Forum Policy Changes

[Shonumi]

We've done a lot of things behind the scenes to cut down on spammers recently. As a result, there are some rule changes. The first is that joining the Advanced User Group is now 50 or more posts instead of 100 or more posts. This means more people can post in the HD Texture Forum without a mod or admin's permission. We trust that people who've been around for 50+ posts know how to follow the template.

Secondly, there's a new per-day posting limit for users with less than 50 posts. Registered and Somewhat Advanced Users are restricted to 25 posts per-day. This restriction vanishes once 50 posts are made. The purpose of this is to prevent spambots from flooding the forums. The new rules are technically as follows:

Quote:Additionally, users with less than 50 posts are restricted to a maximum of 25 posts per-day to avoid spamming. There is no limit for users with 50 or more posts.

What's more, we have a new CAPTCHA system used during account registration to help curb spambots.

[Shonumi]

I forgot to mention some changes that went on behind the scenes last week as part of our efforts to reduce spambots. Some of you may have noticed that you cannot edit your posts; this was implemented to avoid spammers who come back and stealthily add links to some posts that otherwise seem legit. The changes have been in place, but since this was not mentioned anywhere, it seems to be causing some confusion. I apologize for failing to mention it here or in the Global Forum Rules. The Global Forum Rules have been updated as follows:

Quote:Additionally, to avoid spamming, users with less than 50 posts are restricted to a maximum of 25 posts per-day, and they may only edit posts made within the past 24 hours. These restrictions do not exist for users with 50 or more posts. Users with less than 10 posts have their signatures disabled.

[Shonumi]

This really isn't a policy change, but we're going to keep users updated anyway.

As some of you may have noticed, we have a little bit of a new layout. We're rearranging some forums that had accumulated over the years for better organization.

Development Discussion - This has been moved to the same subforum group as General, Support, Hardware, etc. It's important to note that the Development forum is not a place to ask for feature requests. It's there for people to discuss the technical side of Dolphin, such as programming. Most of this talk happens on IRC, however, so those interested in helping or changing Dolphin should hop onto #dolphin-dev on irc.freenode.net.

HD Texture Projects - This has been moved to Game Modifications.

Cheats, Hacks, & Game Patches - This used to be Code Patches, but it's now its own forum for various game modifications. The previous Code Patches forum was intended for patching Dolphin's code to fix issues. This was waaaay before Dolphin had moved to Git and Github, and waaaay before the buildbot and Pull Requests. Needless to say, those posts are not relevant any more, but they have been preserved in a new archived forum called Dolphin Patches.

It's important to note that the Cheats, Hacks, & Game Patches forum is not the place to request cheats or mods. Don't expect people to make things for you. Asking if a specific cheat/patch already exists is fine, as is asking for more information or help if you want to create your own stuff. But asking others to create something for you will get your thread closed. Read the posting guidelines for further clarification.

[JOHN30011887]

Thanks for this info

[MayImilae]

We've addressed the captcha problems, so you are probably no longer having issues because of us fixing it on our end.

And we won't just remove it just because someone asks. :/ Our spam has gone down considerably since we implemented the captcha system!

[Shonumi]

Isn't our CAPTCHA only for registering new accounts? If you already have an existing account, you shouldn't see it when logging into the Dolphin Forums. At least, I have never seen the CAPTCHA pop up when I log in (using the latest version of Firefox + an ancient version of Chrome on Android).

EDIT - I only ask because I want to make sure the forums aren't doing something weird like not showing the CAPTCHA to Forum Staff for whatever reason, or if checking the Remember Me box + browser cookies makes a difference. I'm pretty sure it doesn't, however.

[Shonumi]

Nope, I don't have any mail from that Facebook page. I don't have a Facebook account, so there's that.

[Shonumi]

Nope, nada.

I mean, if you ever need to reach Forum Staff, just PM one of us, or make a thread somewhere appropriate. Additionally, it's not like my email address is a secret if you ever need to directly contact me.

[Shonumi]

Send an email directly to my email address. That is to say, open up an email client and send something to shonumi@gmail.com. Like I said, my email address isn't a big secret, it's sitting on my GitHub profile, fwiw.

[Shonumi]

We've added a bit more guidance in the "How to start an HD Texture project" thread:

Quote:If you want to use textures from other artists, you must get their express permission before including them in your project. Contact the original creator directly for their approval, or review any applicable licenses. Texture packs that fail do so will not be permitted on the forums.

Ask before using someone else's textures, or check the license (e.g. if it's something under the Creative Commons) to make sure you can redistribute their work.