2020 Rules Overhaul!

[Chaos]

Hi everyone!

We have done a massive rules overhaul today. That's for the best since the rules have... not exactly had an extensive rewrite since 2011. 17th Shard has changed a lot since then, and our community is a lot bigger now. 

So let me go through the highlights of what we did.

We've expanded our rule that basically said "be respectful" into a much longer Code of Conduct. It explains our expectations for all members in much more detail. Things in that topic are things we will moderate. It also has a very expansive anti-harassment policy, how to report things, as well as a description on how moderation works, and common actions we will take on moderation. Realistically all of these things are things we have had before, but hopefully a much more detailed description of such things will help us as we get into another influx of new members for Rhythm of War.

I want to make special mention that in the Code of Conduct, there is now a completely anonymous way to report things, should you need. We realized with our strong anti-harassment policy we did not have a mechanism for this, so we've created one. 

Next, we have put a lot of the administrative policies into a Policies topic. These are policies you should follow, describing our rules about double posts, signatures, spoiler policy, but for the most part you wouldn't be moderated if you broke those rules on occasion. (Repeated offenses might lead to moderation, however.)

Please give a huge thanks to LadyLameness for her hard work on these documents. These were a team effort and a lot of drafting on these happened, but she's the one who put in a TON of time in making these documents amazing.

But wait, there's more! There is also a Best Practices for Posting in Debates thread that Comatose has written for your advice.

These topics, with our original forum introduction and how/to (finally updated!), is pinned in the 17S Discussion forum. 

Discord rules have also been updated, too!

Though those topics are closed please feel to comment here on any of these things. Much of this should be expected stuff that we've already done, but expanded in a clearer way. We're here to answer questions though!

[Honorless]

On 4/7/2020 at 1:40 PM, LadyLameness said:

Deliberate post count padding, (posts that contain no substance, eg. that contain single word responses or emoticons) will be deleted.

What about forums like the Forum Games and Random Stuff where we frequently do use single word responses and emoticons to express jest or de-escalate situations or it just makes more sense in context (possibly only after reading the whole page) and where post count doesn't increase? Would those be counted as zero content post? What about article comments where upvoting isn't an option?

Also why is this a thing? I can't wrap my head around this, wouldn't having a disproportionately large amount of upvotes per content posted be more desirable?

[Chaos]

6 minutes ago, Dreamer said:

What about forums like the Forum Games and Random Stuff where we frequently do use single word responses and emoticons to express jest or de-escalate situations or it just makes more sense in context (possibly only after reading the whole page) and where post count doesn't increase? Would those be counted as zero content post? What about article comments where upvoting isn't an option?

Also why is this a thing? I can't wrap my head around this, wouldn't having a disproportionately large amount of upvotes per content posted be more desirable?

Forum Games is separate from this since it does not increase post count, but in book discussion, someone posting "Nice" with nothing else has no value, and should be discouraged. It's like someone posting "First" on a YouTube video. Does that make sense? 

I'm not entirely sure what your second line means in this context.

[Honorless]

2 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Forum Games is separate since it does not increase post count, but in book discussion, someone posting "Nice" with nothing else has no value, and should be discouraged. It's like someone posting "First" on a YouTube video. Does that make sense?

Good to know. I have heard enough horrible things about what goes on in YouTube comments section that I'm not going over to check so I'll have to take you at your word. That does make more sense in the theory-crafting boards, but what about comments simply stating support or interest? 

2 minutes ago, Chaos said:

I'm not entirely sure what your second line means in this context.

Sometimes people (including me) have used "lol" or emoji etc in the article comments section because upvoting article comments isn't an option?

[Chaos]

3 minutes ago, Dreamer said:

Good to know. I have heard enough horrible things about what goes on in YouTube comments section that I'm not going over to check so I'll have to take you at your word. That does make more sense in the theory-crafting boards, but what about comments simply stating support or interest? 

Sometimes people (including me) have used "lol" or emoji etc in the article comments section because upvoting article comments isn't an option?

I'd still assume people could write a sentence stating support or interest when relevant.

For article comments, that's fine, though upvoting will come back this summer, so don't worry too much about this.

Please note that the policy here is not actually different from the old spam policy, so nothing is actually different.

[+Ark1002]

@Chaos maybe pin this too, as a sorta guide/PSA?

[Chaos]

2 hours ago, Arcc1002 said:

@Chaos maybe pin this too, as a sorta guide/PSA?

Well, the thing is, five is a lot of pinned topics. I was hoping that the navigation would be explanation enough on it.