   Guidelines for Posting and Discussions in the Lounge
  GDNet recently added its 100,000th member. But with all the influx of newbies, that means more of them will want to post in the Lounge. So for the benefit of our newest members, I've drafted these helpful guidelines.Feel free to suggest your own additional guidelines, for the betterment of all. People helping people, that's what GameDev's all about. (Well, that and pi-compression.)So, without further ado:Guidelines for Posting and Discussions in the Lounge0.) Your post should be in no way related to games. Not even tangentially. Examples of acceptable topics include:-- Disgusting facets of your poor personal hygeine-- American sociopolitical hegemony and how it relates to the works of Proust-- Global warming-- Topics about arbitrary lists of things, e.g. "Pointy Objects Which, On Second Thought, I Really Shouldn't Have Put Up My Rectum" or "Things That Taste Great With Yak Cheese"-- Al Gore-- Unsolicited medical advice-- Global warming-- Telling us about your collection of David Hasselhoff's pubic hair-- Al Gore-- Meta-topics such as this one-- How Al Gore invented global warming1.) You should hold at least four Ph.D. degrees from accredited universities. This will enable you to discourse intelligently on the enormous breadth of topics we cover, by ensuring that you have the requisite educational and academic background. We wouldn't want anyone coming to the table uninformed and just blathering on about topics where the sum total of their expertise comes from half-baked personal opinions, Wikipedia, and anecdotal evidence, right? Right.2.) Dismiss challenges to your arguments by asserting your considerable experience with the subject matter at hand. Pad your resume if necessary. Global warming? No sweat; you wrote a book on climatology. Rising interest rates? Not a problem; your 4th-grade essay for Ms. Johnson's social studies class turned heads at the Federal Reserve. Paris Hilton's latest sexcapades? Not only do you have the video, you're in the video.3.) Launch preemptive strikes on would-be ratings sabotageurs by prefacing your opinions with "I'll probably get rated down for this, but ...". When posting a potentially controversial opinion (e.g., "Toy Story 2 was soooo much better than the first one."), you need to be on guard. Take a page from Donald Rumsfeld's book: if you know the Enemy is out there and that an attack is imminent, call them out. A preemptive strike says to these people, "Hey you! I know you want to rate me down, but now you can't, because I totally called it! Neener neener!"4.) Anyone who doesn't appreciate your particular brand of humor is the lowest form of filth. If people don't love the totally awesome YouTube video you posted of those f-ing adorable kittens doing various cutesy things, then they are scum unfit to lick the detritus from your $24.99 Adidas hightops that your mom bought you last week at Payless. Bastards.5.) Blitzkrieg your opponents into oblivion. Product manufacturers and lawyers have known for years that if you PUT LARGE BLOCKS OF TEXT IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, you decrease the chances that people will actually read the words. On the Internet, the same thing applies with hyperlinks; who's going to actually bother wasting time clicking them all? Certainly not Lounge readers; their time is too precious and limited, and they can't afford to waste much of it. Therefore, if your argument is weak, it behooves you to disguise it under a torrent of hyperlinks. It doesn't matter what you actually link to, so long as every individual character points to something different. For bonus points, put two spaces in between every word and hyperlink each one seperately.Continue on with your own suggestions below. Remember, do it for the children!   
  ......speechless.........so true :Dyou forgot mentioning the egg and chicken though   ;  You forgot some of our Greatest Hits® such as: The World & Dubya, Chavez: The Devil in Sheep's Clothing, The Emperor Stays Butt-Naked, and (last but not least) Fight Night: Round 10 - Less Bread, More Dredd.Also, you're a Moderator aren't you? Then why haven't you stickied this? It's for the kids![Edited by - Alpha_ProgDes on May 27, 2006 8:48:53 AM];  You mean it's bad to shove sharp objects into your rectum O_O. Wow, thanks for not informing me before I shoved that knife into my ass...   ;Essential Battle Tactics for the LoungeEvery two weeks, we use a new buzzword that is the trump card for immediately discrediting anything your opponent says. For instance, "bias" is the trump word currently. Observe your surroundings carefully to pick up on this magic word - it may change without warning! Those who successfully wield the buzzword are guaranteed utter victory in any debate.Overwhelm your enemy by sheer numbers. If at any time it appears that your campaign has even started to slow down - God himself forbid actually regress by means of defeat - you must immediately attack with as much brute force as you can muster. Exceedingly long posts, fancy bulleted lists, posting dozens of threads within a few minutes, and even signing up fake accounts to support your cause are all time-honored tactics. Use them wisely!The first person to insult a thread's topic, original poster, or official mascot gets a Karma Kookie from the Happy Buddha in the Sky. Make sure you denegrate the opinions of others as often as possible! (For bonus points: start 5 threads from your dummy accounts about how everyone else's taste in humour sucks.)Ratings are the ultimate last-ditch weapon. Should your powerful intellect fail you in your noble mission to convert all the unwashed heathens to your clearly perfect viewpoint, just rate those ignorant bastards down. God knows they deserve it.Now... go forth and mercilessly slaughter one another in the name of picaek and the Unmentionable Seeing Eye Animal!   ;  Speaking of rectal object insertion, I saw this video yesterday. For Valentines Day some guy stuck some flowers down his urethra so his partner would find a lovely surprise. However, the tiny hairs on the flower stem managed to rip the urethra apart and he had to have an artificial one created.So:Topics about things you shouldn't stick down your urethra[Edited by - sanguineraven on May 27, 2006 9:54:41 AM];  Don't forget MP3 BEATING COMPRESSION! Oh wait that's supposed to be in general programming.... OH WAIT.   ;The Lounge Cares About Mundane Life Events: Please, when in doubt, Gamedev is here to be treated like your own personal Myspace.  At a Taco Bell? Tell us about it! Birthday? Nobody else has ever had one of those before so I'm sure everyone would love to hear about it!  The more generic and repetitive it seems, the more likely it's really an interesting story just waiting to be told.The Original Poster is not responsible for actual discussion: If you're the person who creates the thread, you aren't responsible for actually adding any content to the thread.  Curious about DirectX 10?  Post a thread saying "What about DirectX 10?  What do you think?" and never say another word!  Humor never gets old: See a video with a timestamp from eleven months ago?  Post about it anyways because like fine wine and babies - jokes only get better with age.   ;No one visists the other forums, ever.It is actually possible to post topics that relate to game programming in The Lounge as long as you acknowledge that no one would read it elsewhere.  Therefore, "Download my crazy new game !" is unnacceptable, but it becomes OK if you post "Download, my crazy new game !  No one reads Your Announcements and I want to reach more people."   ;  If you're going to PUI (Post Under the Influence) make sure you make leave in some obvious and uncharacteristic speeling and grammer mistakes so people won't think your really that dumb. shmoove   