Forum guidelines
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Most of you have seen the recent discussion in the Lounge. Apparently, we need to clarify how and when we want to sanction a user. Since we're a forum that tolerates a lot of behavior, these were my suggested guidelines:
- Don't post anything illegal.
- Don't post spam.
- Don't doxx any member of the forum.
- Respect the rules and tone of the various categories, as specified in the respective category.
- On the rare occasion that the overwhelming majority of the forum disagrees with a behavior (examples: use of obnoxious bots for an extended period of time, deleting hundreds of threads, actively scaring away users) and the majority of the mods decides to give you an official warning, listen to the mods. Pro tip: Our mods have to be really pissed off to do any work.
Should we adopt something like that as the official rules/guidelines for this forum?
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@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
- Don't post anything illegal.
Illegal where?
Is libel illegal?
Who decides what libel is?We're right back at Fox flagging posts for violating the forum guidelines.
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@ChrisH said in Forum guidelines:
Illegal where?
Good point.
How about: Don't post any content that might cause the site to be taken down?
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@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
How about: Don't post any content that might cause the site to be taken down?
That's probably the best way to put it.
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It might also be a good idea to clarify that the first three items are strict rules, breaking which might get you insta-banned, while the other two are guidelines with some wiggle room (if you break them, the mods may or may not take any action they deem appropriate).
I think there's a consensus that we don't want any strict behavior rules, only guidelines. Otherwise, a few years from now, someone might get insta-banned for forgetting to get a NSFW tag and accidentally getting someone fired as a result or some bullshit like that, which I would very much like to avoid.
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I think we should add "Only flag posts that actually violate these rules" as well.
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@ChrisH said in Forum guidelines:
"Only flag posts that actually violate these rules"
Flags for jeffing are perfectly fine. My favorite kind of flag, actually :D
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@Yamikuronue Technically, that's covered by @ChrisH's suggestion, see guideline 1 (4th item). ;)
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@Yamikuronue Right. So which flags do you NOT like? ;)
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@asdf Not when you're elevating a discussion from, say, the Status thread to being its own thread in the same category
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@ChrisH Spam flags. You'd think they taste like bacon, but they don't, they're nasty.
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@Yamikuronue said in Forum guidelines:
@ChrisH said in Forum guidelines:
"Only flag posts that actually violate these rules"
Flags for jeffing are perfectly fine. My favorite kind of flag, actually :D
so.....
"Only flag for Jeffing, Spam, or Dox. Submitting other flags will earn you a demerit. should sufficient demerits acrue your forim privileges will be temporarily and/or permanently suspended."
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@Yamikuronue Ah, okay, right.
But I don't think this necessarily belongs in the guidelines. We should probably have a separate "introduction for noobs" thread / auto-PM instead.
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@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
We should probably have a separate "introduction for noobs" thread / auto-PM instead.
And if we could not call that post "code of conduct", that'd be great, because if my suggestion causes this forum to get a code of conduct, I will have no choice but to commit seppuku.
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"Don't abuse the flag system"?
I don't know either. But if the mods should decide that there was abuse, we should put it into the guidelines.
Or we could let the reputation system sort it out, as God intended.
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Dickweedery is encouraged. Dickwolfery is not.
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@ChrisH said in Forum guidelines:
Or we could let the reputation system sort it out, as God intended.
^This. I would very much like to avoid having a growing set of specific guidelines. Flag abuse is covered by #5 and we now know a way of dealing with it (requiring X reputation). We can put more details in a separate document, but not in the guidelines.
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@accalia said in Forum guidelines:
should sufficient demerits acrue your forim privileges will be temporarily and/or permanently suspended."
That sounds suspiciously like the mods doing work.
Wait wasn't that one of the rules?
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@asdf Could call it "code of misconduct".
Filed under: I aim to misbehave
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@cvi said in Forum guidelines:
"code of misconduct".
Can we please give the "rules"/"about this category" thread in the trolleybus garage that name? :D
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@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
@cvi said in Forum guidelines:
"code of misconduct".
Can we please give the "rules"/"about this category" thread in the trolleybus garage that name? :D
i can get behind that idea....
even if we don't actually change our community guidelines we should have them written down.
you know. that way we know we're breaking them before we go ahead and do it anyway.
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@accalia oh yes, always know exactly what rule(s) you're breaking before state == broken.
