14. The Forum Help. This is a free forum, for (most of) the users, meaning that you don't have to even log on to post, it might be more respectable to use your own username, but no one really cares about that, much.
Except The Imp. Not one member of these forums is a "professional", meaning that we don't do this for money... but for the satisfaction of creating something, or helping someone and so ourselves. So if you think you can help, go a head and post, we need you... and most of the help will be paid back by other members replying to your questions, it's not a 'money back' guarantee, but it's something. And then there's also a good chance that you were actually wrong and can learn something from that.
Just like The Imp never does.The, not being professional, doesn't mean that none of them are any good at what they do at their free time, it actually means that the people are interested in most if not all of the problems you run into and they probably have already ran to most of them, so more they post, more they can be subject to good influences, even if they take the worst sides of them(they'll eventually have to learn a few good trades).
This also makes the forum it's own little class room that everyone is invited to, and the invite says "try to help", and even if you fail someone else might try and so succeed and you can learn form it at the same time, and then pass the info along. The Imp has done this a lot, as a matter of fact this whole FAQs about that.
The SHSforums users use English to usually communicate in the forums, but we also have various backgrounds and so have multiple languages under our grasp, so if you wish to use other languages, of course you are allowed, it might be best if you could first post in English that the topic is non-English, and then say what you have to say, so we don't look it as Spam and it gets thrown away. And our English skill is probably that bad that if you try, you'll get help even if you don't make sense for a normal English user, even if he is clever.
What comes to the forums, they are sectioned just like the download section, so it follows that you should ask your questions, and make comments under the mod's own forums. And thus:
14.1. The unforgivable mistakes.They can be started with;
Forum: any
SHS forum.
Post: "I downloaded the
BGT-
WeiDU mod from
SHS using the BWS, and now I wish to ask if you could come and wash my car?"
Why: We don't do car washes.
-addendum, well the
Quayle's Circus could be the place to give your sanity a small rest and relief.
Especially the one thread where you can post 2500 times and no one knows how you got the +2000 post to your account. Another:
Forum:
Mega Mod Help. Subject: BiG World Project (
BWP)
v7.0 Post:
"Hey... Love the mods so far..." Why: The latest update to the thread is almost older than the 'made date' of the vacuum contained & expired food you can see yourself throwing up, from it's surface. Moral of the story: Check the latest
BWP thread.
This will be a bitch to update.Yet another is to make a post like these:
Forum:
Baldur's Gate I and II / IE General Help / Big Picture Subject:
Big World Project transition from BG1 to BG2: Which characters/items/valuables get transfered?OR:
Post:
"I have started a BWP game ..."Why: The subject says itself that the forum is wrong... it should be at the
BGT-
WeiDU or the Mega Mod Help forums.
The forums generally responsible of maintaining one of the big mods:
Baldur's Gate Trilogy(-WeiDU).
BiG World Project & BiG World Setup, the
BWS beta.
Check the Bodies.
The Darkest Day.
Region of Terror.
Shadows Over Soubar.
Notice how I left the BP unlinked, it's because people tend to post on it's forums without a good cause.Why this is relevant is because most if not all of the BiG World Project maintainers are not native English speakers, and thus they don't all visit every area the SHSForums.net contains, which could cause them to miss your entire topic, and the proper help might need to be lead to the thread, with gets complicated fast, and even worse is the situation where the 'default' solution to a problem is in a thread, but that thread is million miles from where it is supposed to be in, and so not even the forum search can find it.
When asking a "Yes" or "No" -question, learn NOT to use the word "or" in it !
14.2. The line in the sand during the hurricane... I saw it! Aka my forum policy.... each of these can be forgotten, and almost surely will be
automatically, so there's no need to be sorry, but they won't be forgiven
because all your n00bines belongs to us. And if you make any, you'll almost surely begin to receive more and more hostile replies, that is if you should continue, so don't. Even if a staff-member of the forum personally approves your approach, as they don't know everything, and you might wish to re-think a bit (a day or 5). As a game created using the BWS is a totally different beast than vanilla
BG2, and so different approaches are required.
Such as: Your own topic, your exact computers and Operation System specifics (including the byte count Service Pack and version tag), posting of the
WeiDU.log's content in:
[spoiler]text[/spoiler]
-tags and --change-log'ging, LStest:ing and reading a bit and then a lot, like all the info in this thread that tell about the two.
14.3. The forum search...Should be online again, but just in case the old info is ever needed again:
As the shsforum's search function went off-line at the start of the year 2010 in the forums update, after 5 months, we started to suggest that you should use Google or something else, Google can do this easily, just go
here and replace the "
BWP" with your search parameter,
and remember, Google is evil, as it drools.
Or you could use
this plug-in, but don't ask how to use it, as I haven't ever used it.
14.4 The spirit of the Infinity Engine moding community.Well, it's dead, it was killed a long time ago with an Email directed to a person who then send it to another, of which the snails ate the hard copy off and thus a lot of porn was produced...
That's to say that there are a few personal feds between the
IE communities, we shouldn't try to fix them, but leave them in the past while at the same time, we should try to find the best solutions for problems we face/find and then try to ask the original mod-maker to correct the 'mistake' if s/he is still around. If not, we try to make notes of the fixes to the BiG World Fixpack's readme, as the Fixpack is usually the place the fixes end up being in.
Now what comes to the forum help, as said you can and actually should try to help people, as you can learn from those mishaps and success stories.
But try not to be an asshole while doing so, there's already one and he is enough, yes, I am taking about one Jarno Mikkola that's also commonly referred as The Imp, he never invents anything new, he just silently copies, näh he steals... to help
other peopleitself, as if he had created something new and creative. Here's an advice when encountering him; Weird as he is, he doesn't forgive, he forgets. Try to abuse that.
And so it goes without saying, you are welcomed to the SHSforums, your apologizes are unwelcomed, but accepted and your help is appreciated ... as I don't have the habit of saying those anymore.
Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 10 November 2012 - 08:05 AM.