Terms and rules

The Beyond3D forum community rules are minimal, straightforward and all underpin a core tenet of "be nice to each other and have fun". There's a lot of scope for an unnecessarily heated discussion in 3D graphics and we discourage it at Beyond3D. We value politeness, friendliness, respect, civility and keeping the conversation on-topic and moving forwards.

Circular discussion and argument is frowned upon pretty heavily, as is moving off-topic rapidly, shilling for your favourite company, and not listening to experienced members or moderators.

We have a lot of industry participation on the forums from all walks of graphics and semiconductor life. That's one of the great things about Beyond3D: you can be posting in a thread about a game or a piece of hardware and the folks who built it might could pop up and add something to the discussion.

So the guidelines are:

  • Have a good time! The Beyond3D forums are an excellent place to discuss graphics technologies, games, consoles, handheld devices and more. Have a great time posting and help others have a great time too when they read your posts.
  • Keep colourful language to a strict minimum. It almost always just adds noise and rarely boosts signal.
  • Longer thoughtful posts are preferred to shorter off-the-cuff ones that add less to the discussion. Investing the time there usually increases the value of threads.
  • Keep your bias in check. Bias and preference are unavoidable in a lot of cases, but rarely do they help move any discussion forwards. Talk about what you like and don't like positively, respectfully, with curiosity, and constructively wherever possible.
  • If you're a company marketer or shill, please just go somewhere else. Seriously, if you're acting on behalf of a company to overtly promote its products or rubbish the competition, please leave and find another place on the Internet to make worse.
  • If you're banned, please see out the ban, be it a thread post ban or a full forum post ban. If you want to talk about why you were banned, as a banned user you can still message the moderation team, or ask a question in the #feedback channel on Beyond3D's Discord server.
  • Zero brigading, personal attacks, overt negativity, shallow dismissals or low-effort shitposting of any kind. Signal must be maintained or boosted at all times.
  • If your post doesn't address the topic, but instead addresses a person, your post will be removed and you'll receive a thread post ban of some kind.
  • Be kind, curious, thoughtful, respectful, positive where possible, and friendly.
  • Comments should get more thoughtful, substantial and considerate of the topic as the topic advances, not less.
  • If you're disagreeing, reply respectfully to the argument, not the person.
  • Assume good faith and the strongest plausible version of what's in a post.
  • Stay on topic and avoid tangents (if those tangents are interesting, please start a new thread for them).
  • No uppercase for emphasis. Use the text formatting tools at your disposal.
  • Don't post about brigading, astroturfing, shilling, manipulation or the like. Let the moderators know privately via PM or ask on Discord and we'll look at it.
  • No link-only posts with no summary and following commentary, especially single links to "leaker" accounts on Twitter. If you bring a link or quote or similar to the table for discussion, you should lead the discussion with a thoughtful summary and reasoning as to why you feel it's valuable to discuss.
  • Listen to the moderation team. We have over 100 person years of community moderation experience between us, so if we ask you to do something around your behaviour or posting style, please heed their advice or instruction.

If you get stuck and need some help understanding a moderation decision or some other aspect of how we run the forums, head to the Site Feedback area and make a post and ask, drop me a line by email (rys@beyond3d.com) or head to the Beyond3D Discord server and ask in the #feedback channel.

Lastly, we have a basic user promotion system. It's not something to game, but more of an indication of how long and prolifically someone's been participating over the years:

  • 0-249 posts, you're a Newcomer
  • 250-999 posts, you're a Regular
  • 1000-4999, you're a Veteran
  • 5000+, you're a Legend

Pretty simple!

You get various extra stuff as you make your way up the ranks, but nothing crazy. Regulars and above can edit their own posts, have a signature, and give themselves custom user tiles, Veterans can add colour to their signatures.

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