Hello and welcome to GTAForums.com, home of the largest GrandTheftAuto community on the intraweb. Being a forum dedicated to gaming, obviously the main goal is to provide a laid back and fun atmosphere to chat about GTA - or any number of other topics to be found in the vast array of community forums. That said, however, there are a few rules and expectations to keep the place running in a smooth and (hopefully) user-friendly manner. Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with these basic rules:
• No pornography (linking to or directly posting any media containing nudity or sex)
• No warez/piracy (linking to, requesting or discussion of illegally obtaining copyrighted material)
• No advertising (a link in your sig is fine, but posting a topic about your site or PM'ing members with links to your site is not). Referral links of any nature also fall under this category.
• No flaming (Antagonistic, slanderous, racist, or sexist comments will not be tolerated)
• No 'ripping' (stealing other people's work and claiming it as your own; be it sig images or game mods)
• There is an edit button to stop double and triple posts, so please use it.
• Signatures must be of a reasonable size (
click here for guidelines and details)
• No impersonating forum staff, other members, or Rockstar employees. In other words, no making fake accounts with other people's names.
• Never open multiple accounts, unless you have a legit reason. Members found using multiple accounts to abuse the forums will be taken care of appropriately.
Remember, you are a guest on a free service. Our moderators and admins reserve the right to remove you from GTAForums at any time for any reason. You have no rights and may make no demands.
Breaking these simple rules might naturally result in locked or deleted topics and/or a message from a moderator asking you to cool it. Repeated violation of the rules and ignoring requests to stop may end with temporary suspensions of posting rights, or banning if need be. The whole point of the rules and the moderators isn't to provide strictness for its own sake, as the forum staff is just as interested as having fun here as anyone else. But with thousands of members - hundreds of which may be online at any given time - some degree of civility is needed to keep it enjoyable for all.
For the most part, just use some common sense while posting, and all is fine. Like any other forum on the intraweb, there are of course unspoken 'rules' of etiquette regarding spamming (off topic, short, or otherwise pointless posts), flaming, and whatnot. While such things are not generally enforced on a regular basis, administrative/moderatory action may be taken if such posts become problematic or habitual, thereby causing complaints from other members. It might also be worth mentioning here that doing anything which might be illegal in the real world is also frowned upon here. This could include anything from selling your services as a contract killer or selling black-market babies, to posting other people's private information against their will. Things of this nature are really too numerous to list, and again, fall into the realm of common sense.
If you're not familiar with how forum communities in general work, or are just unsure of the specifics of this one, please, by all means, lurk for a while and observe how things go. But basically, if you follow ye olde 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' concept, things should be just fine. Or, another way you could look at that one is that if something you're about to post would annoy you, don't post it.
Also take a look at the following thread for more insightful information:
New Member Guide To GTAForums