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@Yamikuronue said in Forum guidelines:
Flags for jeffing are perfectly fine
And soon we should be able to Jeff out of the status thread again.
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@accalia said in Forum guidelines:
Only flag for Jeffing, Spam, or Dox. Submitting other flags will earn you a demerit.
Enshrine this on the Flag popup itself, so it is self documenting.
"Flags are intended for X,Y,Z. We've also included an 'Other' box for extraordinary circumstances. This is a fire alarm directly to the mods. Don't abuse it."
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@Lorne-Kates said in Forum guidelines:
This is a fire alarm directly to the mods. Don't abuse it.
What about fire drills?
On a serious note, this gets my thumb. I'd even raise it up, but that's work.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Forum guidelines:
@accalia said in Forum guidelines:
Only flag for Jeffing, Spam, or Dox. Submitting other flags will earn you a demerit.
Enshrine this on the Flag popup itself, so it is self documenting.
"Flags are intended for X,Y,Z. We've also included an 'Other' box for extraordinary circumstances. This is a fire alarm directly to the mods. Don't abuse it."
Don't abuse it or you will be abused.
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@Weng said in Forum guidelines:
Don't abuse it or you will be abused.
Is that a threat or a promise?
SCNR
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Should probably also remove the ability to flag a moderator or administrator's post. Or at least have a message box that chides you for doing so.
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How about letting the mods decide what to do about flag abuse given that nobody else is affected by it? It appears that the mods are the ones least concerned about it.
Or is this secretly about fox?
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@asdf why have strict rules at all here? If someone does something boneheaded like spam, the mods can ban or forgive or ban-forgive at their discretion.
I see no advantage for strict zero-tolerance rules at this scale.
Guidelines can be nice to make sure people know what the rules are, but 99% of newcomers will not benefit from these with our demographics either.
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That said, with the illegal clarification, the guidelines (as guidelines) are quite appropriate in my view.
For example, I can triple-post with no consequences, mwahaha.
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@Sumireko said in Forum guidelines:
Should probably also remove the ability to flag a moderator or administrator's post. Or at least have a message box that chides you for doing so.
Nah. We're only people. Built from the same crooked timber as the rest of you. The rest of the staff is there to smack us down if we get out of line.
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@boomzilla said in Forum guidelines:
The rest of the staff is there to smack us down if we get out of line.
Well, the rest of you, too. We're users first.
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@CreatedToDislikeThis said in Forum guidelines:
Or is this secretly about fox?
It is (and not so secretly...), it's coming directly out of this threadTL3+.
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@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
Most of you have seen the recent discussion in the Lounge. Apparently, we need to clarify how and when we want to sanction a user. Since we're a forum that tolerates a lot of behavior, these were my suggested guidelines:
- Don't post anything illegal.
- Don't post spam.
- Don't doxx any member of the forum.
- Respect the rules and tone of the various categories, as specified in the respective category.
- On the rare occasion that the overwhelming majority of the forum disagrees with a behavior (examples: use of obnoxious bots for an extended period of time, deleting hundreds of threads, actively scaring away users) and the majority of the mods decides to give you an official warning, listen to the mods. Pro tip: Our mods have to be really pissed off to do any work.
Should we adopt something like that as the official rules/guidelines for this forum?
I'm thinking about suggesting not to post anything (especially images) that may cause discomfort to others. But it'd be better if @mods can bring back the "spoiler" tag and require forum users to hide those "content that may cause discomfort to others" in those tags.
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@cheong said in Forum guidelines:
I'm thinking about suggesting not to post anything (especially images) that may cause discomfort to others
Yeah, @tufty!
But spoiler tags already exist, via
<details>
This is hidden. Oh no!
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@sloosecannon Humm... seems it's not working...
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@sloosecannon
Why would we misuse<details>
if<spoilers>
doesn't work anyhow?"Principal of least surprise something-something-fuck-you-pay-me?"
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@CreatedToDislikeThis said in Forum guidelines:
why have strict rules at all here?
Because the mods were asking for guidelines.
@CreatedToDislikeThis said in Forum guidelines:
I see no advantage for strict zero-tolerance rules at this scale.
Apparently, the doxxing rule was not obvious? Some people don't seem to get that we're not /b/.
@CreatedToDislikeThis said in Forum guidelines:
Or is this secretly about fox?
