Hello and welcome to Arsenal Mania, the Arsenal site, for Arsenal fans!
We hope that you enjoy your time on our site and to help you make yourself at home we would be grateful if you would take a few moments to read the following guidelines.
For your convenience we will answer the most commonly asked questions about the site. Are you sitting comfortably? Let's begin:
First off the bat, who are we?
OK, as a Forum Member, how do I start a thread?
Cheers!
The Arsenal Mania Forum's Team
We hope that you enjoy your time on our site and to help you make yourself at home we would be grateful if you would take a few moments to read the following guidelines.
For your convenience we will answer the most commonly asked questions about the site. Are you sitting comfortably? Let's begin:
First off the bat, who are we?
- We are the Arsenal-Mania.com Team. To take at look at our profiles click on this link: The Team
- The Moderators keep control of the various forums. They can edit or lock posts, warn or ban members, move/delete/merge/lock or unlock topics - as they see fit or if those topics or users contravene the forum guidelines.
Moderators are there to ensure that a member doesn't misbehave whilst he or she is on the forum, ensuring a comfortable and pleasant environment for the other members.
- Whoa, slow down. You gotta learn to crawl before you run. See if you become a Trusted or Elite Member first before plotting plans for forum domination!
- A Forum Member who is deemed, by the Administrators, Moderators, Trusted and Elite Members, to have regularly contributed to the forum in a highly positive fashion is eligible to be nominated for election to Trusted Member; likewise, a Trusted Member is eligible for election to Elite Member. If the election is successful, then, depending on the rank in question, the following forum features become available to the newly promoted member:
Trusted Members:
- Access to the Random Chatting Board and the Picture Gallery
- Admission to the Promotion/Demotion Committee for new Forum Members
- Admission to the Promotion/Demotion Committee for new Trusted Members
- The ability to add polls to threads, to lock own threads, and to add attachments
Elite Members:
- All of the above, plus
- Admission to the Promotion/Demotion Committee for new Elite Members
- Exclusive private Arsenal Mania player and team content
- And much, much more!
- Possibly. However, when considering someone for election we look more at the QUALITY of the member's post NOT the quantity. We would much rather make someone who made 500 informative and entertaining posts a Trusted or Elite Member than someone with 5000 posts of which 90% were 'I agree' or wishlist type posts. The posts don't have to be long boring essays as this isn't an English language lesson. So long as you post well and show a bit of personality you'll be well on your way. Being elected is a reward as we are thanking you for your contribution to the site. Best thing to do is to be yourself and keep posting as normal. If you are deserving of election you will get it eventually.
- Truth be told, there are always Trusted and Elite members online all the time as well as Moderators and Administrators. If you deserve to be nominated, chances are you have been. We are always nominating and voting on an upwards of 20 members at a time for Trusted or Elite member status. Whether or not they are successful is a different matter altogether but the process is sound and very thorough. Please do not PM the Moderators asking to be nominated as chances are it will just put question marks on your intentions for posting. We want Arsenal Mania to be a community where people can talk to fellow supporters in an open and honest matter and having people act in certain ways just for promotion isn't something we encourage. Stay true to yourself, post well, follow the guidelines and you'll do well here. Abusive PM's will also not be tolerated and any members found to be bombarding Moderators with excessive and rude PM's will be put to the bottom of the pile when it comes to allocating new nominees. Oh and we will change your username to Emile Heskey's *****. Permanently.
OK, as a Forum Member, how do I start a thread?
- In each forum there is a button near the top which says New Topic. Just click on that and post away. Couple of guideline before posting new threads. First of all make sure there isn't a similar thread already open by checking through the forum as duplicate threads will be locked. Also make sure it's being posted in the correct forum as if not they will also run the risk of being locked.
In opening a thread be sure to put some effort into the opening post. Threads opened with an opening post containing something like "Discuss" or "Go" will not be tolerated and will be locked on the spot even if there are 100 posts by then. This also goes for matchday threads. There is no need for essays or an elaborate graphic intro (however they would be appreciated) but put in the little effort required to open up a thread otherwise it will be locked.
- No one's stopping you from liking someone's post but this isn't FaceBook. If you want to agree with someone's post go for it, but if you want to comment on the post just to put a "+1" or "This" or only to say I agree, then forget about it and just leave the post be. It's one thing if you agree with the post and want to expand on it, but any posts we find with "+1", "I agree" or one word replies will be deleted without any warning.
