[flamingo]

Another wave of users have joined the forums, and a few of us wanted to reinstate this:

1. EMERGENCY- "An emergency is a situation which poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or environment. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the situation." *Emergency* is generally used in a thread that needs IMMEDIATE help. Something that could possibly kill your fish, wipe your tank out.... NOT for something that could be answered in any time, with no general purpose. Posting without a cause generally leads the threads with a REAL problem underlooked.

2. Sentences- With the amount of threads posted not only weekly, but daily, adding in the extra punctuation or at least whole sentences, provides a wider spectrum of users actually reading your thread. If you have the ability to type an actual sentence, why not use it to your advantage? To be truthful, not that many people actually understand half of what's posted.

3. A response. A response is generally to answer a question, or at least provide general info or reassurance to that thread, on topic. This isn't always the case, but repeated off topic or pointless posts get old fast. "I agree" or "That's true" or "lol" is not a response. Did you really need to post that?

4. A question. A question is asked to obtain information. If you already knew the answer, why ask it? Making a thread asking something, while having multiple users on the other end taking time to read the 2 pages, and taking half an hour responding, proves tiresome when the user basically tells them "no" or completely ignores them.

5. Search- a wonderful add-on to any forum, that's rarely ever used. And in most cases, v-bulletin also provides related topics underneath a thread, with the answer already provided. Using this beforehand might prove useful.

6. Photos- A simple solution, use any number of photo hosting sites. The most popular being photobucket, tinypic, flickr, etc. Click the yellow image with a *mountain* on the second line of the post editor- and paste the link in. Or, use the [IMG/IMG] link provided through your hosting site. If making a permanent thread, attach the picture rather than hosting it, for fear of future loss. Otherwise, whenever possible, host through another sites space. If your thread contains an excess amount of pictures, post "load warning" in the title, be kind to users on dial-up. RESIZE PICTURES BEFORE USE.

7. Stickied Threads- They are NOT a general place for questions. If one needs a question answered, and sees that it wouldn't pertain or generally add onto that thread, make a new one.

8. Making a thread- Think for three seconds, look at the actual forum, and choose what topic your question would best be suited under, and click "create new thread." Post a pertaining title that sums up your entire page. Posting "help my fish" rather than "Help, my gourami has ich" will likely deter a larger amount of users from reading it.

WHEN POSTING AN EMERGENCY OR GENERAL QUESTION:
Post as much as is pertainable. Enough to provide the basics in a quick form, and give the users an actual amount of info to tell you *something*.

Ph, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate levels, stocking, amount of water changes performed, feeding, filtration, cycle, and general history should be provided. If not typed out, your only response will be an entirely new question, that gets the topic at hand nowhere.

Last but not least...
CHAT.-
Chat is one of the most widely used features on this site, and is generally filled with a few people, or even at times, twenty. Coming into chat before making a topic, might save you some trouble. But at the same time, be kind, and remember the users are actual people.

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And I hope that helps by any means. If not, I suggest searching "posting and you" in your favorite search engine.