Principles of Lore and Forum Guidelines

[Gmr Leon]

Principles of Lore.

1. Never assume anything is certain.
2. Avoid stating information as fact without supporting evidence or cited sources.
3. If you're presenting information in a thread, please, please, link to your source information, or, if it's image-related, attach or link to the image. It needn't be as soon as you've posted it, but at some point, try to get the image or link and edit it in to your original post.
4. Always, always, always argue a point intellectually, and provide your own evidence to the contrary of another person's opinion.
5. Never assume someone is always correct, always doubt what they're telling you, no matter how much evidence they may present.*
6. Keep an open mind, and be willing to learn. This is a place of speculation, debate, and learning. As long as something has legitimate evidence to back it up, no matter how absurd it initially sounds, it might be viable.
7. Always remain uncertain of the information you are about to present. Try to find holes in it before you post so that you won't be ridiculed, and so that you'll double-check your sources and evidence.
8. Avoid basing an idea on circumstantial evidence. In short, anything that is highly dependent on precise circumstances for it to occur.
9. Levels have no place here. Enemy levels mean nothing of their actual strength. Nor does the ease with which you kill them mean anything of their strength.
10. Gameplay mechanics only have a place here when specifically stated in the lore. Such things as levels, mentioned above, attribute points, map travel, and the like are not lore.

*Amount of evidence is never confirmation or firm support for a theory. The evidence must be legitimate, capable of being tested or observed by others, and not based in circumstances created by, or exclusive to, the researcher. The latter meaning that the circumstances were set up by the researcher, (luring of monsters or creatures to a site to make it appear as though they are connected) or they were bizarre, once in a lifetime, experiences by the researcher that are impossible to reproduce.

Motto of this forum:
"De omnibus dubitandum."-Descartes.
"All is to be doubted."

[Gmr Leon]

On the Definition of a Theory and Hypothesis:
Theory:
In science, an explanation or model that covers a substantial group of occurrences in nature and has been confirmed by a substantial number of experiments and observations. A theory is more general and better verified than a hypothesis.

Hypothesis:
In science, a statement of a possible explanation for some natural phenomenon. A hypothesis is tested by drawing conclusions from it; if observation and experimentation show a conclusion to be false, the hypothesis must be false.

In short, keep this in mind:

[Konig Des Todes]

To add on:

Forum Guidelines. Now in bite-size sections!

Basics.

• If you’re new here, read through the first post of the sticky thread 'Welcome to the Priory!'
• As always, the main forum rules and guidelines apply.
• Keep the discussions here to a sensible and mature level.
• Referring to the above, as the things discussed here may often be very intellectual and arguable topics, it is unacceptable to flame others or try to impose that your opinion is entirely correct. Everybody has the right to their opinion and the right to express it.

On the Area of Threads and Their Topics.

• Make sure any discussion topics always relate to lore as a general term. Things that it may include are listed in the other sticky thread.
• Prior to creating a new thread, make sure you search and check over previous threads to see if the topic has already been covered. If it has been covered in a previous thread, post in that thread - no matter how old (as long as the post is relevant to the topic of the thread).
• Never hesitate to a post a new thread for the discussion of a new topic, and never be hesitant to express your opinion and knowledge in discussions.
• If your thread is not a big topic, post it in the random discussion thread instead.
• Lastly, do not open threads for discussing a topic which takes place during Guild Wars 1 or earlier. This forum is only for discussion events in the lore that occurred after Guild Wars: Eye of the North.

On the Discussion of Topics.

• Nobody shall try to come out on discussions as superior to others in intellect.
• Do not respond to other people's theories with posts such as 'You're going into too much detail, it's just a piece of scenery'. While some things in the game may not have any basis in lore (as far as ANet is concerned), it is up to us to explain them by creating our own theories, going beyond what ANet has given us. No matter how abstract or over-complicated a theory may seem to you, that theory is effectively the opinion/interpretation/research of its creator, so please respect that theory just as you would respect another person's opinion/interpretation/research.
• Discuss and research things that you hold an interest in. Do not try to make things seem boring and laborious. We can bring so much detail to the game world and the information that surrounds it here as long as we maintain interest in the subjects that we pursue.
• Images from in-game and from websites are fine here, but just make sure that they are relevant as evidence or information in a discussion.

Spoilers.

If you are going to make a thread that will contain discussion about the storyline that may spoil things for others, always include a spoiler warning either in the title or at the start of the original post. Similarly, if you are making a post that could spoil the story for others, put a spoiler warning at the beginning of the post.

Repetition of topics

As time goes by, we will probably see new threads posted on subjects that have been discussed in previous threads. If any of the previous discussions were recent - containing posts from within the last three months - then I will lock the new thread and ask that discussion be taken to the older thread. If the previous thread's last post is beyond three months old, then I will allow the new one to continue. To avoid having your thread locked, please use Search to see if a topic has been discussed previously, before you post your thread. This system is simply to make sure that threads are not repeated too often, and that good discussions may be recycled.


Thanks for reading.