a captcha, which allowed the moderators a bit of respite against the spambots and allowed them to focus on new and creative bans for the trolls. This effectively ended the "Pre-Captcha War" and brought peace to the forum once again. We are now living in a Golden Age my fellow members. Together, we must make sure that we make this Golden Age last as long as possible. We must strive together as a community to make sure that we welcome new members and help them become great alongside us. We must be sure to learn and abide by the rules of the forum and to help others to learn and abide by them as well. No more double posting. No more team spamming. No more trolling. No more should we see the same post rehashed by others and posted again just to increase one's post count. This is what we must do to make sure that our forum becomes the best forum in the history of the internet. We must learn that people make mistakes, and forgive them of these mistakes. We must learn not to get angry at the slight things. We must learn that when a troll appears, the only way to defeat them is to point them out to the moderators and ignore their jabs and jibes. We must learn that it is not the quantity of posts that matter, but the quality. We must learn that if a forum member breaks the rules, then that forum member is threatening the very thing that makes this forum great. We must learn these things, and help others to learn these things. We cannot allow ourselves to be torn apart by petty things. We cannot allow ourselves to be taken in by oneupsmanship. Together we can accomplish these things. Together, we can stand united against the horrors of the internet and keep them from crawling their way into our forum. You should not ask, "What can my fellow members do for me?" Instead you should ask, "What can I do for my fellow members?" The following are definitions of the terms used in this post. Double Posting: Double posting is posting two times or more in a short time. The excuse for this is usually that a person had an additional thought they wanted to add. This can be accomplished without double posting by editing your previous post. The edit button is to the left of the quote button. Team Spamming: Team spamming is posting after another person, having them reply, then posting after them again over and over. It is not considered spamming, however, if it is a debate. This is usually done in the "For fun" threads, where there are no debates. Trolling: Trolling is when one person attempts to get a rise out of another person. This person will say or do anything to make people angry, mainly for attention. The ONLY way to defeat a troll is to ignore them and report them to a moderator so that they may be banned quickly and efficiently. Engaging a troll could result in a ban for yourself as well. Trolls are there to make you mad. When you get mad and try to make them mad, they laugh at you, resulting in you getting madder. Don't be a bad fish. Don't take the bait. Rehashed Post: A rehashed post is posting the same thing another person already posted, but in your own words. This is a relatively common occurrence in new threads, however past that initial chaos of people trying to get their points across, it's inexcusable. If you have nothing to contribute, do not post. If you agree with a post, instead of copy pasting that post and editing some of the words in it, quote them and list why you agree with them. Oneupsmanship: This is an age old practice. Two competitive people go out of their way to compete in everything that it's possible to compete in to prove their superiority to one another. What this USUALLY results in is an endless argument and a bunch of spam. If you are going to be competitive against another forum member, do so in a video game. Spambot: A Spambot is a person or program that spams links to try to get people to buy things. Moderator: A moderator is a member who is a part of the "Moderating Team". These members have the power to ban, mute, and change any part of a person's profile. The list of moderators can be found at the bottom of the community index, just above the list of members who have visited the site in the last 24 hours. It is to the right of "Today's Top 20 Posters". Format: Format, as used in this instance, is the general layout and color of a website.