The Flat Earth Society
The Flat Earth Society => Suggestions & Concerns => Topic started by: xasop on December 15, 2013, 06:54:55 PM
-
This took longer than I'd intended to get around to. Sorry, work has been fairly busy lately. I'd also like to thank Supertails for coming up with an initial draft of this stuff, which I've then edited somewhat to produce the below.
I'm trying to keep these minimal. We can add more rules as we come across situations that highlight the need for them, but I'd rather not start with rules covering every possible circumstance under the Sun, as nobody is going to read them and they will be difficult to enforce. Let's start with some obvious ones and go from there.
Please post any comments or suggestions regarding these rules. I don't want to implement rules that aren't going to be for the benefit of the community, so feedback is definitely something you should err on the side of giving more rather than less of.
No personal attacks.
The Flat Earth boards are a place for debate, and debate is often heated and tense, but don't handle this situation by lashing out at others. Keep your posts civil and to the point, and don't begin insulting others. If you have run out of valid arguments, simply do not post. The exception to this rule is in Complete Nonsense and Angry Ranting, where personal attacks are par for the course. If you do not like this, then don't post in those fora.
Anyone seen personally attacking another member will be immediately warned. After two warnings, a ban with length determined by moderator discretion will be issued.
Stay on topic.
If what you're discussing isn't related to the thread's opening topic or a natural progression thereof, it's off-topic. Minor derailments will be handled by splitting the off-topic posts into another thread (possibly in another forum); repeat offenders will receive a warning. Depending on the frequency and severity of derailments, a short ban or restriction from specific subfora may be imposed after at least three warnings.
Do not disclose personal information.
Do not post any personal information relating another member without their express consent. Any post containing such information will be deleted immediately and a warning issued. A second offence will result in a ban, the length of which is up to moderator discretion.
Post in the appropriate forum.
Read each forum's description and ask yourself if your thread fits. Have a question about Flat Earth Theory? Post it in Flat Earth Q&A. Want to talk about Breaking Bad? That goes in Arts & Entertainment. Have casual discussion in The Lounge and rant about how your day went in Angry Ranting. If you have a suggestion or a concern to do with the forum, such as possible improvements or bugs, post it in Suggestions & Concerns—we'd appreciate it! See? That wasn't so hard.
For the purpose of handling offenders, this rule will be treated as a special case of the "stay on topic" rule.
Keep alternate accounts within reason.
We will be taking a very relaxed policy towards alternate accounts ("alts"), provided that people do not force us to take a stricter stance by abusing this policy. Alts are allowed, and will be permitted free reign across all fora, provided that they follow the rules for the forum they are posting in. FES has a history of alts that contribute to discussions in addition to the usual complement of spamming and trolling alts, and it would be a shame to try to restrict this.
There are two exceptions to this policy: one, an alt that is used for the purpose of furthering a main or another alt's argument without itself contributing a unique point of view on the situation ("sockpuppetting") will be immediately banned; two, an alt that is intended to impersonate a member either here or on the old FES will be immediately banned, and deleted if it is occupying the username of an old FES member, as otherwise it would bar them from registering here.
An alt breaking any rule that would ordinarily result in a warning can (at moderator discretion) be handled by immediately banning the alt account, and instead warning the main account of the person controlling it.
Use appropriate channels for seeking help.
If you have concerns about a member, a thread or specific posts, you have a few options. You can use the report post feature to alert the moderation staff to your issue; you can PM a moderator directly if you'd rather have a discussion with someone about the problem; or you can create a thread in Suggestions & Concerns if you'd rather open the situation to public discussion.
Posting complaints directly into the thread in question is only going to escalate the situation, and this will be treated as off-topic posting.
-
These look like guidelines, not rules.
Happy?
-
I'd like to see a rule about excessive use of BBCode outside of CN/AR. EJ-like spamming of quotes should be explicitly prohibited.
-
I'd like to see a rule about excessive use of BBCode outside of CN/AR. EJ-like spamming of quotes should be explicitly prohibited.
I dunno, I think it's pretty admirable how much effort he puts into responding to absolutely everyone everywhere. What's the harm in it, anyway?
-
I'd like to see a rule about excessive use of BBCode outside of CN/AR. EJ-like spamming of quotes should be explicitly prohibited.
I dunno, I think it's pretty admirable how much effort he puts into responding to absolutely everyone everywhere. What's the harm in it, anyway?
It's incredibly bothersome. I can see allowing it in the lower fora, but in the Flat Earth - boards it's just unprofessional. But it might be better to err on the side of free speech.
___
I suggest a rule against blatant discrimination. It should be worded better than in the other forum, but it should still exist. Although the whole thing with The Forbidden Word was ridiculous, we should still have some rules about profanity and general PC'ness. At the very least, in the upper fora.
