><((((º>General Rules and Posting Guidelines

[MotherNature]

Effective 11-12-07 - please be sure to see siggy and avatar rules.

At All Times:

• Keep all commentary civil, and be courteous at all times. Constructive criticism is welcome, but insults directed towards other users or the site admins will not be tolerated. Coarse/insulting language will not be tolerated. Any post in any of the forums that have a racial tone or undertone of any sort will be immediately removed.
• No commercial advertising is permitted. Any posts deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam can and will be removed. NO SPAM - NO ADVERTISING This is not the place to settle a commercial disagreement or to be a 'wall of shame'. Any posts deemed to be of this nature will be removed. Settle your disputes in private please.
• If you feel a post violates any of these rules, please send a PM to the moderators of the board where the post resides.
• Failure to abide by these rules may result in an editing, negative moderation or deletion of your post. We reserve the right to ban abusers from the site without notice. We reserve the right to change these rules at any time.

Ultimate Bass Forum Guidelines and Post Rules:

• Only one account per person is permitted.
• Keep all posts on-topic.
• If you are providing an answer to a post, put your answer within your post and DO NOT redirect them to another site for answers.
• Do not discuss illegal activities. Our server is hosted in the USA and so is subject to US law. Please do not expose us to any unnecessary legal liability.
• Post your comment/question to the most appropriate place. Any posts deemed to be in the wrong forum will be moved. Do not cross-post the same question to multiple places.
• Use your own words. If you wish to use the words of somebody else, quote them, citing the source. Plagiarism is unethical and is illegal.
• Choose an appropriate subject line. Try to summarize the problem briefly in the subject, and elaborate in the message itself. Repeat the subject in the body if it will make things clearer. Do not use all caps and do not add false information just to get attention (e.g. ;read this or you will be arrested;). An example of a bad subject would be ;HELP ME;. A good subject might be, ;How do you use a spinnerbait;.
• Include as much information as you can when seeking help. This may include water temperature, location of lake or river, time of year and weather conditions. Nobody will be able to help you if you don't give sufficient detail.
• Thank those who help you. Acknowledgment of a helpful suggestion not only placates those who helped you, it may also help others with a similar problem. All those who have been helped on this forum are invited to help other users by responding to their questions when they know the answer.
• Do not link to any site that contains adult content, "woops"ually oriented material, or might otherwise be considered offensive. Any post containing an inappropriate link will be deleted and the poster will receive a warning.

Signatures:

• Must be setup in your Profile (link up top, next to logout) , and not manually added to your messages.
• May NOT contain any sponsor images.
• May not contain any pricing, sales, product etc. details.
• May contain a maximum of two smilies. Or one animated smiley.
• May include four clickable links. URL's or mailto:
  Only exact URL's allowed ie not < a href="www.domain.com">LOOK HERE; an acceptable example would be < a href="http://www.ultimatebass.com/index.php>Ultimate Bass
• May include only the default colors. Hyperlink color is set by the forum and is not counted as a color.
• Maximum font size cannot be larger than normal unless you are a forum sponsor and that will be set up for you by our staff.
• Must be kept to a maximum of three lines to include any graphic.(at 1024 resolution).
• All graphics will be held to a maximum size limit of fifty (50) pixels in height and 350 pixels wide.
• All graphics must be no more than 15Kb in file size.
• Signatures may not be animated.
• Please center all siggys so that the look of the site is uniform.
• May not contain links to other threads or posts.
• Your signature is your signature. It is not for sale or rent.
• Any signature that is offensive or insulting to us, our members, or our staff, are prohibited.
• We reserve the right to ask you to change and/or remove your signature at any time, for any reason, if you are in violation of these rules your siggy may be removed without notice.
• Must be stored on Ultimate Bass Server

Please send all Siggys to with username to be uploaded to Ultimate Bass server.

Avatars:

• All avatars must be no larger than 20Kb
• Please resize all avatars to no more than 85 pixels wide before uploading.

We hope these new rules will help to keep our forums advertisement free, and a 'safe' place to hang out. We appreciate your assistance in complying with the new rules.

Anyone found to be violating the rules will be warned, but be assured we (the moderators) will not hesitate to ban any non-compliant users. Signatures found violating the rules, will just be deleted until you can come up with one that is compliant. Any questions, please ask in the correct thread in this forum.



Getting good customer support:

• Remember there's a human on the other end. Treat them with dignity and respect. Their sole purpose is to help you so be kind and thank them in advance for their assistance. The nicer you are the nicer they'll be in response — this is simple human nature.
• Provide useful, descriptive, relevant information. This can be a tough one since people don't always know what's relevant, but think it through before you send your support request. If you are having trouble logging in, don't just say "I can't login. Any ideas?" Instead say "Whenever I try to login, the login screen just reloads without an error message. I know my username and password is correct. Any ideas? Thanks." That extra bit of information will help considerably and will reduce the number of back-and-forth posts/emails between you and the support person.
• Don't write overly detailed, wordy support requests. The longer your post/email the more of a burden it puts on the customer support person. They have to read the entire thing (I've seen simple support requests balloon into two printed pages), sift through to find what's meaningful, and spend more time figuring out exactly what's wrong. Since they're trying to help you, you want to reduce their burden. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to help you. So, be clear, concise, and brief. More words often confuses instead of clarifies the issue. Save the wordiness for the thank you email once the problem has been solved.

Summed up: be polite; be prepared to wait; even if you're in a bad mood because something doesn't work, don't blame the software straight away, it can be a million other things; useful, descriptive and relevant information- nothing to add;
get to the point.

If you do not know what the problems origin is/could be, try to describe steps to reproduce it, including your setup (browser/OS/user knowledge level...)



Restrictions & Warnings:

• Editing of posts - Team Members are instructed to edit and correct any posts containing violations of our rules!
• Deleting of posts - If you wonder why your post was deleted, study the above rules!
• Staff members here at Ultimate Bass may also take any immediate action including banning members if an extreme situation calls for it.

*Finally remember this, these rules and guidelines have been posted for those members/guests who might like to push the envelope. We want you to enjoy the site and feel comfortable here. We are publishing this mostly to protect yours and our lower posterior end.

These Guidelines will be updated as needed.