[V2] Square-Enix News Guidelines

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As the name suggests, this section aims to keep both members and guests alike updated with the latest announcements, trailers and miscellaneous pieces of information from Square-Enix.

Members are encouraged to discuss the news topics at hand in the appropriate threads as they would in other sections. If you have something to comment on and discuss with your fellow newsreaders on a particular announcement or interview, feel free to voice your thoughts in the appropriate threads.

Bear in mind therefore, that this section does also follow general forum rules and regulations, which can be found here. General flaming for instance, is just as prohibited in here as elsewhere. In addition to that, in order to keep this section organised, the following guidelines should also be adhered to:

1) Ensure that the news you are posting is recent.


This is a general practice of journalism. Posting news from an old article is of little use, so please avoid posting an article from several months ago. For a general idea as to how recent you should be aiming for, anything up to two weeks at the latest would be acceptable.

2) Make sure someone hadn’t already beaten you to it.


In addition to the above, we would like to avoid the problem of duplicate news threads on the same piece(s) of information springing up. There have been plenty of occasions in the past when certain interviews have been posted several times, mainly in segmented forms. To avoid this, check at least the entirety of the first page and open relevant threads to check whether the information you wish to post has already been posted.


If you wish to be even more certain, you may also use the search function which can be found on the top of the site to do a double check.

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3) When posting a site update, include the date.

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For organisational purposes, you are advised to accompany your thread title with a preceding date. This is to help us identify when the section has been updated and whether it has already been posted before. An example of what you should aim to do is as follows:

[03/04] Naoki Yoshida Details Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 Beta Update
[09/12] Famitsu Scores Final Fantasy XIII-2 Full Marks

Bear in mind that dates are set in the DD/MM/YY format. It is understandable that this may prompt some confusion. If necessary, feel free to message the moderator of the section and a date format change can be applied.​

4) Be specific as to what you are posting.


When making the title of your thread, avoid vague wordings. Keep them relatively specific, so we can easily deduce what news is to be expected, and it helps determine whether or not the news topic has already been covered.

Avoid:

[15/09] Versus Stuff Updated
[19/11] New Game Announced
[07/12] Toriyama Interviewed By Japanese Magazine

Instead, go for:

[15/09] Nomura Confirms Final Fantasy Versus XIII Japanese Release Date
[19/11] Square-Enix Announces Tomb Raider: The Lost Buster Sword at TGS Conference
[07/12] Famitsu Interview: Toriyama Inspired By FPS Games

Additionally, you should make sure that what is mentioned in the thread title is fully relevant to the content of the post itself. Titles that have very little to do with the actual news are misleading and lead to unnecessary confusion.​

5) Ensure that the thread is accompanied by sufficient evidence.


Perhaps there is some speculation somewhere on the internet that may evoke a lot of interest from other members, but please make sure that your news thread topic is corroborated with sufficient evidence from an actual and trusted news website such as Andriasang or VG247. Otherwise there is little basis to support the legitimacy of the news posted and the thread in itself may be closed.​

6) Link your source!


Don’t simply copy an entire article and neglect to provide a link to the appropriate source of the news. At the end of the day, the effort put in to give to readers and visitors the updates is that of the news website, and the least that can be done is to provide proper credit.

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At the end of your post, please provide a URL link to the relevant article. Any format will do, so long as it is clear to the reader where your news originated from. An example of how you would go about doing this is as follows:

Source: JustDucks

Source: [ url = http://justducks.co.uk ] JustDucks [ / url ]

Follow the coding above and simply omit the spaces.

7) General forum post guidelines apply in this section.


In addition to the thread making guidelines as detailed above, members should remember that the Square Enix News section is also a post count section and therefore general forum rules on posting also apply to this section. Therefore as in any other post count section, short, spammy and at times irrelevant posts will not be allowed and may be deleted.

If for example, a post such as this has been come across in a Final Fantasy Versus XIII news thread:

I want this game!
While it may be referring to Versus itself and technically on-topic, its brevity means it is essentially a spam post and therefore contributes very little to the discussion at hand. The post would be asked to be expanded upon, although consistent spam posts following this from the same poster would result in immediate deletions in the future. Repeat offences will result in infractions.

If however, in the same news thread a post like this is made:

Wow, it looks pretty good. Hope it comes out soon. :)
While posts like this are perfectly on-topic and contributory, these posts may also be asked to be expanded upon depending on the content and how a moderator sees fit to.
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As aforementioned, members are encouraged to discuss what they have seen, though this is no invitation to directly attack or flame another member for views you do not share. There is an ignore function available, and it should be used when necessary. A moderator has no need to constantly remind members of this, so do make good use of it. If you genuinely feel that you are being victimised by another because of conflicting opinions and/or clashing personalities, please make use of the report function on the bottom left hand side of each post, and this will alert the staff.

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Rules may be subject to change and/or additions.
 
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