Cemetech has seen an amazing influx of new users in the last few weeks and the staff are grateful to have everyone with us but, we've seen some practices that can be easily remedied. Please read and understand the following. All of these will henceforth be referred to as the "Official Rules."

Searching

Please search for topics of interest. We have a Google Search bar located in the header of the site. You can also go to Google and search what you're looking for by amending "site:cemetech.net" to the end. It also works with other websites! Here are the tips and tricks to use with Google.



Searching may not find what you're looking for. If you need help with a problem try typing fixed, solved or another synonym and see if that helps. If not, check the dedicated topics we have stickied in each respective forum category and search the pages (actually using your browser to search each page for a word or two will be tons faster). I'm going to leave it to you guys to search and find the suggestions & bug report topics, but here are three bug reports topics to get you started:

BUG REPORTS

• SourceCoder
• Website
  
• jsTIfied

When posting about a bug to get help, please be as specific as possible! We can't do our job in fixing an issue unless we know everything about it. If it's a bug report for jsTIfied, the website, TokenIDE or something else we need information such as the precise version number of your browser, your OS and steps to reproduce it. These steps can include a link to the program that crashed jsTIfied or was parsed wrong in SourceCoder; if it's a jsTIfied issue we just need the OS of the ROM and the calculator as KermM (or another user) will likely have that OS on an existing calculator that they can use.

If searching can't find anything even after getting specific and stuff, use some logic to deduce where it could go. We have the forum separated into categories and into sub-categories (pictured). Our sub-categories are set up so that popular topics have their own location and not mixed in with other topics. If you look at the picture, you would post anything not related to Calculator Hardware or Electronics/Hardware Development to the Technology & Calculator Open Topic. If you are unsure, click the parent category (in this case Technology & Calculator Open Topic) and the sub-categories will be separated at the top with descriptions. Use these descriptions to appropriately search existing and make new topics.

When searching, if you need help with a TI-BASIC program, or saw a topic that helped you before, it's best to start under the "TI-BASIC" category. Always check the topics before making a new one, it's possible someone had the same issue you did. Search isn't perfect and may not show relevant topics first or find them at all. If it's not in the first page or two, feel free to make a new topic. Keep in mind when looking through our topics that Cemetech has been around for a long time. We have a great many posts spanning back nearly a decade. It is general netiquette to not post in topics that are a year old or older, and your post may be either deleted or split into a new topic.


Red/Top: Category; Green/Bottom: Sub-Category

You can also find other resources nested in the "Tools" page in the navigation up top. Links in here include information about calculators (and FAQs!) as well as a link to our Wiki for DoorsCS.

Now that you have been brought up to speed with this crash-course searching and finding resources, let's cover rules of engagement.

Rules of Engagement

You need to make an effort. The more you help yourself the more the staff and our user base will be inclined to help you; you get out when you put in. Asking for help because you claim to be lazy or because you are on mobile isn't a valid reason. If you need help urgently, we have a chat bar to the side (click Pop-Out SAX in the footer on mobile) and you can ask but we may not be able to help out for a while. You can also use SAX to bump your topic, if you haven't had any new posts for a few hours you can bump us to read it. Again, we may not respond immediately because we either don't have an answer, don't have the time or no one is active/online. This is the appropriate way to avoid double-posting.

When you post directly after yourself in a topic within 24 hours, it's considered double posting. There are times when 18 to 23 hours is acceptable but it's best to use the button in the top right portion of your post when you need to amend something. SAX will do its job and let the forum know that you updated your post. Double posts will typically be merged together by admins but repeat abusers may find that their consecutive posts are being deleted without being merged.

After a few posts you may discover that L-O-L is automatically changed to lol. Our reasoning for changing the alphabetic version to the hexadecimal version partly for the sake of being nerdy but also to discourage it's ambiguous use. L-O-L went from meaning extreme joy and amusement to a generic expression, similar to a smiley. L-O-L is not something you put after a serious question or use for the sake of it. You can read up on the reasoning here.

General Rules

Cemetech is a professional site where you can expect to get courteous and helpful feedback and discussions. So - of course - make posts like you'd want to receive them, with lots of information. If you're posting a bug or for help, include any information so the first 5 posts aren't getting more information from you. If you see a help topic, take the time to do a search for the topic starter. Summarize your findings and link to posts so they can advance their search. If you have direct knowledge, share it! The admins aren't the only ones who can help. All we do is provide our personal experience, do a search for you and link to any relevant pages. If that help topic is barren of useful info, ask questions to get as much info to their problem as possible. We do censor bad words on the forum and in the SAX widget. Do not attempt to evade the censor, you may be temp-banned and even permanently banned depending on your number of previous (and even unrelated) offenses.

When formatting posts, be formal and educated. Use proper grammar and spelling; most popular browsers these days have spell and grammar check. Don't post in caps either. We don't need to come off as yelling. There's really no situation where you need to use capital letters, if you need to emphasize something then use the BBC code to bold a few words. Don't use color for no reason and if you do, keep in mind the color your post will appear on as yellow and light gray aren't easy on the eyes. When you post this way you come off more professional and appear like an adult.



