We are pretty lenient when it comes to behavoir on Stardock forums, but we are increasingly seeing a lot of flaming and other negative behavior.

It is not enough to simply avoid swearing and name-calling.  These forums are not a battlegrounds for flamewars to be fought.  Other forums are a lot less lenient than we are, and that's been backfiring on us for awhile.

The short of it is, treat others as you would like to be treated.  Generally, be polite to other users and the developers. 

Here are some specific points:

1) Don't flame the newbies.  We were all newbies once, if not here, then elsewhere.

2) Don't make assumptions.  If someone posts a bug report and they don't even post a debug.err, point them at my sticky thread about how to submit a bug report.  There's no need to jump down people's throats.

3) Don't spam the forums, and wait a decent interval before bumping a thread.  Also note that we generally don't work on weekends.   If you don't get a response immediately, try #galciv on irc.stardock.com or e-mail us. 

4) Paying for the game does not give you the right to abuse the developers or other users either here on the forums or in the chatroom. 

5) When replying to other people's threads, don't hijack them.  In other words, if someone posts a thread about multiplayer, don't jump in and start ranting about the lack of carriers. 

We don't demote or ban people friviously.  If you are demoted or banned, you are free to object by e-mailing us.  However, being civil will get you a lot farther than if you're nasty.

I have seen several people post about how they love how the developers actually post on the forums and interact with the community.  It makes it a lot harder for us to do that if we have to sift through the flame wars, questions that were answered by the stickies, spam, etc. 

If you find someone's behavior inappropriate or offensive, don't waste your time flaming them.  E-mail a moderator a link to the thread or come in #galciv on irc.stardock.com.