Welcome to forum.thevalency.com

Table of Contents

1 - Who Are We?
1.1 - Member Colours
2 - Rules
2.1 - Shit We Hate
3 - How You Can Help
3.1 - Posting
3.2 - Uploading
3.3 - Servers
4 - User Mixes
4.1 - Uploading & Posting Your Mix
4.2 - Responding to Mixes

Who Are We?

 The Valency is a project started by me, Moe at the end of 2007, with a simple goal of posting some reviews on HEDM (Hard Electronic Dance Music) releases, with a focus primarily on hardstyle. Keby expanded the Blag with his mini-reviews about hardcore releases, and soon the Blag flourished. Eventually, download links were added to each mini-review, and the Blag gained (and still gains) a considerable amount of traction. The servers were getting hammered, so we had to shift everything to a registration-based forum, which is what you're seeing now, to reduce bandwidth costs.

Member Colours

 The forum is pretty colourful, because we like pretty things. Here's what the colours mean.

Blag Runners

The big cheeses, the OG's. Admins, if you will.

Release Managers

All round moderators of all forums.

Forum-Specific Moderators

We're looking for moderators for specific forums. If you think you've got a pretty keen knowledge of a specific area, let us know.

Supporters

Supporters are basically individuals that stand out in the community one way or another, whether it's uploading plenty of stuff, or contributing to the community in general. There's no real benefit (yet - though something is in the works) to being a supporter, except the fact that you stand out, and people may likely listen to you more often, because they know you've got something decent to say (most of the time anyway). Supporters have a nifty orange name.

Rules

Shit We Hate

 Here's what you can get warned/banned for:

Quoting the original post.

Honestly, there is NO need to do it. What's the point?

Generally not contributing.

Whether it's providing uploads or participating in discussions in General or about releases themselves, that all counts as contributing. If you aren't doing either of these, you're generally not contributing.

For questions about this you can PM any Release Managers.

How You Can Help

 There's always something we're going to need help with, so if any of you can lend us a hand, that'd be fantastic.

Posting

 As simple as it sounds, it's probably what helps us the most. Creating a thriving, growing community is the overall aim of the site, and you, the little member, are the key part in doing this. Create a thread in General, discuss a release, whatever!, just as long as it's insightful, relevant or interesting.

Uploading

Make sure you do a search before you start uploading your files, because they might already be on the site.

Figure out approximately how big your upload is going to be, use WinRaR to compress it.

Then pick one of the appropriate services, outlined below:
Max 30MB - Speedyshare
Max 100MB - RapidShare
Max 500MB - Megaupload

You'll be given a download link, copy it, create a new thread in the correct forum here, paste the link in, then put [hide] tags around your link.

Servers

 Simply, the host we're on now (Dreamhost) sucks. If you run/have access to a fast server that is available and you'd like to dedicate to the site, that'd be swell. Get in touch with Moe if this is you.

User Mixes

Okay people, I've noticed this board is becoming such a mess that we need a couple simple rules for uploading mixes here.

Uploading Your Mix

 First, let me set a standard format for topic titles:

[Genre/style] DJ Name - Mix Name

You can put any additional notes you may have in the topic description. If your mix doesn't have a name, just think of something - I don't care if it's your mother's maiden name or the date on which you mixed it.

Then there's the actual post. Therein, please include a tracklist of your mix. If for whatever reason you don't have one, clearly state that fact so people don't have to ask for it. It might be advisable to at least give people an impression of what kind of tracks your mix contains if you don't have a tracklist available.

You can decide for yourself if you want to hide the download link or not. Bear in mind that if you don't hide the download link, people who have not registered with the forum will be able to download it as well. This means not hiding it might get you some extra downloads, but no extra feedback.

You can also pick an upload service of your choice - anything goes as long as it's not harmful to the downloader.

Responding to Mixes

 A major nuisance to the uploader of a mix, just like to the uploader of a vinyl or album, is asking to upload said mix to a different upload service. It is accepted if done politely and with respect. If not, your post will be deleted and you will probably be warned.

If you have downloaded a mix, try to get back to the topic once you've listened to it and give as much feedback as possible. Constructive feedback is ALWAYS highly appreciated, even if you don't know much about mixing / DJ sets. If you think you lack the knowledge to give proper feedback, just forget that. Make a post stating you don't know much, and say what you think of the mix anyway. Mind you, flaming or giving nonconstructive comments will earn you at least a warning, maybe even a ban. Of course there is no way of enforcing people to give their opinion, but let me ask you again to please say what you think of the mix.

If your upload is a mess, the thread will be closed or edited to match the proper format. If you repeatedly fail to comply with the rules, you may receive a warning.

I would also like to stress the criticism rule once more: nonconstructive criticism = warning or ban. This WILL be actively enforced.