Part One: The Official NLO Forums Survival Guide

1. Spelling counts.
If you spell or build sentences that make you look like you're ten years old, no one will take you seriously. You'll forever be seen as an idiot, or worse, a 'moran'. Spellcheck your shit. Use proper capitalization. Punctuate your drivel.

2. Start a new thread on the Let's Talk About Me board.
It's a great way to introduce yourself to your new-found community. There's also a strict 'no flaming' rule in effect there that will prevent people from giving you a hard time. The only exception to this rule is when you choose to chuck shit first in your own thread -- then you're fair game.

3. No useless trolling.
Starting fights for no detectable reason? That's a banning.

4. Don't complain about moderation.
Someone deleted or edited your post? Got an infraction you don't agree with? Suck it up, Nancy. Tell a moderator or administrator in a PM, because if you bitch about it on the forums proper, you'll get slapped with another ban or extension of the original one.

5. Lurk moar.
Brand new to the forum? Take some time to read through a bunch of the threads and posts. Try to get a feel for the community before you jump in and start spouting off about shit no one cares about.

6. Try to make new threads interesting and/or unique.
Making a new thread about how much you love pie is going to get you into shit. Also, if you're going through the pains to create a new thread for everyone to view and participate in, do a cursory search to make sure your topic hasn't already been discussed.

7. If you have a question, USE THE SEARCH.
We've got three years of history on these forums, and a lot of posts have come and gone. If you have a question or topic that you think may possibly have been posed before, try using the Search function to see if it's been asked recently. If not, you may proceed. If it's something easily found on teh intarwebz, JFGI (Just Fucking Google It).

8. Don't multi-post.
When replying to more than one post in a thread, it is considered bad form to reply to each individually. Use the multi-quote function to group them all together. For the first, second, etc. posts in your reply, hit the 'Multi-Quote' button on the post. When you get to the final post you want to include in your reply, hit the 'Quote' button and you'll be taken to a reply page with all the quotes you wanted.

9. Don't discuss Reputation.
There is a reputation (short form 'rep') system in place that lets everyone rate the posts of their peers with a virtual thumbs up or down. It is good form to 'sign' your rep with your username. If you get rep you don't agree with - too fucking bad, stop being such a douchebag. If you make reference to rep or bitch about rep in a post, a moderator will be along shortly to give you an infraction. And probably some more neg rep.

10. Use the Edit Button.
Made a mistake? You can fix it. Hell, you can even delete your own post. Use 'edit' to add more information as well, rather than double-post (see 8 above).

11. Don't necropost.
If a topic has lain dormant for three months, it's probably dead. By chiming in with your "I agree!" or "LOLZ!", you've just resurrected something that died a while ago. If you do this, you risk the wrath of everyone here. The worst offender in recent memory posted to a thread that had last seen action in April, 2006 - in March, 2008. That thread was fully decomposed, people. If you're pulling something up that's more than three weeks old, have something constructive, useful, or interesting to add to the deceased; otherwise, you're likely to be attacked by forum zombies.

12. NO SPAM.
It's fine to mention projects or things you're associated with, but if you're just here to advertise your shit and not contribute otherwise, you gonna get raped. New forum members are now unable to create new threads (they will be moderated first) until you hit 5 posts, and all posts are run through a Akismet filter to help cut down on the junk. Likewise, posting in a SPAM thread is just as bad as being the original poster. You're giving attention to the offender, and bumping the SPAM thread. Don't do it.

13. Don't be a post-whore.
If all you do is run around and make one-word replies in every thread you see, you're a post-whore. Be prepared to be raped accordingly.

14. Not Suitable For Work (NSFW).
Some of us get through the day by visiting the NLO forums. Posting your favourite pornographic images may not be the best thing to do for our desk-bound worker demographic. If you must bring up something NSFW, **LINK** to it with a hyperlink and **LABEL IT NSFW**. And the next jackalope that says, "Not my problem, shouldn't you be working at work and not surfing the forums?" gets a size-12 steel-toed combat boot forcefully pushed up their ass.

15. Wear your cup.
Most unwanted attention on these forums is self-inflicted. The Twisted Garden can be a rough place some times - that's life. If you're easily offended or overly sensitive about some things - get over it.

16. "The Place With The Things" Rule.
Everytime someone posts about their favourite torrenting site or sites and mentions the word 'invite' or 'invitation', we shoot to the top of Google searches for that topic. Next thing we know, we're flooded with leeches looking for invites to these places. If you talk about these places, do it in a discreet manner that won't be picked up by search engine bots. A corollary to this rule - NO LINKING TO TORRENTS of copyrighted materials. This is actually a violation of the Terms of Service of the vBulletin license for these forums. We have been and will continue to delete posts and baninate offenders.

17. BE NORMAL.
The Golden Rule. Do this, and most of these other things happen automagically.

Guide adopted from this thread: http://www.nobodylikesonions.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9762.

Part Two: Reputation & Rep Power

100 Reputation Points = 1 Green Chicklet
When someone takes some kind of opinion on your post, they can give you rep for it. To do this, they simply click the little scale image next to the post number. They are then taken to another page, where they can either give you good or bad rep. They can also leave a comment along with the rep, which you can see in your User CP. If they do not leave their name in the comment, then you don't know who did it, but you can click the link to view which post was given rep. As you earn or lose rep, there are also changes in your status. For every 100 points of positive rep you have, you gain a little green chicklet underneath your rep power status. I, for instance, am nearing 100 already, meaning any day now, I should have two little green chicklets. When you drop below 0 rep, however, you get a red chicklet. Someone somewhere didn't like what you posted, and decided to walk all over you. This is common if you are Nick Starr or Fartin, or if you post random crap about the forum stating that someone sucks, everyone hates you, why can't we all just get along, etc.

The amount of positive reputation you gain from a user who 'reps' you is equal to the amount of 'Rep Power' he or she has (see below on 'Rep Power'). A negative reputation award subtracts one half of the giver's 'Rep Power' rather than the full amount.

Rep Power
Beyond the simple math of Reputation Points = green or red chicklets, users also get 'Rep Power'. Your total number of points received from others is only a portion of what goes into the calculation for Rep Power. Power also incorporates 1 pt per X number of forum posts, and 1 pt for X number of days since you joined the forums, for example.

You can learn more about vBulletin Reputation and the underlying system at the following links:
Reputation - http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/reputation
Rep: An Intro - http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/main/reputation_intro
Reputation Lvls - http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/reputation_levels
Rep Comments - http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/reputation_comments

Part Three: Read More (Messages on Forum Policy)

Posted by Patrick
05-04-2008: Reminder about Trolling and Bashing Others
12-14-2006: Posting Just To Post
12-14-2006: Posting In Spam Threads
11-17-2006: The Infraction System
08-16-2006: The Rep System Spelled Out (Current Formula May Differ)

Posted by Forum Regulars
11-10-2007: Original NLO Forums Survival Guide