To all forum participants,

Welcome, and thanks for being part of the MAKING HISTORY community. From the early days our company, creating a successful discussion forum has been one of our key goals. Whether it's to discuss our games, history, education technology, or share your ideas and opinions, please make yourself at home.

FORUM RULES

There is a single, primary rule that will allow our discussions to proceed with a minimum of fuss, and that is this: Ladies and gentlemen, please be ladies and gentlemen. Treat your fellow posters with the courtesy you wish for yourself, and our forum will be, for the most part, just fine. This site will likely attract sincere and intelligent people interested in discussing education and strategy games. However, as a veteran of online forums and newsgroups, I know that occasionally a person may register and post simply to start arguments or insult people (trolling is the common vernacular), so I want everyone to have a simple rulebook to work from.

1. Racist, sexist, homophobic, or other hate speech is not tolerated. Users posting such things will be banned, and the offending posts removed.

2. All members shall conduct themselves in a courteous manner. People get passionate about the things that matter to them, and this can lead to wonderful, enriching discussions. Just please avoid derogatory language, insults, or ad hominem attacks. Avoid thread spamming--jumping into many threads and repeating the same message. Honest participation is also encouraged. If someone rebuts your argument with logic and reason, its polite to acknowledge it. Users uninterested in maintaining polite discourse will be banned.

3. Copyrighted material should be respected at all times. If you post a quote from an external source, please mark it as such and give the author credit. If you would like to post a large amount of copyrighted material, please instead post a URL link to its location. Do not post a URL to a site that contains stolen material. Users posting such material will be banned, and the posts removed. This rule also applies to our own copyrighted products. Anyone admitting to pirating the game will be immediately banned.

4. Intellectual or abstract discussions of politics or religion are acceptable, but personal religious and political discussions should be avoided. A discussion on how certain religious or political groups influenced a particular country during a historical period is just fine. Claiming people who dont attend your particular church are heretics is a no-no. Care should be exercised discussing potentially volatile subjects. Users violating this rule will be banned.

5. It is incumbent upon all to attempt to maintain a high level of correct spelling and grammar. Just imagine Im your 4th grade teacher and I have a red magic marker ready to circle misspelled words and give your forum post a spelling grade. If spelling is not your forte, try preparing your post in a word processing program before posting. The occasional text error will not be noted (we are all busy folks, after all), this mainly applies only if your post is difficult to understand due to poor spelling and grammar. Obviously, anyone having difficulty because English is not their native language will be given far more slack.

6. Users who have been banned for cause, who return with alternate usernames or who use software that changes IP's will, upon discovery, have all posts created by them deleted, and in most cases, threads they initiate will be deleted entirely. As this forum is now an integrated part of a commercial site selling products, repeat offenders may be subject to legal action.

7. The best forums are democratic in nature. If members wish to add to or change the rules, they should post it as a suggestion. If there appears to be support, we can start a poll and vote on it.

Finally, if you have any problems registering for the forum, you can email techsupport@muzzylane.com and we will fix the problem.

Best regards,

Muzzy Lane Team--