-
I dunno, I think it's pretty admirable how much effort he puts into responding to absolutely everyone everywhere. What's the harm in it, anyway?
Responding to everyone everywhere is fine, if done responsibly. Quoting long-ish posts to respond with a one-liner is annoying (and often deliberately so). It gets even worse when other people then quote an entire EJ-esque post and also respond with a one-liner (granted, they are as guilty as EJ in that case). Excessive use of BBC can easily make a thread unreadable.
-
How about just making a rule against obnoxious posting habits? Seems to cover everything.
-
Actually, the "don't be a dick" rule pretty much covers this.
-
How about just making a rule against obnoxious posting habits? Seems to cover everything.
I think we need to aim for something specific. We're trying to avoid giving staff too much discretion. In an ideal world, we should always be able to make a clear call on whether or not something violates the rules. Different people will find very different things to be obnoxious.
-
Well, I don't think limiting how people can post is the way to go. It's pretty much the same thing as banning typos.
-
How about just making a rule against obnoxious posting habits? Seems to cover everything.
I think we need to aim for something specific. We're trying to avoid giving staff too much discretion. In an ideal world, we should always be able to make a clear call on whether or not something violates the rules. Different people will find very different things to be obnoxious.
The problem is that we're trying to make something subjective, objective. Trying to solve that by getting too specific doesn't really fix the problem, I think, because it just results in rules that don't cover all of the bases.
I think the best way to do it would be to have rules with room for interpretation, but strict moderation guidelines. I suggest a publicly displayed moderation policy separate from the rules, detailing what steps moderators are allowed to take and when. This would have the added benefit of avoiding moderators like how I was a few years back.
-
Well, I don't think limiting how people can post is the way to go. It's pretty much the same thing as banning typos.
Oh, I was planning to set up a filter that spell-checks every post made (using a British English dictionary, of course) and automatically issues a full 100-day bammywham for each red squiggle...
On a more serious note, I do see your point. It would be difficult to find the right balance between freedom of speech and not letting people kill threads. I don't think it would be completely impossible.
I suppose another way to approach this could be to modify the forum so that quotes are not fully expanded by default. Something along the lines of:
It's incredibly bothersome. I can see allowing it in the lower fora, but in the Flat Earth - boards it's just unprofessional.
(see more) (#post_)
(except actually working lol)
However, I would also propose that quoting an entire post when you're only responding to part of it could count as... uh, off-topic posting? The quote sets the context for the rest of your post, after all. If your post isn't very relevant to the quote, something's wrong.
-
Maybe you should make this an issue when there's more than literally one person (who also happens to be a troll) doing it.
-
I like the alts rule. Some people can make a flat alt and a round alt. I have not done this myself but had been tempted before. I can help debate, just dont argue with yourselves ya weirdos!
Long quotes dont bother me as much as the people that keep quoting and quoting. Or what botheres me even more (but shouldnt be a rule anyway) is when people quote strait after the post they are replying to! Especially when it is so obvious who they are speaking to.
A lenient stance on swearing is good too, most posters are adults and we swear in our vocabulary. But people should just respect peoples wishes if they feel the language is too much.
Maybe another set of secret mod rules would be good too. Perhaps they have to be more civil to other posters? They should set the example at least.
-
There's nothing about prohibiting NSFW content in the rules. Was that meant to be included? I could be wrong, but I suspect that most of us would be in favor of keeping that rule. I certainly am. I don't want to have to brace myself for potential goatse every time I open a thread in CN.
Also, I agree with Tausami that we don't want to be too specific with what the rules address. That can lead to people gaming the rules, as the old forum sometimes showed. I'm reminded in particular of permanoobs like The Knowledge dancing around the letter of the rules while doing their best to discourage new posters from staying and being as unpleasant as possible to everyone. We should try to think in broader terms about the kinds of behavior we don't want here.
-
Saddam is on the money here.
As for NSFW content; no, the exclusion of that was not intentional. My sleep cycle has been literally faggots in gravy the past week, and I'm not thinking as clearly as usual, so I'm hardly surprised if there are some glaring omissions.
-
I have never heard if that term before lol. Make mine one giant faggot too.
-
Maybe we could have a process to ban members who haven't explicitly broken rules? Like, they could be nominated for bamhammeration by the council and there could be a vote among the moderators or something like that. Maybe there would have to be better checks and balances than that.
-
Maybe we could have a process to ban members who haven't explicitly broken rules? Like, they could be nominated for bamhammeration by the council and there could be a vote among the moderators or something like that. Maybe there would have to be better checks and balances than that.
No, I don't think that's fair to anyone. People should know if they can be banned for something before they make the decision whether to take the action or not.
