Thread moved to Announcements and pruned.
To celebrate, some FAQs:
- Why can't I edit my avatar/signature/post Visitor Messages/&c.?
As an anti-spam measure, some account features are disabled until you've made ten posts. When you reach that number, all will be well.
- Is there a thread for me to introduce myself?
Yes! No-one actually cares about it, though.
- What do all the pretty colours in your usernames mean?
Blue usernames are for regular users. This is probably you.
Orange usernames are for tempbanned users. They'll be back, but they've accumulated enough black marks on their record to warrant a time out. Try not to get this colour.
Red usernames are for permabanned users. Really try not to get this colour.
Grey usernames are for users who have requested to be banned on their own initiative. We require them to give us an exact timetable (and preferably a reason), but there's no official mark against them and they'll come back according to their schedule.
Green usernames (which may have a glow, depending on your browser) are for mods. We do the day-to-day forum work, patrolling threads to clean up spambots, enforce the rules, and generally keep things running as smoothly as we can.
Cyan usernames (ditto the glow) are for administrators. They are the other half of the staff, whose vote has primacy whenever we're deciding something about the forum. They are more powerful and have more tools at their disposal than the mods.
White usernames are something you'll see very rarely. These are for users who got their account deleted entire for some reason. We don't really do this any more, so it's not something you should come across.
- Are there any limits on signature size?
- What's up with the Type-Moon Wiki?
It sucks. Please don't use it: you'll only end up with tiny nuggets of possibly-good information amidst the fanon trash and people will moan at you for it. Instead,
the OP of the Questions thread has a number of superior reference resources for you. If you can't find your answer there, make a post in the Questions thread to consult the various hoarders of knowledge on this forum.
- I'd like to ask a few quick questions about TM ...
Cool! Make sure you've at least done a quick Ctrl + F through the resources I mentioned above, and then make a post in
the Questions thread. We generally prefer megathreads on BL, rather than making new topics for each new user's queries. If you make your own thread, the mods are probably just going to move it into the main Questions thread anyway.
- How do you do the funny - - - Updated - - - thing?
Make two posts in the same topic within ten minutes of each other. If no-one else posted in between, the forum will automatically merge them for you and update the timestamp to the last post. People like to do this because the edit button is occasionally finicky on bad connections or certain browsers, and because it looks less ugly than the message that the edit button leaves behind. Please don't abuse this. Also please don't complain about the fact that someone posted and so you couldn't merge posts: it's very old hat by this stage, and you might tempt a moderator to warn you for spamposting.
- What's BL's expected etiquette level?
Fairly basic netiquette, really. Most of what you'd expect on any forum. If you're not sure of basic netiquette, do a quick Google Search, ask the moderators about something particular which concerns you, or just lurk for a while to see what the general standard of behaviour is.
A few things which might differ from your expectations: we're an adult board, so swearing (if not to ludicrous excess) is expected and fine; similarly, properly tagged porn is allowed. We are not 4chan, and calling people faggots or similar is likely to upset mods. Racism, sexism, and homophobia will not be tolerated.
- What's the policy on spoilers?
With one exception, BL has a simple and overarching rule: if it isn't
comprehensively translated into English yet (officially or unofficially), use spoiler tags. This means that if something's only been summarised - or had a few sentences translated - it's still verboten for open discussion. But as, for example, each English Fate/Apocrypha chapter is released, you can start talking about it happily. (For Fate/EXTRA CCC, this means you should use spoiler tags for everything not covered by the English Let's Play and a few scenes filled in by the translation forum: notably, the CCC route's unique events are therefore still under embargo).
The exception is Fate/Grand Order, which has its own spoiler policy,
as detailed here.
For
non-Type Moon works, we have no particular policy beyond requiring you to have some consideration for other members of the forum: we will frown upon spoiling the end of a long book/game/whatever the day of its release, for example.
Occasionally, we also manually designate certain threads as either spoiler zones or spoiler-free zones, in the title or OP. Translation threads often end up being spoiler zones where information from throughout the work is likely to be given away without tags; conversely, in some threads we place an embargo where spoilers would otherwise be allowed (Prisma Ilya's anime thread is meant to remain free from manga spoilers, for example). We will make these exceptions clear, so just do your due diligence and spend ten seconds looking at the thread title and OP before you post, and you should be fine.
As for the tags you should be using to censor your spoilers, we would prefer you used the [collapse2] tag, which can efficiently signpost what you're spoiling, is not overridden by browser or forum settings (black text is visible on alternate backgrounds; Chrome doesn't like transparent text), and hides what you're saying from the Activity Stream. For spoilers containing images, surround your [img] tags with " marks to ensure they work properly.
- Is there a post size limit?
Yes, 100,000 characters. If you really need to post more than that at once, don't try to post twice in a row, because the merge will prevent you doing so. Instead, contact a member of staff and we'll help you out.
- Do you care about thread necromancy?
Not in any kind of hard-and-fast way. As long as you're posting something relevant, feel free to dig up old threads instead of pointlessly making a new one on the same subject. The only exception is story threads in the Fanfiction forum. After about a month without activity, we ask you to address your feedback or commentary directly to the author instead of posting in the thread, because people get very tetchy when they think a story has been updated and it hasn't.