[XPERIA X8 General] sgt. meow:
SOME THINGS YOU GOTTA BE CLEAR ABOUT

Well, if you've read the first post, you'll know by now what XDA expects from you. You should also know that there are certain things that XDA finds very important. You may also not understand a couple of things here-and-there. This post intends to clarify all that.

1.

Reading:

Reading posts on XDA will enlighten you. Really. Try it some time. As a newcomer you should read through all the stickies of your device's forum. It will not only help you find things, but also get used to XDA little by little. Even Senior Members read, so why can't you? Your motto here has to be: "Read more, post less useless stuff". Trust me it's the only way you'll ever survive in XDA (we're not that bad but we do know how to behave with ignorant people).

Basically, you wanna say on XDA, you need to read. A lot. You have to learn to understand that the OP (like me) usually works super-hard to post a new thread (again, like me), and expects you to read the whole of it before making a "smart" comment. You have to learn to respect that. It helps reduce spam, too, because there's a great possibility that the answer to your question is already in the thread.

So just read. Read before you post, even if it takes ages to read just the OP.

2.

Searching:

The button's there for a reason. Search before you open up a new thread. It doesn't help any of us. 90% of the time the question's been answered already. That means there's a thread for that particular problem. Post there. Why create useless duplicate threads when you can find the answer in the other thread? However if, in the thread, your question has no answer or only part of the answer, you can create a new thread, provided the first one is really old and hasn't been updated in a long, long time. Posts that revive a thread after a long, long time are considered spam some times,

especially ones that just say "Thanks for xxx and yyy"

. You can also search XDA with Google. Just add this to your search terms:

site:xda-developers.com

Please. Search. Reduce spam. Help yourself. Help XDA. Help the world (okay this bit's unnecessary).

3.

Giving and getting thanks

Like I've said in the past, thank any developer who has been working hard just to bring you the stuff he/she brings. Not just devs; themers, contributors and, mostly, normal members help out a lot too. They ask for nothing really, except for a little recognition. Please thank them. It acts as an encouragement to continue their work, to continue helping members. It's not like clicking the button will rob you of your soul, or anything. It's free of cost.

That being said, don't go about thanking spammers. It only encourages them to spam more. We don't want that.

You'll see every member has a thanks meter. It's basically a count of the thanks they have got over time. It's not meant to be some kind of "prestige" meter, and therefore one must not post with the sole purpose of getting thanks. It gets you nowhere, trust me.

Anyways, this is how the bar fills up:

1st bar - 26

2nd bar - 51

3rd bar - 101

4th bar - 201

bug here, never gets to 5 bars, probably 501 if fixed.

6th bar - 1001

7th bar - 2001

8th bar - 5001

9th bar - 8001

Maxed! - 10000

4.

User titles

If you've spent some time on XDA, you'll have noticed there are some titles given to members. Here's how they are given:

- Junior Member - New members with less than 30 (?) posts.

- Member - Members with more than 30 (?) but less than 100 posts.

- Senior Member - Members with 100+ posts.

- Recognized Contributor - A title given to members who have helped people with various problems. You can apply for this position or ask a Forum Moderator, Senior Moderator, Recognized Contributor to nominate you. They don't give it away for free though; you have to meet some requirements.

- Recognized Themer - A member who's known for original themes. You can apply to the Senior Moderators yourself, or ask a Recognized Contributor to nominate you.

- Recognized Developer - A title given to a member for his/her work in his/her device-specific development. You can apply to the Senior Moderators yourself. I don't think anyone can nominate you here. The developer committee assesses your overall activity and decides whether you're eligible for this position.

- Elite Recognized Developer - This title is given to Recognized Developers who have provided outstanding work, way beyond the knowledge of us mere mortals. A Recognized Developer is re-assessed by the developer committee before being given that title.

- Forum Moderator - This title is given to Recognized Contributors who are responsible enough to handle a forum on their own with some other such members of course. They have to fill out an application (which is no longer available now) and then the moderator committee approves of them.

- Senior Moderator - Senior Moderators are in charge of the whole site-wide support for Forum Moderators and nitty-gritty business that Forum Moderators cannot look after.

- Administrators - Next comes the admins who are responsible for everything as a whole. Each look after a specific part of XDA.

- MikeChannon's the dude behind all this. He's the Forum Administrator.

Other titles you may come across are

- Moderator Committee - sits on the Mod Committee

- Developer Committee - as above, but for Developer Committee

- XDA Newswriter - publishes articles for the Portal (front page)

- Retired xxxx - have since officially 'left' their XDA position

-Skeleton of this part taken largely from mf2112's guide. Thanks a lot, bro.