- It depends. If you support a team apart from Arsenal and you want to discuss football and interact with our members in a friendly and community spirited way then you are more than welcome. Please note, however, we will be stricter with your choice of avatar your posts will be more closely scrutinised.
If however you are here solely on the wind up then don't even bother posting as:
a) We will ban you
and
b) Before we ban you we will make you look like a complete idiot. In fact you will look so stupid that you will be a laughing stock on these boards for years to come. Try us and we WILL make you famous! You have been warned.
- Not at all. While we are happy to help with any queries, ideally we don't want to have to tell people off and sort out disputes and problems. We would much rather talk about the club we love. But if action has to be taken then we will do so. Its not for our egos, it is for the sake of the forum community.
- First and foremost please DO NOT flame the person back. If we cannot determine who started the flaming then BOTH members will be held responsible and dealt with accordingly. The best thing to do is to contact a Moderator by Personal Message or by using the Report Post function. We will then deal with this accordingly. In the mean time just ignore the idiot.
- There is no set policy on banning as such, its more on a case by case basis. If you annoy an admin then you are running the risk of a ban. How many posts it takes you get there is down to how much of an arsehole you want to be!
- Pardon?
- No, I am afraid not. This is a multi-national forum and as a result some posters will not have English as their first language. This means that while you may "get" text language they probably will not so for their sake please do not use it. Any text language will be edited or deleted at the Arsenal-Mania's team discretion, and a ban imposed on the offender if he or she repeatedly ignored warnings.
- Yes there are and here they are in all of their bulleted glory:
- No racist posts will be tolerated
- We at Arsenal Mania are a multi-cultural community. In fact, one of the things which makes us such a diverse and popular forum is the wide ranging nationalities of our supporters. As a result no racist comments, whether directed towards other forum members or in general are acceptable and repeat offenders will be banned.
- Advertising of any sorts without prior permission from the team is strictly prohibited
- If you want to advertise anything, be it another site or a service, it is only common courtesy to ask first. If we say we are happy with you doing so then you may post the relevant advert thread, but any done without our consent will be deleted and the poster dealt with accordingly.
- What about match tickets? Can I advertise them?
- No sorry afraid not, not even at face value. If we allow tickets to be advertised we run the risk of Arsenal taking legal action against us and shutting us down. Any posts regarding their sale will be amended/deleted accordingly.
- No posts regarding online match or goal clips are allowed
- All Arsenal goal or match clips are copyright and sole property of Arsenal and Granada and their trading without prior permission from either of those two is illegal. Arsenal Mania does not have nor is seeking to obtain such permission and as a result does not condone the linking, trading, or downloading of these (unauthorised) clips. Any posts regarding them will be deleted and the user dealt with accordingly. Besides you can get goal clips etc. for Arsenal matches by going to Arsenal.com and joining Arsenal TV Online. Is £3.99 a month really so expensive? (Note that this policy extends to the English Premier League as a whole.)
- General Chat Forums
- As we experienced in the past, having a general forum open to the entire forum is out of the question. In the past it was swamped with the most inane and idiotic topics such as "what is your favourite colour?", so we feel by restricting access to it to the Trusted Members and above it will be put to better use. Once you have been made an TM then you can use it, and the picture gallery, as much as you like.
There is no use in arguing that there should be one because our position on this matter is not up for debate.
- Go to your profile and scroll down to the appropriate section. You can either use one of the default ones by highlighting it, or alternatively use one of your own by ticking 'use personal picture' and entering the web address of the picture.
- If it is urgent contact one of us and we will see if we can assist you asap. If it is more a general query then it would be best to post it in the 'Help' section.
- Hey you are catching on!
- We think that is it. However, we encourage you to check out any threads which are in bold and are at the top of various sections. These are usually Forum Announcements and are generally important. Examples of these could be "What is this?" or "Forum Rules".
Other than that enjoy your time on our forums, and please remember that we are here to help make the forum run as smoothly as possible and this is for your benefit. We put a hell of a lot of effort into this place so all we ask is that you are nice to us and in return we will be nice to you
Cheers!
The Arsenal Mania Forum's Team