A better way of doing this is to simply add new rules as we discover behaviours that are undesirable. That way, the new rule applies equally to everyone. I intend to revise the Manifesto to formalise the process of adding new rules once we have a finalised set of rules.
-
Maybe we could have a process to ban members who haven't explicitly broken rules? Like, they could be nominated for bamhammeration by the council and there could be a vote among the moderators or something like that. Maybe there would have to be better checks and balances than that.
No, I don't think that's fair to anyone. People should know if they can be banned for something before they make the decision whether to take the action or not.
A better way of doing this is to simply add new rules as we discover behaviours that are undesirable. That way, the new rule applies equally to everyone. I intend to revise the Manifesto to formalise the process of adding new rules once we have a finalised set of rules.
Well, I mean it for situations like TK. When a poster is taking advantage of the rules, there should be some way to stop them. There are going to be loopholes in whatever we come up with, and angry noobs will abuse those loopholes to no end unless we have a method to deter them from doing so. It would of course only be able to be used in extreme circumstances.
-
I say leave that up to moderator discretion, but always warn the user first.
-
I say leave that up to moderator discretion, but always warn the user first.
Of course. Like I said, there should be a process. Otherwise we end up with unclear moderation, and the angry noobs will get persecutory delusions again.
-
Make a rule against the obvious exploitation of loopholes.
-
Make a rule against the obvious exploitation of loopholes.
Mods should be able to use discretion in this case.
-
Maybe we could have a process to ban members who haven't explicitly broken rules? Like, they could be nominated for bamhammeration by the council and there could be a vote among the moderators or something like that. Maybe there would have to be better checks and balances than that.
No, I don't think that's fair to anyone. People should know if they can be banned for something before they make the decision whether to take the action or not.
A better way of doing this is to simply add new rules as we discover behaviours that are undesirable. That way, the new rule applies equally to everyone. I intend to revise the Manifesto to formalise the process of adding new rules once we have a finalised set of rules.
Well, I mean it for situations like TK. When a poster is taking advantage of the rules, there should be some way to stop them. There are going to be loopholes in whatever we come up with, and angry noobs will abuse those loopholes to no end unless we have a method to deter them from doing so. It would of course only be able to be used in extreme circumstances.
TK was taken care of fairly under the old rules.
-
Make a rule against the obvious exploitation of loopholes.
I'm a bit uncomfortable with that, though. I foresee abuse if a single mod can just decide such a thing on their own. I think we'd be better off making them jump through a few hoops first.
-
The less rules the better. The shorter the better. Then if a rule isnt broken as such but the poster is obviously not good for the site, then mods should use their initiative.
-
The less rules the better. The shorter the better. Then if a rule isnt broken as such but the poster is obviously not good for the site, then mods should use their initiative.
I agree with this. The rules should be good, but simple and short. Keep it to, say, ten.
1. No personal attacks
2. Post on topic
3. Personal information
4. Don't alt obnoxiously
5. Use appropriate channels
6. Don't be offensive
7. No excessive BBCode or whatever we decide this rule should be
8. Always post in the appropriate board
9. Respect the OP
10. Moderators have discretion to moderate outside the scope of these rules within certain circumstances
Adding more rules can be the job of the council
-
Adding more rules can be the job of the council
The Council is there to run the Society, not the forum. As far as I'm concerned, forum rules are firmly within the jurisdiction of the forum admins.
Regarding your proposed list of rules; a rule should be clearly defined and have a specified penalty for breaking it, so that there is as little doubt as possible whether enforcement of it has been done correctly. A rule like "don't be offensive" is so widely open to interpretation that it may as well not exist.
My aim in this draft is to keep the set of rules as concise as possible, while still maintaining clarity. This is intended for members' benefit, so everyone knows exactly where they stand.
-
Adding more rules can be the job of the council
The Council is there to run the Society, not the forum. As far as I'm concerned, forum rules are firmly within the jurisdiction of the forum admins.
Regarding your proposed list of rules; a rule should be clearly defined and have a specified penalty for breaking it, so that there is as little doubt as possible whether enforcement of it has been done correctly. A rule like "don't be offensive" is so widely open to interpretation that it may as well not exist.
My aim in this draft is to keep the set of rules as concise as possible, while still maintaining clarity. This is intended for members' benefit, so everyone knows exactly where they stand.
That wasn't exactly a final list. I was just quickly writing down the rules you originally had and the ones we've discussed since. Obviously they'd be written better than that.
-
The Council is there to run the Society, not the forum. As far as I'm concerned, forum rules are firmly within the jurisdiction of the forum admins.
I think this is completely necessary. That is how I believe it was laid out in the beginning. I am happy to confer with council on things, but ultimately there are three admins that are good at putting their personal feelings aside and dealing with issues objectively.
-
The Council is there to run the Society, not the forum. As far as I'm concerned, forum rules are firmly within the jurisdiction of the forum admins.