Regarding our methods of Instant Messaging on the site, this is subject to the same rules. Keep it professional. We have various bots in the channel that add functionality. Please do not abuse these bots. Doing so will result in getting kicked from the channel and if you're doing so through SAX, your SAX privileges will be revoked. SAX is a tool that connects you directly to our Internet Relay Chat room (IRC Channel) where we are in active and related discussions (most of the time.) If an on-topic discussion is happening (such as how to set OS flags in ASM), that discussion takes precedence over topics like Minecraft* and School. Do not nag admins or users to post in your topic. We see it, I promise. Whether we have a response or the time read/respond is not determined by the amount of times you ask us to reply to/view your topic. Our users and admins have a mix of work, school, social lives and extracurricular/volunteer activities - even all 4! - and sometimes sitting down to a movie and a beverage or taking a nap is what they'd rather do with their down time.

Of course, the Terms of Service you agreed to upon registration is still applicable.

I hope this advice has been helpful. We enjoy moderating Cemetech and, with your help, to maintain the "Quality-over-Quantity" mantra. If you have any questions about any of this please feel free to post under this topic. If you have private questions about some content on Cemetech please PM myself or another admin.

*For Minecraft, we have a channel you can join. Once on IRC join #Cemetech-MC, it features a live feed of the chat in our server as well!

Future amendments will be clearly dated (MM/DD/YY) to avoid retroactive enforcement of rules.

Brilliant job! Perhaps this page could be pulled up when a member first joins? That would solve a ton of problems right off the bat. I also learned that posting recognizes grammar issues, something I had never known before. Once again, great work!

I thought about that but we're going to modify the welcoming e-mail to include a link to this topic. I've also marked it as an announcement and there will be a news feature as well.



It's not a website thing, it's down to your browser to support it. Safaris' isn't amazingly precise or correct most the time but it helps in certain situations (double the's, and stuff) while the rest of it is down to education. Like, right now this paragraph as a green line under "it's" and "isn't" and I'm 100% sure those are both used correctly (it's down to your, it is down to your. I don't need a possessive it. Safaris' ins't amazingly, Safaris is not amazingly. Not sure what it's getting at there)

Update: Just to show how spotty it is, the grammar mistake in the above sentence isn't underlined. I wrote "this paragraph as a green line under" when it should be "this paragraph has a green line under"

Whoops, should have read a bit more into it.

EDIT: Had something here about the website looking funny... But now it looks great!

It's just a latency issue. Reload the page and you should see the correct summary by now.

I see this as a great idea to help educate newer users on Cemetech. Great job!

Thanks! It was comic's initiative based on a general feeling among the entire staff that some of the new users were collecting are unfamiliar with the accepted netiquette and manners in communities like Cemetech. We hope it's helpful to members new and old, so if there's anything you guys noticed that we left out or mistakes we made, please let us know.

tl;dr'ed the hardest. Next time get someone who can actually communicate write them.

Condensed version:

Searching

Search before your post (especially if you're new and don't really know the body of posts we already have):


If you can't find what you're looking for, there might be topics listed under subforums. Do a little browsing before you post.

Here are some commonly searched-for threads, just to make things easier:

BUG REPORTS

• SourceCoder
• Website
  
• jsTIfied

When posting about a bug to get help, please be as specific as possible! Tell us everything that might be of interest. If you just say "it doesn't work", we're not going to be able to help you.

If searching didn't find what you needed, use your brain to determine where things may be based on forum/sub-forum:

Red/Top: Category; Green/Bottom: Sub-Category

You can also find other resources nested in the "Tools" page in the navigation up top. Links in here include information about calculators (and FAQs!) as well as a link to our Wiki for DoorsCS.

Using your brain is, in general, a good way to do well at Cemetech. If you can't figure out where to post, ask in SAX.

Rules of Engagement

Don't be lazy, and don't be a nag. Full-bodied posts are better than one-sentence posts. If we haven't responded if a couple minutes, just have some patience. If it's been a really long time (like a day), feel free to bump the post again in case we missed it.

If it's not been a full day, and you have something new to add to the post, try the edit button!

It's at the top of the post.

Here's why you can't say L-O-L, and it turns it into 0x5: http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=969. Short answer: Because L-O-L is wicked annoying and mostly meaningless.

General Rules

Try to remain professional, and attempt intelligent posts.

Use proper grammar and spelling. Your browser probably has a spell checker. Please use it:


If you're using SAX, don't flood the chat, and don't nag people to read your posts. Spelling and grammar go a long way there, too. Keep in mind there's a delay between messages being sent/received, so have a little patience.

Of course, the Terms of Service you agreed to upon registration is still applicable.


Even shorter version:
Don't be stupid and/or annoying. Use your brain before before you make a post, and while making the post. Have patience after posting.

Normally I stay fairly quiet about these sorts of efforts, but this one is such a mess I feel compelled to respond.



Really? You went from having very little formalized rules to an extremely long bundle of rules in paragraph form because of a few weeks of increased forum behavior? That's super great trend analysis there guys.

