Chaos

Removed altogether.

Hey guys, It's come to our attention that some signatures (that is, the thing that appears after your post) on the forums are quite unnecessarily long in vertical space. With this in mind, we are changing our guidelines on signature length. I think the previous, very loose guidelines worked for a small community, but as the site's evolved, things need to change, and the rules need to be more strict. Here's the general idea: if you make a really small post (a line or two), your signature should not be much longer--vertically--than the space the forum regularly allots your post to be. When signatures are long, this is very annoying to scroll through when a person writes a one sentence post, and yet it actually takes the space of two or more posts. I think we can all agree that we want the desktop viewing experience on the forum to be as pleasant as possible, and long sigs really hurt that goal. Here are the new signature rules: Image Restrictions The total size of all images in your signature may be up to 500 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall. This means you can have multiple small icons next to each other, but all the images cannot take up any more than that space. It's really important that this is the case. Having images much wider than 500 pixels extends the forum length in the Personal Messenger area, and as for height, we generally want to reduce the amount of scrolling that takes place on topics. Yes, this means you can't have multiple big banners any longer. Sorry. Animated GIFs should also not be used. GIFs cause direct page-load and performance problems. Total Signature Size Look at one of your posts. See that vertical line separating the left-hand side--which has your avatar, post count, and rep count--and the post content? That's the minimum height of your post, regardless of how much or how little you write in a post. Therefore, here is the restriction on signature lengths: if you write a one-line post, your signature should be contained within this vertical line. This makes it so short posts actually appear short and do not cause undue scrolling. Note that images also need to be within that vertical line (in a one-line post), but fortunately, if you have a 500x100 banner, you actually have a lot of room for text--like, say, the theories you espouse, or other pithy lines. Also, as should be obvious, your signature (or posts, for that matter) shouldn't increase the width of the site. This has very rarely occurred, so I'm not concerned, but let's make that explicit. No More Spoiler Tags Some use spoiler tags in signatures to hide particularly long content. There's not much reason for this, and hiding large images in these spoiler tags still means that your browser has to load them. Due to the general unnecessary nature of these, and the increase in page load from hiding lots of things, there should no longer be spoiler tags in signatures. Elimination Score Count This one is specific to the players of the Sanderson Elimination games. There should be no more keeping scores in signatures. There have been concerns brought forward about them, and it’s time to stop having that as part of your signature. In Conclusion We'll start enforcing these rules this Sunday, September 20th. We'll generally PM you to alter it, and if that doesn't happen in a reasonable fashion, we'll remove it. I hope this sounds reasonable! End of the day, your signature should tell us a little bit about you, a personal touch, a bit of flair. It shouldn’t be an all-inclusive autobiographical history of your life, or even your time on the site.

Moving topic to General Brandon Discussion.

I'm also going to restrict all comments on the entire book, unfortunately, natc. Don't worry, there's not much more time to wait, all things considered.

That is correct.

I'm going to go with "he was so confused you asked how to get an unannounced thing that he really wasn't sure how to respond." Obviously, when we have details on how to get this thing, expect a big news article on it. But right now we don't know.

Full book spoilers will not be allowed until October 6th. I am glad you got it early, but whoever sold it to you or something should be in big, big trouble. So yeah. Nothing on the book outside of the sample chapters is allowed until release.

Those would all be wonderful things that I wish this software suite had.

Hello Recca! It's always good to see new people who have no idea about the cosmere It's pretty exciting! You might want to read Mistborn, though. There are some big spoilers for Mistborn 3 floating around. I hope you like it here! I promise I won't spike you. (That's a reference to something in Mistborn )

I'd say that with Firstborn, since it never really got sold outside of the con exclusive package, that'd be totally fine.

Every time I ordered from Weller's, I asked a really in depth cosmere question. My favorite time was when they did orders by phone, and the guy who took my question was so confused.

This is not basic, but is very complete and up to date (as of a few months ago): http://www.coppermind.net/wiki/Cosmere As long as you've read Mistborn and Stormlight it doesn't contain anything you should spoiler. But, I think you'll find literally everything you want here. So, it isn't basic, I know, but this should serve you very well.

Relationship rant: I'm pretty sick of girls saying and acting like they are into me but then it turns out they had doubts all along. You could have just told me in the first place. I actually quite like listening, even if it is something I wouldn't want to hear. But instead little to no explanation is really irritating. It kind of makes you wonder why anyone puts in any effort into significant others at all. I obviously need to just stop giving any craps at all...

No, I disagree that a new thread is needed. 100 pages is arbitrary and I want it centralized here. There is no benefit to there being another topic and I have closed the second topic, Silver.

That's going to be a strictly "we get what we get" type thing. I'm not touching any of that xD

Did I say that? I don't remember. xD It is primarily that my attention on the site is directed to the new version which is taking a long time, so this won't be added for a while (I really just don't have the time) but they will come.

There are various emoticons I wish to add, and will do so eventually.

Oh yeah. I do need to do that. I've been really busy, and admittedly, rehashing things I've already said is kind of not a task I am excited to do. *Administrators. Simply to make the distinction with Josh, Mi'ch, and I, and the other more focused administrators more clear. See my post above for the explanation. Bard, you might want to PM suggestions instead.

I do it on occasion, when needed

Man this makes me so excited to learn about her. It's crazy we will get to know the full picture in the next book. I mean, I was always interested to know what made Dalinar do this and what she was like, but it wasn't on the forefront of my mind. Now it is. I imagine that with Brandon and Peter's hints about Dalinar's earlier personality... Dalinar used to not be a good person at all. It seems like she was the better person, at least up to Gavilar's death. Very interesting. SA3 plz now.

Oh, I should probably answer the questions raised in this thread. Jokes of Hemalurgy aside, we look for people as we trawl through the forums. There's a thread in our staff forum where staff discuss potential people, and we discuss it at length. There's a lot we look for in a mod, and though the spam is annoying, we don't come at it in an angle of "hey we need this time slot filled." We look for other qualities, like competence and the person fits in with the staff (namely, that their vision mostly aligns with our own). Also, even considering a mod in the time slot, bashing bots isn't a full time job. Killing bots is very simple; merely a button click away to destroy them... Someone just needs to hit the button. Point is, we would promote based on merit, not time slot, as the spam is not a sufficient reason in and of itself to promote. Yes, but then you don't get to see the life drain out of their eyes as their love magic fails them. It's just not the same. Moderators have two roles: they are eyes and ears of the staff, and then they are functionaries that have the general abilities you list. Though, we don't have them do disciplining anymore. Global moderators are expanded moderators, and have the complete forum-side toolset to do things. We also let them speak on behalf of the staff for matters of disciplining or other things. Basically, same as moderator, but with more trust. Administrators can do everything. There's Josh, Mi'ch, and I who get total access to everything on the serverside and setup stuff. Other admins are now actually a lower tier (which we really need to make a new group for), where each of those administrators have their own section they are "in charge" of. For example, Will with graphics, Joe with the Wiki, and now Weiry with News/Database stuff. These admins have the same forum abilities and do get server access. Most don't use it extensively as they are not on the technology side of things. Administrators also obviously get to deal with disciplinary matters. All staff get a voice about decisions, but the administrators are the trusted high council who really can shape the direction we go. Ultimate decisions come from Josh, Mi'ch, and I, and of those three, Josh is in charge. The three of us talk all the time to make fast decisions. I remember when we banned someone for being a total jerkwad literally within thirty minutes of him being a jerkwad. Who said committee decisions are not efficient?

I understand it's annoying, guys...

I'm changing the topic title to something a bit less spoilery