Welcome to the official Dark Tranquillity forum!
Thank you for joining this community and taking the time to read this post. The following - an updated version of the old rules - was conceived by the
moderators on a cold and starless night while listening to a pack of wolves howling in the woods, which gives it a lot of street cred in the world of metal. Although the moderators exchanged several e-mails written in blood on a pentagram background over this, if you still think something should have been done differently or are offended by the constant swearing, feel free to send a private message to
rahvin.
The forum only has one section, hosting both band-related threads and otherwise.
Before you post a new thread about Dark Tranquillity, check the first couple of pages to see if the topic is already being discussed. Duplicate threads (same interview, same show, same piece of news) will be merged, and a sudden wave of embarrassment might even force you to turn off your computer for a while. Very few people survive.
Threads with extremely low content should be avoided altogether. They usually take the shape of enthusiastic remarks about the joy Dark Tranquillity bring to the world or equally enthusiastic remarks about why Dark Tranquillity should have stopped making music in 1995 or - in some extreme cases - 1815. Neither add anything to any discussion.
High-fiving each other to the merry sound of "YEAH!" is not what this forum is about: you can leave comments on the band's
Myspace page if all you're interested in is cheering. One or two low-content threads about strong ejaculatory responses to newly released material are tolerated, because we know you're all full of testosterone (or, in the case of male users pretending to be girls, still testosterone), but it's the only exception.
As for the other kind of message, it should go without saying that posting on a band forum if you can't stand the band is a stupid waste of your time. The best you can do is try to get away with some good-mannered criticism if you can tolerate regulars telling you they'll send their grand-nephews over to kick your butt.
Certain questions involving the band or their records have been asked so many times in the past years that the mere sight of a new such thread is enough to send regulars in a suicidal rage where they listen to Avril Lavigne songs on purpose. How do you know if the burning questions keeping you awake at night are going to elicit a similar reaction? Simple: learn to read minds! In the meantime, check the following list of FAQs.
THREAD FAQS
Q: If you don't tell me right now the name of the font for the newer "Dark Tranquillity" logo, I'm going to kill this goat!
A: It's Industria Solid. We can't send it to you, though, because it's not free.
Q: Why aren't you coming to play in my country / state / town / attic? There are cookies and pies and grandma's hearing aid is working now and my sister wants to be deflowered by the cute one with the red hair.
A: Dark Tranquillity have almost no control over where they're going to play next. Tours and single dates are organized by agents and labels and promoters and club owners and the forces of fate. One thing you must know: Dark Tranquillity WANT to come play close enough to your living room to please you. If it doesn't happen it's never because of lack of will on their part.
Q: I'm writing from the record store, where a bunch of Dark Tranquillity CDs are begging me to buy them, but I only have money for one and I have no idea which I should get! Woe is me! Please, Internet, tell me how to live my life!
A: Unsurprisingly, everybody has a different opinion when it comes to which Dark Tranquillity record is their best, and which one would appeal more to a newcomer. There's a thread
here where you can read reviews and suggestions from forum users of the present and the past. Ultimately, though, there are so many legal ways to listen to a few songs before buying a record that you're probably better off making up your mind yourself.
Q: Nothing would please me more than compiling a long list of Dark Tranquillity songs for no reason whatsoever! Hey, why don't we start a poll where, like, you tell me which of their songs shorter than 6 minutes but longer than 4 is your favorite? Or maybe what songs you would like to see live. Played at your funeral? Sung by a drunken sailor? In a Lost
episode soundtrack?
A: It's all been done before, possibly multiple times. As far as "post your favorite..." threads go, the ones involving Dark Tranquillity songs have provided all the entertainment you could squeeze out of them. Starting over again could only be interesting when and if a whole new generation of at least 200 regulars have populated the forum with whole new tastes and opinions.