And are these rules? Because the topic seems to imply something very different. If these are to be the official rules, you should at least say that in the FIRST SENTENCE. We're not writing 5-paragraph essays in middle school here people, we're writing an informational document designed to be read and consumed by new users to the site. It should be clear and concise, not a rambling essay on how one should act online.



I don't get the point of this. This forum has a very strong propensity to yell at users dredging up old topics, and now you're suddenly encouraging it? ???

The random "exercise left to the reader" is weird and offputting. What's the point of it? Are users expected to start reporting bugs?




Like seriously, if you want to make users report bugs well, link them to actual helpful resources and don't repeat the freaking wheel.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html



Wow thanks for telling us how to use a forum. Never used one of them things before out in younder country.



Okay, so you spend another long paragraph to basically continue saying "search for your relevant topics" before finally hiding something about "but don't post in topics that are too old!"

Two paragraphs to tell users to do something before spending a sentence with a huge caveat. Wow.



No, now I'm super bored and kind of want to find a better forum where the rules aren't super long and confusing. But rules of engagement sound fun. Are we fighting?



Here are a bunch of different ways of getting help right now! Which method is the best??? Who knows?!?



Really? This required a whole paragraph? Just to lay down some weirdly rigid rules? Posting twice within 24 hours is bad! But after that, go for it!



Is this a rule? A tip? A FYI? I don't understand what the point of this paragraph is.



I think there are rules buried here? But it mostly rehashes the very long sections spent above explaining ideas such as "searching" and "how forums work." It seems like we're at least starting to address some concrete rules in this paragraph, so great job!



Wow thanks for explaining how to act like someone on the internet. Don't use color! But like, we let you use color if you want! But if you do, be sure to make it fit with our lame color scheme and we may let you break the readability!



Let me condense this for you: "Don't be annoying." I think internet users get the whole idea that help may or may not come.



Why aren't these tied into the ToS directly, rather than being weird and off in a forum topic?



What you really enjoy is typing long and extremely dense "rules" to make yourselves feel self-important and justify being hostile towards new users. These rules (and I'm using the phrase 'rules' liberally) are extremely dense and likely will be completely ignored due to their length, poorly-phrased paragraphs, and bad organization.

Try again guys.

Nikky replies to a dissertation with another dissertation. tl;dr'ed the hardest.

I thought it was funny because he took the time to put my name for every quote box.



We try to stay away from a "formalized" list of rules, (as in: Topic I Paragraph a. or what have you) so your liberal use of rules is just. We encourage family friendly and well written posts and there's really nothing else we explicitly prohibit. The topic above, as titled, is an introduction to netiquette. It should be common sense to search and supply adequate information but users over the years have failed to show any of it. The inclusion of the term "official rules" is so users know what we base our actions off of.

Our push to search before posting a topic isn't to encourage necrposting but to encourage the user to find other leads. Yeah, they might have this problem 3 years after the release of the software they are using but a topic on the same issue 3 years ago is still relevant if it fixes their issue. If they are still having issues, they can link to the topic and explain more about the situation or post in said topic. If a moderator feels like the necropost is not necessary they may split the topic or take other appropriate action.

I deeply apologize you weren't involved in the creation of this topic, as it looks like you have plenty of feedback, however all of the Cemetech staff who were involved in the discussion of this topic support it. Looks like you'll have to try again bud!

Probably not he best place to put this, should be under site suggestions, but perhaps, when a user goes to post a new topic, it asks them if they want to search for the topic first? Also, the search bar is somewhat harder to see compared to the new user account buttons: Maybe people just find it easier to ask questions first, search later?

Not every topic is a bug report or for help but we'll consider the proposal. We also don't want to discourage new users. A user might not be signing up explicitly to post for help. Again, we'll consider it.

This is highly dismissive.

You clearly wanted feedback, as the news post listed above not only says to use this thread as a feedback point, but you also left the comments open. However, it seems the only actual feedback you're interested in is "wow this is so great! We agree 100%," and completely ignore anything else.

What seems clear is that Kerm has largely stepped back from any sort of administrativa regarding this website, and while I didn't always agree with his decisions, I appreciated that he was able to communicate clearly and put in thought behind every one of his actions. I certainly miss his guiding hand in what made this forum stand out above the rest.

I'm not sure where you get "stepping back" from run-of-the-mill delegation to my skilled staff.

While Merthsoft is right that your comments are nearly as long-winded as the content they're criticizing, I do see the validity in some of your points, and we'll be working on fine-tuning these guidelines in the future.

It clearly states to post if you have questions about any of this, hence why the comments were left open. But since you seem adamant it does, I'll gladly apologize and admit I was wrong if you show me where it says to "use this thread as a feedback point."

Also read the posts a few times before replying? I sometimes don't get the meaning first time through.

One thing that should be added: A section reminding current users to be respectful to new users too.

Both of these topics should have been linked:

• Anti-Defamation Policy
  
• Anti-Obscenity/Hatespeech Policy (with clarification of Anti-Defamation Policy)