Newcomers Read This! (Rules & FAQ)

[Cosmin]

Welcome on the Romanian Forum on SkyscraperCity! I'll present you a set of rules and recommendations we play by here, so we can avoid future problems. By registering and participating in the forum you agree with all of the following.

First and foremost, you have to abide by SSC's forum-wide rules of which I'd like to emphasize the following:

• Profanity towards other members will not be tolerated.
• No spamming; multiple topics will be deleted/merged.
• No inciting hatred or violence.
• Multiple accounts are forbidden.
• Racist posts are a serious offense and will be severely answered to. This does not include nations.
• Homophobic posts will be treated the same way as racist ones.
• Do not create an account presenting you with a different nationality in order to start flame wars.
• Post in the right forum, continued posting in wrong forums will be considered spamming.

Local rules

• Xenophobic or ultra nationalist posts have no place here, so please keep this kind of opinions to yourselves. I can't emphasize this enough.
• Posts bashing Gypsies, Hungarians or other minorities will not be tolerated.
• Be respectful to our Bulgarian, Serb, Hungarian, Ukrainian and Moldovan neighbours that post here, as well as any other foreigners.
• We have a thread for off-topic discussions - Nebuniile nebunului. Use it to discuss anything (provided you're not breaching the rules) and refrain from opening other off-topic threads.
• Discussions about separatism and related propaganda are strictly forbidden.

Rules regarding user signatures

• Signature lines may be up to 5 lines of default sized (vBulletin size 2) text, spaces included or up to 3 lines of vBulletin size 3 text, spaces included.
• No text over vBulletin size 3 is allowed, even if your signature line uses only one line.
• Signature lines can't contain nationalistic, combative, racist or any other kind of commentary which may offend other users.
• Members are not permitted to quote other members in their signatures for any reason.

Recommendations

• As decided by voting, the main language we use here is English. I urge you to keep Romanian to a minimum (except on Nebuniile nebunului) if you have decent command of the English language. Remember that SSC is an international community and we have a lot of foreigners visiting.
• Try not to post several posts in a row. Instead of creating a new post, edit the previous one.
• Do not use loads of emoticons in your posts as it creates visual clutter which can be very annoying.
• Whether writing in Romanian or English, make sure what you write is easily understood by others. No l33t talk!
• When posting pictures, please take your time to upload them to a service such as ImageShack or TinyPic and link them from there. Do not hotlink from other sites!
• When possible, credit your source, be it for an article you quoted, or a a picture you posted. Include a link to the original source, especially in the case of articles.
• Always credit pictures taken from Flickr, Panoramio, Airliners.net etc.
• Refrain from using a large font size and/or use too many colors in your posts. Again - visual clutter.
• If you have any problem with your account, please contact me or any other staff member and do not make additional accounts. Multiple accounts are not allowed and you'll be banned.

[Cosmin]

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What can I discuss where?

How can I insert pictures in my posts?

How do I embed YouTube videos?

How can I submit a banner?

[Cosmin]

How can I insert pictures in my posts?

SkyscraperCity doesn't provide image hosting, like some forums do. This means that images you insert in your posts must be hosted on an external site. Free services like ImageShack, Photobucket, TinyPic and others do just that.

Here's how you insert an image in your posts using the simplest method:

Step 1

Go to ImageShack, click the 'browse' button and lookup the image you'd like to post on your hard drive. You can upload multiple images at once by selecting more than one image at once, but for this tutorial we'll just upload one.



After the image is selected, its file name (2279809708_ebf327a94f_b.jpg in our case) will appear in the upload box. You can remove any image you selected for upload just by clicking the grey 'x' to the left of the file name.

If you want to resize the image, make sure you check the 'resize image?' checkbox. We want to resize our image to 800x600, so we've checked the box and selected the appropriate size. Note that 800x600 is the recommended resolution for images uploaded on forums, since it displays well on both small and large screens. 1027x768 is also ok, but it tends to make the images too large for smaller screens (17" and smaller).

Next, we'll actually upload the image by clicking the 'start upload!' button. Our image will be uploaded in a few moments.



Step 2

After the image is uploaded we are presented with a new page containing various links to our image. At the very top we find a 'direct link to image', the link we're interested in for this tutorial. Now we just need to copy that link and insert it in our post.


Step 3

Go to the forum and click the 'insert image' button in the post editor. A dialog box will popup. Paste the link copied earlier at step 2 (direct link to image) in the box and click 'OK'.





This will insert the direct link you provided between two image tags ([ IMG ] and [ /IMG ]. You can also write the tags and paste the link between them yourself, without clicking the 'insert image' button.



You can now post the image on the forum by clicking 'submit reply' or you can check how your post looks, before posting it, by clicking 'preview post'.

That's it.


Note: this is only a short introduction to image uploading and posting. You can experiment with the links provided on the upload page. For example there are links that already have the image tags inserted and you can just copy the text and paste it in your post, or you can use the thumbnail links to post just the thumbnails on the forum, in case the image is very large and scaling it down is not an option. If you have a large numbers of pictures you can upload several at once.

Experiment with the different links and with different image uploading services. ImageShack works best, but there are plenty others (i.e. Photobucket) and the uploading process is similar to that of ImageShack.

[Cosmin]

How can I submit a banner?

The rules below were agreed by SSC's staff and should be respected by all users in order to ensure a smooth process and increase the chances of your favourite banner to be displayed on the forum.

All banners proposals should be made on the dedicated thread. When we agree on a banner I will then forward it to Jan and propose it.

Bypassing this and sending the banner directly to Jan or other staff member(s) will not help your cause and will end up hindering the entire process.

Thank you.

Banner Requirements

• in general, the goal is not to have your city up there at all costs, we only want quality images related to the topics of discussion,
• check the banner archives first to see how many times your city or country has been up there. Be reasonable about this. Don't expect your place to be up there every other month,
• banner must be 719 pixels wide and 123 pixels height, dpi of 72,
• no text marking, flag waving, logo's or anything else other than the image itself,
• feel free to be creative, but please no banners made of multiple images pasted next to each other,
• if the banner is tied to a specific date, please post it at least one week in advance. Reserving dates is not possible, as I don't use a calender to keep track of these.

Required Info

• name of the source of the image
• link to the source
• info on what we are seeing.

[Cosmin]

What can I discuss where?

Here are some guidelines to help you determine what topics are discussed where and whether or not it's a good idea to open that thread you've been thinking about.

Please try to respect these guidelines and generally stick to the topics discussed in the table below.

If a section you're interested in doesn't have an off-topic discussions thread, then don't ask for one. Remember, we're here to discuss skyscrapers, architecture, urban planning, infrastructure etc., not your local football team or politics.

[Cosmin]

How do I embed YouTube videos?

1) Go to the YouTube video you want to post.

2) In your browser's address bar, copy the part of the link after v=



3) On the forum, paste the copied text between and tags, like this:

The video will now appear in your post.



Adapted from the YT tutorial on Holland Hoogbouw Forums . Thanks to the Dutch moderator lffıs.

[Cosmin]

Project Threads Naming Conventions

When opening a thread dedicated to a specific project, use the naming conventions below.

CITY | Project name | Height (m) | No. of floors (fl.) | Status

Where "Status" can be:
Pro = proposed
App = approved
U/C = under construction
T/O = topped out
Demo = undergoing demolition
Built
On Hold
Cancelled

Mentioning the city is only needed for those cities that don't have their own metropolitan forums.

Example: SkyTower | 137 m | 36 fl | U/C

For projects with multiple towers, list only the three tallest one.