Threads that have nothing to do with the band must abide to slightly stricter rules, mostly so that topics are seldom - if ever - repeated and don't take up space that could otherwise be dedicated to Dark Tranquillity. We know that the bulk of all forum posts consists of off-topic messages and random conversation, and Baphomet told us this is ok. Yet we desperately want to keep this board's level several inches above the kind of disassociated spam-fest most communities turn into, where semi-coherent messages float around for days, warranting one-line replies and petty flames. It's a much more serious risk right now than it was back in 2001, when this board came to exist: along with the spread of accessibility and common usage of the Internet as a means of entertainment and getting your daily fix of pornography, the quality of the average Web-dweller has plummeted and what used to be unthinkable (forum-goers typing with only emoticons and chatroom language? Surely you jest!) is now considered acceptable by some. But we digress, and it must be very un-metal because Metallica never wrote a song called "Seek & Digress".
Opening new threads on specific topics is encouraged. Threads are meant to start a discussion, so as long as you put some content into it (personal opinions, a story, links to news you would like to see debated) you're doing the right thing. With the exception of the topics listed under the TABOO section of this post, nothing is off-limits. The tone is also completely left to your decision, and there's no rule saying you should not post if you're irate or strongly opinionated about a subject. Again, you must however avoid duplicates of threads in the first couple of pages.
In this case, too, there are subjects that constitute the daily bread of this community. For practical reasons, you're not allowed to start a new thread on such topics: all of them always have ongoing threads on the board, which we listed here because we're clean, decent guys who would make excellent marriage material.
NOT TO MISSThis is for all of your messages that don't warrant their own thread and don't fit in any existing one. It's typically used by regulars to tell each other about their day or when something (or someone) strikes their fancy, without the assumption of starting a lengthy discussion on the subject. If a discussion does take place it has to put up with other random posts inbetween, where users might comment on something unrelated to what you hold so dear. Any information you want to reveal to the Internet for eternal storage and ages of not giving a damn you're supposed to post here. This includes all those annoying "now _____ing" messages that used to be so popular a while ago: if you're eating bees, watching bombs fall, wearing fur underwear or drinking liquid fire DO NOT start an exciting thread full of plot twists about it.
The only exception to the rule mentioned above, the now playing thread serves its purpose with monotonous patience since the beginning of this board's activity and - according to some - time. It's a way to find out about new bands, new records by old bands, and hilarious song titles.
Seldom used by regulars to actually encourage other people to listen to bands they like, this thread is one huge dump of spam messages originally posted as new threads by accounts registered with the sole purpose of promoting somebody's own band on every community on the face of the Earth. We're mentioning it here because everyone is supposed to read the rules and avoid making that mistake, but we already know they won't and sometimes we cut ourselves in silent desperation.
VERY IMPORTANTOh, the beauty of a meadow on a spring morning! Wait, no... the beauty of a slaughterhouse on the eve of Thanksgiving, that's what we wanted to say. Personal pictures of any kind go here. Your images must not break tables and it's probably better if you're not leeching off somebody else's bandwidth. Posts in violation of these rules may be removed, and there's one funny macro involving bandwidth leeching that we just cannot wait to post.
If you're moving your first clumsy steps in this community you might find it easier to fit in if you introduce yourself. This thread is a good place to do so, mostly because if you start a new thread about it it'll get deleted. Beware, though: the vast majority of new users who post a message there disappear never to be seen again. Some say they instantly lose their will to participate in any discussion, but that's very discouraging and we like to think they die a horrible death instead.
OTHER ESTABLISHED THREADSWhenever Dark Tranquillity release a new album or single or live show, right before the seas part and volcanos erupt, a new thread inevitably comes up dedicated to discussing the little bundle of joy. While you can certainly start new threads on specific aspects of the new release, users' reviews and opinions should all gather together here.
When first we heard about a "haul" thread we wondered who was moving and where, but it quickly became obvious this thread was about shopping and the marvels of running home to tell it to the Internet. You're not likely to want to start a new thread about this topic, unless you have some weird fetish or listen to Beck, but you might be happy to know that if you ever want to post about it, it's there.