Not really/exclusively. It's about where the line is in general: How far are people like blakeyrat, Fox or morbs allowed to go? In the other thread, there was some consensus that trolling and being a dick should be allowed, unless you piss of everyone and the mods feel like they have to intervene. This is consistent with what we've done so far, so I tried to turn it into a general guideline.
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@cheong said in Forum guidelines:
But it'd be better if @mods can bring back the "spoiler" tag and require forum users to hide those "content that may cause discomfort to others" in those tags.
-1.
I feel like that would already be way too strict for this forum; trolling someone with horrifying images should be allowed, even if I still hate @tufty for that. Even requiring [NSFW] tags would be too much, IMO.
In really bad cases, the mods can still intervene and delete a post as soon as they notice it.
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@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
Even requiring [NSFW] tags would be too much, IMO
That's primarily a courtesy we encourage because so many use the forum from work. It's nice to have that warning to avoid awkward situations at work.
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@abarker said in Forum guidelines:
@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
Even requiring [NSFW] tags would be too much, IMO
That's primarily a courtesy we encourage because so many use the forum from work. It's nice to have that warning to avoid awkward situations at work.
Easy for me: Just use IMGUR for your NSFW pics, it's blocked at my work so
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@abarker said in Forum guidelines:
That's primarily a courtesy we encourage because so many use the forum from work.
That's exactly how I feel about it. Trolling with slightly NSFW images/links is okay, but if you start threads about NSFW things or post links to porn, you'd better label them.
I don't think we need a strict rule about that. Otherwise, we'll get a lot of annoying rules lawyering ("Is X porn?").
In really bad cases, mods can edit posts/titles or jeff or delete posts.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Forum guidelines:
@abarker said in Forum guidelines:
@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
Even requiring [NSFW] tags would be too much, IMO
That's primarily a courtesy we encourage because so many use the forum from work. It's nice to have that warning to avoid awkward situations at work.
Easy for me: Just use IMGUR for your NSFW pics, it's blocked at my work so
It may be blocked, but your company's firewall/proxy log would still log that.
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@MathNerdCNU said in Forum guidelines:
@sloosecannon
Why would we misuse<details>
if<spoilers>
doesn't work anyhow?"Principal of least surprise something-something-fuck-you-pay-me?"
Btw, I suggest spoiler tag primarily because I hope that the content will not be rendered in that page at all unless clicked.
Maybe it's too much to ask for. :P
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@cheong said in Forum guidelines:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Forum guidelines:
@abarker said in Forum guidelines:
@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
Even requiring [NSFW] tags would be too much, IMO
That's primarily a courtesy we encourage because so many use the forum from work. It's nice to have that warning to avoid awkward situations at work.
Easy for me: Just use IMGUR for your NSFW pics, it's blocked at my work so
It may be blocked, but your company's firewall/proxy log would still log that.
Psh, like anyone actually reads logs. The firewall gets hundreds of blocks per second from one department alone. ;)
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@cheong said in Forum guidelines:
@asdf said in Forum guidelines:
Most of you have seen the recent discussion in the Lounge. Apparently, we need to clarify how and when we want to sanction a user. Since we're a forum that tolerates a lot of behavior, these were my suggested guidelines:
- Don't post anything illegal.
- Don't post spam.
- Don't doxx any member of the forum.
- Respect the rules and tone of the various categories, as specified in the respective category.
- On the rare occasion that the overwhelming majority of the forum disagrees with a behavior (examples: use of obnoxious bots for an extended period of time, deleting hundreds of threads, actively scaring away users) and the majority of the mods decides to give you an official warning, listen to the mods. Pro tip: Our mods have to be really pissed off to do any work.
Should we adopt something like that as the official rules/guidelines for this forum?
I'm thinking about suggesting not to post anything (especially images) that may cause discomfort to others. But it'd be better if @mods can bring back the "spoiler" tag and require forum users to hide those "content that may cause discomfort to others" in those tags.
So basically you want to ban CodeSOD?
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@Deadfast said in Forum guidelines:
So basically you want to ban CodeSOD?
If that's what I want, I can easily unsubscribe to that part of the forum by clicking into the category and select "Ignoring".
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@cheong said in Forum guidelines:
@Deadfast said in Forum guidelines:
So basically you want to ban CodeSOD?
If that's what I want, I can easily unsubscribe to that part of the forum by clicking into the category and select "Ignoring".
I think you 'd ;)