Welcome to the Trade Rules Review thread!
Want to know if your trading rules are clear, direct and to the point? Want some advice on
how to make people want to trade with you? Come post here and find out,
but be sure to help others too!
EDIT 10/13/2016:If you see anyone breaking any of these rules, including asking for a review without giving one, report it to CS staff. If this keeps up, we may have to add a banlist, and I really don't want to do that.
Thread will be remade at 900 pages by voidrabbit
Want to know if your trading rules are clear, direct and to the point? Want some advice on
how to make people want to trade with you? Come post here and find out,
but be sure to help others too!
EDIT 10/13/2016:If you see anyone breaking any of these rules, including asking for a review without giving one, report it to CS staff. If this keeps up, we may have to add a banlist, and I really don't want to do that.
Thread will be remade at 900 pages by voidrabbit
R U L E S
Read before posting!
1) This is not the place to rant about someone else's trade rules.
2) Before you ask for a review, give one to the last person who asked.
If someone asks for a review without giving one, ignore them and report it to CS staff.
3) Do not yell at your reviewer if they gave you a bad review. In the same
vein, do not yell at someone who's trade rules you're reviewing. We're
trying to help each other here.
4) Offer advice where necessary, but remain polite.
5) If you see fighting, report it to a CS Staff member. Do not join the
argument.
6) Please try to keep your reviews longer than three sentences!
To beef it up, include hints to make a person's trade rules more
attractive, more easily readable, more understandable, ect.
While not everyones' rules need a huge review, try to make yours
as helpful as possible.
Don't want to post here but
need some help with your rules?
That's fine! It's totally okay to be shy. Here are some tips to help you make your trade rules
clear and easy to read without using big shouty capital letters and scaring off potential traders!
Don't use huge/too many pictures. While some decoration is okay, giant pictures can take awhile
for some computers to load, and often more than one is distracting from the rules themselves.
Try to keep your images small enough that they don't lag one's internet or make it hard to read
the rest of your rules. Many people like to use pixel pets from other adoptables websites, like
dragons from dragcave.net. That way your other adoptables can get all the clicks and views they
need to grow, without getting in the way!
Good places for little pictures include: the bottom or top of your trade rules, sitting above your
headers, on the side and in corners.
HUGE, SHOUTY CAPITALS ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA unless you want to scare away some
potential traders. writing your rules in capital letters can make you seem like an angry, eager-to-foe
person just waiting for someone to break a rule. When writing your trading rules you'll want to come
off as friendly, and you'll want people to know that you'll work with them as much as possible to get
the best deal for you both!
Giant text is an eyesore, and tiny text is hard to read. A good range for text size in trade
rules is about 120 at the largest and 80 at the smallest. Remember that you can bold, underline and
italicize what you want read the most.
Brightly colored text hurts people's eyes. colors like lime green, bright red, yellow,
deep blue, cyan and hot pink will make your trade rules painful to read. Colors themselves are
not a bad idea, though! Quite the opposite, in fact! Just be sure to use the right ones. Tone down your colors,
by either making them darker and paler or just paler in general. Don't make them too pale, though, or else
they become invisible!
Let people know when you last updated your trade rules! Something i do with my trade rules that caught
on pretty quickly with other users is adding a little 'last updated' box in the right-hand corner, in smallish text so it
doesn't get in peoples' way while they read. If someone trades with you often, they're most likely not to read your
rules a second time unless they know there's something new there.
Fonts like ＴＨＥＳＥ don't work in trade rules. But they don't have to! A new trend in decorating
one's trade rules is transparent images of text! Using an art program like GIMP, Photoshop or even SAI, people
make transparent banners using unique fonts for their trade rules. It's a great way to decorate
your trade rules without using giant pictures that take up too much space.
I'll reveiw your Rules, ASAP.