All threads become awe-inspiring juggernauts of evil once they reach about 3,500 posts, and as much as we love awe, juggernauts and especially evil, they tend to be a little too intimidating to be left open. New or infrequent users prefer threads they can read from top to bottom without having to take a week off work or have a cornea transplant afterwards, so we will close very long threads (regardless of the topic) after posting a message saying any user can start a new one with similar title and content. A repost of the last message - besides ours, which is going to be silly anyway - will be included in the new thread if necessary.
Threads that break rules will be merged if the content is considered relevant and acceptable somewhere else; closed if they were just "meh" and have no purpose open; or deleted if the content is something forbidden in the TABOO section, inappropriate for a post, meant to be an annoyance, or just plain infuriating.
The language of the Dark Tranquillity board is English. As long as a user's English is understandable and he/she can understand others, it will be fine. Messages partly or completely in other languages are allowed if they serve a specific purpose (such as asking/offering a translation, or when debating languages, or to relate details of a story), but they should never be a thread title or used repeatedly as means of communication thus excluding non-speakers.
Grammar and syntax should be treated with some respect. While no one expects you to proofread everything you write here, repeated disregard for simple rules is not going to be tolerated, as long as you are a native English speaker or show flawless fluency one moment just to lazily type a couple of jumbled phrases the next. Non-native speakers only need to do their best.
Internet slang typical of chatrooms, chat channels in MMORPGs, and most teen-oriented message boards is not allowed unless used as a joke or to show the fallacies of some lost soul's ways. This includes: improper capitalization of words (hElLo, i'M aN uTtEr MoRoN!), most contractions (u r my tru wub, k?), total lack of punctuation (hi guys how are you can you tell me where i can find the new dt ringtone), catchphrases (kthxbye, teh, ...).
Do not take the above too literally: if your style of posting includes one of the behaviors described above you're still not necessarily doomed to spend an eternity watching
Oprah reruns. For instance, someone who writes in impeccable English but never uses capital letters is allowed to keep doing so, and if you add a catchphrase in the middle of an otherwise ok post, that doesn't really mean you'll be kicked out. What we aim to discourage is a habit of lazy or "cool" posting, where people either can't be bothered to invest some mental energy in what they're writing or have by now absorbed this new kind of hip illiteracy and mistakenly believe it's the English language. It's not, and we'll keep doing what we can to prevent impoverishing our communication any further.
Vulgarity is tolerated, but if the only content of your message is an insult or some offensive remark your post might be deleted for trolling.
Profanity and racism need even more post content in addition to the offending words to be tolerated, and we cannot see us ever being ok with either in thread titles. To clarify where we draw the line: "I think Lilith is a lie conceived by the Catholic Church as the stereotypical woman who's a temptress and lives in sin. Incidentally, you all who worship her are poo" is ok, but "Lilith: fucking bitch doesn't even exist, screw you and her" is not. "Italians smell bad because their spaghetti sauce is stored in the sewers" is ok, but "Get the fuck out of my forum and go eat a pizza, you shitty Guido" is not.
As much as we would like us all to get along and have many, many kids together, conflict is rather common wherever strangers can pretend they're fit and experienced adults instead of geeky acne-ridden adolescents. This forum is pretty tolerant when it comes to users exchanging pleasantries over who has the biggest hard drive, so you need not worry too much about inadvertently hurting somebody's tremulous feelings and getting banned. Just read the guidelines below to get a feeling of what's not tolerated.
If you think a thread is against the rules and the administrators are busy playing Bejeweled, send one of them a private message. If you don't like the topic for a thread, either ignore the thread or state your opinion in a civil way then leave. Shooting down threads only results in people with legitimate thread ideas becoming more reluctant to post.
