Beach Life Forum Rules & Information
Welcome to the Beach Life forum! In this forum, you can discuss news, life, entertainment, the Internet, and anything else you want! To help keep your discussions healthy and active, we have a few rules that you must follow in this forum:
- Threads that do not achieve 1 post (the OP and a reply from other users) within 3 days (72 hours) of being created will be removed from the Beach Life forum.
- When participating in a Group Topic, please respect any rules or guidelines outlined in that topic.
- Threads that are created to cause trouble (flame wars, unproductive/cyclical discussion, etc) will be locked/deleted at the moderator’s discretion.
- Do not create any topics against the forum rules. You can read them here.
Thread Topic & Group Tips: Keys to Success
- Label your topic clearly. Imagine you are seeing it for the first time when you name it. Would you click on it?
- Please keep an open mind when participating in discussions. Try to keep your cool and use reasoning to get your point across.
- When you create threads you should aim to spark a discussion that could contain many different things, facts, and/or opinions rather than simply state the same things over and over.
- If you disapprove of a topic, simply don’t post in it or contact a moderator to discuss it if you feel the need.
- Feel free to use media/imagery or thought provoking ideas in your OP. These can help discussions along.
Group Topics
What are Groups?
Group Topics allow members to get together to discuss long-term topics regarding one central idea in a sanctioned format. A group is different to a regular thread due to how it’s organized and managed; the original poster (OP) may set rules for the group topic and the participants of the thread may be on a whitelist in the original post to help forum members with similar interests find other similar members (though a whitelist isn’t absolutely necessary).
These topics are different to the usual forum thread or discussion topic in the sense that their rules and ideas are backed up by PokéBeach’s moderators and that they have 10 or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Initially groups may have less people, but they have 2 weeks in order to garner enough attention to remain open (10+ people have posted in topic). If a group fails to recruit enough members, the topic will be locked.
Creating a Group
If you’d like to make a Group topic, you should have a clear idea of what your group is going to be about. You should then contact one of the Beach Life staff to discuss your Group topic idea, and once your idea is approved you are free to post your topic. Once the topic is posted, the staff will assign your thread the Group prefix tag to make it official.
Only officially-supported Groups in the Beach Life forum will wear the Group prefix, so if you’d like to create a group of your own or feel a topic should become a group, feel free to contact a Beach Life staff member and make things happen!
Group Leaders
Group leaders (the OP) lead discussion and/or facilitate it, doing things such as prompting discussions with new updates (eg. if a new Marvel movie is announced, a new line of discussion could be started based on that new information). They also lay down the topic rules and organize things such as activities/tournaments, or Skype chats for their group. These rules are approved and supported by a mod in the Beach Life section.
Maintaining a Group
Please add people as they request to be added if you are maintaining a group member list*. You can opt out of this if you like, but most groups will maintain a list of members in the OP**. After the initial joining wave of the thread, mods may do some cleaning up of short "add me" with no consequences such as warnings attached. A suggestion to keep these "add me" posts minimal is to have everyone PM you to be added to the list, then allow them to post freely in the thread/join in group activities as you have them.
Additionally, please let any mods know if you feel the need to ban/deny any member from posting in your group. Some reasons may be that they are violating thread rules, they were not added to the group list and/or caused a disruption, or they are breaking PokéBeach rules. We prefer this to be done by using the report button but you may also send a direct PM to the Beach Life staff and/or Shining Raikou about any issues.
* Do this always unless you have extreme objection to them joining the group and provide reasoning to a moderator of the Beach Life forum.
** If you do not maintain a member list, you are saying you do not mind who posts in the thread, so people will be allowed to post as they please.
Topics that can be a group
Group topics discuss long-term topics/ideas with the idea of helping like-minded people find others who share interests, as well as keep long-term discussions organized. For example:
- Popular Video Game Franchises (not Pokemon related)
- People working on a project or helping with something (ex: hobby/tech/video/media, etc, not art/writing/fanmade games as these go in Creative Works.)
- Groups of people organizing on a topic (ex: Culture, Religion, Location, etc)
- Music, movies, or popular type of media or franchise (not Pokemon related)
Topics that cannot be a group
Non-group topics discuss short term topics/ideas in spurts or a format resembling a debate. For example:
- News Headlines/Current events
- Political Ideas/debate
- Internet topics/news (YouTube closes, deviantArt's new rules, Reddit's CEO resigns, etc)
If you have any questions or would like to discuss or suggest changes to these rules, feel free to contact a member of the Beach Life staff, such as @Luispipe8 and @Juliacoolo
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