Rulings Guidelines

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Kahedron
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Post by Kahedron » 4 years ago

In addition to the general forum rules concerning spamming, flaming, and the like, by posting in the Rulings forum you are also accepting the following rules:

1.0 GENERAL RULES FOR POSTING

1.1 Be polite. While the general forum rules already prohibit flaming, please remember that you're here to give or get assistance. The standards for politeness are therefore higher than other parts of the MTG Nexus forums. Don't berate someone because they don't know the rules as well as you do and don't ignore someone's answer just because they're not a judge.
Along with the Rumor Mill, this is one of the first parts of the site a new user will see, and we don't want to drive them away.

1.2 Do not discuss disqualifications. Do not discuss or ask about a disqualification from a tournament unless information has been made public by the DCI or until the investigation is confirmed to be closed. Investigations in progress should not be discussed by the participants, and discussion by other parties is generally pointless. Also, do not post about illegal activities observed from organizers, judges, or players.

1.3 Do not discuss exam content. Do not discuss content from exams in the DCI judge center. When you signed up for that site you agreed that you wouldn't discuss any of the questions therein (yes, this includes practice exams). If you discuss content from one of these exams, you will receive an infraction, your thread will be deleted, and you will be reported to the DCI.

1.4 No off-topic discussions. The Rulings forum is a place for discussing the Magic game rules and tournament policy, so only post if you're either asking or answering a rules question. Posts about strategy advice (combos, strategies, deckbuilding, etc.) or anything else that isn't directly related to the rules and the question being asked are not permitted.
Exceptions: 'Thank you' posts are permitted to acknowledge that your question has been answered. Including minor strategic hints in a post that answers a rules question is okay, but posts that contain nothing but strategy advice are spam.

2.0 RULES FOR ASKING QUESTIONS

2.1 Use Card Tags. When you ask a question about specific cards, you must use card tags for any card names except for basic lands so that the posters that answer your question can look up the cards and give accurate answers. The easiest way to make card tags is to put "

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[card]
" directly in front of the card name and "

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[/card]
" directly after it. For example,

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[card]Runeclaw Bear[/card]
will show up as Runeclaw Bear. For more detailed instructions, see the Card Tag Explanation thread.

2.2 Search for answers. Before asking a question, please check whether your question has been asked recently. If your question was already asked and answered earlier that day, asking the same question again is pointless. If you only find an answer from months ago, please make a new thread for your question, since the answer might have changed.

2.3 No "grab bags" of questions. Compilation threads of several different topics are bad because you can't give the thread a meaningful title, which makes the thread impossible to find in a search, and follow-up discussions are hard to follow if the thread jumps back and forth between several topics. Therefore, we prefer that each thread contain only one or two different topics. If you've got a notebook full of questions from your last Commander session, great, post them all, but please break them up into several threads instead of making one megathread.

2.4 Only Official Spoilers. Questions about mechanics or cards from unreleased sets are allowed only if the mechanic or card in question has been officially previewed on wizards.com. If the card is in the MTG Nexus spoiler, the tags should already work, but if they don't, you must use

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[url]
tags to link the card image from the wizards.com card image gallery so that people can look up the card you're asking about. Questions about rumors that have not been officially previewed belong in the New Card Rulings discussion in the Previews section. This includes hypothetical or custom card designs, questions about non-existent cards or mechanics belong in the Custom Card Rulings discussion in Custom Card Creation.

3.0 RULES FOR ANSWERING QUESTIONS

3.1 Explain your answer. When somebody has a rules dispute with their friends, "some guy on a forum said that this works" doesn't pull much weight, so always backup your answers with an explanation. Exception: If the question is "Is [explanation stuff] correct?", "Yes" is an acceptable answer. "No" is not - explain why it's wrong then.

3.2 Don't guess at an answer. If you're not sure of your answer, please don't post. By saying "I think the answer is this, but I could be wrong" or similar statements, you're just telling the reader to ignore your post. Check the Comprehensive Rules or other resources to be sure, or leave the question to someone who is sure. It's okay to be wrong, but guessing does not help anybody.

3.3 Don't repeat answers needlessly. For most questions, one correct answer is enough, so if you're just posting to repeat what the person before you said, don't bother.

3.4 No nitpicking. We want people to give straightforward answers to specific rules questions, and answers only need to be correct in the context of the question they're answering. Posting to point out that an answer is wrong because of informal terms (such as "fizzle") or because the answer can change in narrow circumstances discourages people from giving straightforward answers, which does a disservices to everyone.
Example: When somebody asks "Are Swamps black?", it is fine to answer "No, lands are colorless." Pointing out that that answer is wrong because of Painter's Servant or Dryad Arbor would be considered nitpicking.


See, that's it! Half of it's common sense anyway, the rest isn't even that hard. When everyone follows these rules, then I'm sure that there won't be any problems at all! If you do have any questions, just PM one of the Rulings Mods.

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