Do not bring your personal issues from real life or other forums on this board. Nobody is ever going to care and most decent people, including your mom, hate having anything to do with your dirty laundry. Also, in ten years' time when you're busy ruling the world and generally being very important you'll regret every single personal message you ever posted anywhere on the Internet, so there's no need to add to your future embarrassment.
- Everybody in the universe loves you except the Dark Tranquillity forum
Most terrible posters' favorite reply to users pointing out how little they contribute to the board is along the lines of "Oh, you all who are so quick to judge me from my messages, know you not that in real life I'm a rocket scientist philantropist friend of the President reincarnation of a beautiful dove and every person in my country worships the ground I walk on while I single-handedly perform miracles or cast spells? Know you not that when I post here I type with my eyes closed, one arm tied behind my back and several rodents chewing at my fingertips? It's amazing I can hit the Reply button." From now on this is going to be a sanctionable offense. In online communities everyone judges everyone else based on how and what they write. It would be stupid to add disclaimers after every use of the second person, specifying it's the online persona we're referring to. We're not going to forgive your inadequacy at posting just because you have curly blond hair anyway.
By this we mean systematically and preposterously flaming threads, topics, or forum users, especially through low-content and offensive messages. You can make fun of each other - more or less benevolently, we won't know or care about personal reactions - for a short while and without derailing threads. Anything that becomes some sort of cross-thread obsession with seeking out and trying to ridicule somebody's posts is not allowed. The same goes for Internet Male With Rabies impersonations, where you only show up to tell us how much something sucks, unless you're talking about your life.
There rarely are problems with spam and over-eager users, on the Dark Tranquillity forum. If you're an enthusiastic new guy who feels like replying to every thread multiple times, don't worry: soon you'll be a savvy disenchanted cynic who's seen it all, or you'll fall in love with another unique snowflake from Russia and have your heart broken, or you'll find a job. Failing all of the above, we'll pay you a visit and break your fingers ourselves. Nevertheless, you might want to check what follows in order not to overstay your welcome.
Do not log in and reply to every thread in the first page with short (and often superfluous) comments only to log out and disappear for a week, then rinse & repeat. You don't have to say something at all costs, especially if you're not interested in or available for the comments it might elicit.
Single-emoticon or "quoted-for-truth" replies are allowed, as long as you don't post like that all the time and as long as that's not all you post about.
Double-posting is ok too, although used as rarely as possible.
If you're just beginning to post on this forum, you want to make sure to start on the right foot and leave low-content posts for later.
Only bump very old threads if you're honestly interested in the topic and feel you have something to add. "Look what I've found querying for baby seals" is not a valid reason.
The following topics are not allowed on the Dark Tranquillity forum. We also considered and rejected: halitosis; haircuts; hexagons; holograms.
- Pornographic or shock images
Ask yourself: would you rather be caught by your boss / parent / supervisor / parole officer looking at a picture of a Dark Tranquillity live show or a picture of a midget dressed like Minnie Mouse performing oral sex on a horse dressed like Goofy? Based on your answer, you now know which picture needs to be posted as a link and which one can appear in its full glory on the board. You also know if you need therapy.
- Links to copyrighted material
Regardless of the band's stance on Mp3 downloads, the site's integrity must not be compromised by discussions containing pointers on where and how to illegally download copyrighted material, be it music, games, movies or anything else. No traces of exchange of such material between forum users are allowed on the board, for any reason. If you're in doubt whether your link/suggestion is compliant with the harsh law of the Internet, ask the moderators. It is understood that bootleg recordings of live shows are allowed as a topic and as a list, as long as the trades take place for free and no links to the files are posted on the board.
- Dark Tranquillity members' private life
We don't encourage discussing the band members' personal life in any way. Although comments are bound to be tolerated, it's important to remember that this forum is about the band and the musical experience its members share, possibly branching off to other manifestations of creativity. What the individuals behind the act do and are - no matter how many details you may find in interviews or by other means - is none of this community's business.
Sincerely,
the moderators