I think this is completely necessary. That is how I believe it was laid out in the beginning. I am happy to confer with council on things, but ultimately there are three admins that are good at putting their personal feelings aside and dealing with issues objectively.
Oh, okay. I wasn't around for that. I guess the hypothetical addition of new rules will be the admin's job, then.
-
The process for addition of new rules will ultimately be specified in a future version of the Manifesto. For now, I just want to get some rules up so we have grounds for enforcement.
-
I have posted a set of rules in Announcements: http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=977.0
These are enforceable as of now, and I'll be updating the "Don't be a dick" registration agreement to refer to these rules instead. Ideally, I would have posted a revised draft for comment first, but we keep running into problems that require rules to resolve fairly, so I decided the sooner we have a set of rules the better.
-
They're pretty good. I like the part about the alts, too. They don't have to be a bad thing. They can be anywhere from harmless funny to contributive.
-
I did not see anything prohibiting the public posting of PMs. Does this fall under the prohibition against posting people's personal information?
-
I did not see anything prohibiting the public posting of PMs. Does this fall under the prohibition against posting people's personal information?
I was wondering the same thing. I believe "Private Message" is private and should be against the rules to directly post someone else's private message sent to you. However you should be able to post the contents in your own words. Otherwise someone could send a PM and inhibit what another poster can say. You should be careful what info you send in a PM.
-
There shouldnt be a rule about posting pms. If its such an issue remove the quoting.
-
There shouldnt be a rule about posting pms. If its such an issue remove the quoting.
Yeah, because people wouldn't just copy-paste them and surround them in quote tags ::)
-
But if a rule was put in place where we can not quote a pm then the ability to quote it in 1 click should be removed too.
-
But if a rule was put in place where we can not quote a pm then the ability to quote it in 1 click should be removed too.
Why?
-
Why not? It's my suggestion that's all.
-
I agree with the privacy and PM rule. You should not be able to copy a PM onto the public forum. It was sent as a PM because it was expected to be private, as in Private Message. These should not be allowed to be reposted in public. If the PM contained things that are against the rules, then the admin should be alerted and permission for the offended party should be given for the admins to read the PMs.
Also, things such as names, locations, and even gender should not be made public unless done so in a public post by the person who is giving up their anonymity. If it is done in a PM, chat, or any other form that is not accessible to the public, it should be considered as private information, and members should not be allowed to repost it.
-
I don't see why protecting the sanctity of PMs has suddenly become such a big deal.
-
I don't see why protecting the sanctity of PMs has suddenly become such a big deal.
It's not a big deal, it just happens that they are called "private message". Which could lead someone to believe that they are private, which they are not if you can post them.
-
Even if I couldn't copy and paste, I could open a second tab and type the pm into my reply manually. You can't stop someone from doing this before the fact, only after. I don't get why this was brought up unless someone in the past did this and it caused major problems.
-
Even if I couldn't copy and paste, I could open a second tab and type the pm into my reply manually. You can't stop someone from doing this before the fact, only after. I don't get why this was brought up unless someone in the past did this and it caused major problems.
Because, when you say something in something called a "Private Message", there is an assumption that it will be kept private. Otherwise, you would have posted it on the Public Forum.
I know Gayer's, beardo's, and Sean's names and addresses. They did not post that information on a public forum. I would be a dick if I posted that information on a public forum, would I not? Would you not agree that it should be against the rules to post that information?
What if I told Gayer that she is sexy in a PM? It would also be a dick move for her to post it for everyone to see. I sent it in a PM because I did not want everyone to read that.
Do you understand now?
-
I have no problem with a rule against it, I just don't think anyone here is that kind of dick. Also it sounded like Squevil was asking for the forum to be coded to guard against this kind of thing, which isn't feasible.
-
I just don't think anyone here is that kind of dick.
You're new here, aren't you?
-
It's already against the rules to post private information like names and addresses. But telling Gayer that she's sexy or whatever, no, I don't see why that should be privileged information that she should literally be forbidden from repeating. This community has a long history of posting PMs for humor and whatnot, and I don't want to see that taken away based on what looks to me to be nothing more than a whim.
-
Of course, people can grant and ask permission to post PMs.
-
It's already against the rules to post private information like names and addresses. But telling Gayer that she's sexy or whatever, no, I don't see why that should be privileged information that she should literally be forbidden from repeating. This community has a long history of posting PMs for humor and whatnot, and I don't want to see that taken away based on what looks to me to be nothing more than a whim.
Right, but what if someone confided in you with personal/emotional topics or whatever in a PM? Or what if they told you something they don't want the forum knowing but you don't necessarily know that? I don't think anybody is saying "you can literally never post the contents of a PM, even if the sender/recipient has said it's okay".