Hi Everyone,
I'm working on the forum rules and I'd appreciate your input.
The document is available on Google Docs for anyone to comment and can be discussed here.
I'm working on the forum rules and I'd appreciate your input.
The document is available on Google Docs for anyone to comment and can be discussed here.
Comments
"Don't be a dick" - what does this mean? While I have my ideas of what this means, I don't know if this is unambiguous enough and/or if my ideas are the general consensus. I'd prefer a final set of rules that either don't include this, or have a lot more clarification.
For introductions: what if people would like to remain anonymous for personal reasons? I feel like the rules should generally be comprehensive enough that we don't need the accountability of the person's real name.
Maybe we should include a bit of preamble where we define the sort of objectives we want to achieve? I'm thinking something like:
We want to create a safe, respectful and friendly environment, where local game creators in all fields (programming, design, art, music, etc.) can share their creations, give and receive feedback on their work, and engage with their peers. To this end, we will not tolerate oppressive, insulting or disrespectful behaviour.
Do we need to explain what "being a dick" means? I feel quite strongly that trolling, resorting to ad-hominem arguments and other forms of rhetorical bullshit should be a thing users can complain about.
Do we need to talk about what being banned entails? What about when people complain about "censorship" - I'd love to have a succinct think that they could be linked to that basically says "No, also that's a really bad argument, don't use it".
And finally, I think we should seriously consider putting in rules about criticism: That it should be expected, that it's not aimed at you personally, that there are multiple responsibilities in both giving and receiving criticism, and that flaming someone is never an acceptable response. Also, I don't think people should be able to "opt out" of critique: That weakens the learning that others might potentially be exposed to (I know I want to learn from other people's views on things I didn't make) and there's no reason to demand criticism be silenced if it's accepted that it's never a personal attack.
I agree on adding something about criticism. "I don't think people should be able to "opt out" of critique" - so much yes.
For instance, yesterday you/@fengol revived a Unity3D thread that was over a year old with an unrelated question to the OP. Most forums (that I use, anyway) discourage that, and prefer each thread to have one topic. Then a new question will go into a new thread.
I'm not for/against either way personally, but it would be good to get clarity.
Which I'm just posting since I'm kinda curious what happened to our giant unity thread? There is a tonne of useful nuggets of info in it.
I feel like asking someone that's posting a job to be serious about what they're doing and provide some sort of mechanism to contact them and/or do due diligence research on their team/project is not a big request. In fact it's the bare minimum as far as I'm concerned.
Someone starting a team is pitching their idea more than offering a job. Basically: If it's growing on the forums, don't worry about solicitation rules; If it's about coming to the forums because of the density of potential hires, solicitation rules apply.
Should we talk about advertising your game/service? We do tend to get random posts from internationals that are just advertisements for their random 3D model service, or game skinning studio, or whatever. Are those useful?
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I also understand the desire to have a bunch of forum rules, so that you can point at those and say, "Hey, you broke this rule, so you're being warned/punished in this way." And I get that it can be a good guide for new members to understand what our culture here is like, and what the accepted etiquette here is.
But at the same time, spending a lot of time to spell out exactly what each thing is, saying you should post certain prefixes or whatever, kind of feels... I dunno... like something to make us sound all important and official, while not really actually mattering. If we feel we can trust the moderating team to have the community's best interests in mind, then cool. And if not, well, then we get moderators we think we can trust.
But I agree there is a large amount of solicitation for which there should be an adherence to the an etiquette of posting.
Personally (yes, I'm reiterating that), I come here because I want to see stuff that South Africans are making. I can go to the Unity forums if I want to be advertised at by randoms (I'm not saying this is a bad thing though).
I'm not sure where the line is though. Like, technically there really isn't much difference between me posting a cool asset I found, and some random from the US doing it.
Basically, I come here for South African content, there are hundreds of other sites for other things. But I'm happy to be wrong/in the minority.
@Karuji that thread is still here:
http://makegamessa.com/discussion/1339/unity-general-questions/
I thought we were going to continue adding to this, but I saw another one opened up, without a plural in "question", which implies it's not a questions thing.
I've given the committee members access to edit the doc so when people are in agreement the comments can be marked as resolved and the document updated.
I personally subscribe to the idea that bigotry is a more extreme version of differenced opinion. One that also includes an element of menace and exclusion/intolerance that aims to limit the other person's ability/freedom to have their belief or opinion.
I can't access the doc from work, but I'll add the following recommending notes as soon as i get home.
Bigotry in comments is... any statements deemed by the moderating team as offensive/aggressive/insulting against the belief/opinion of another person, and that seeks to trespass on (or limit) their freedom to have, or express, their belief/opinion.
Projects containing bigotry will be... determined by the moderating team, and will be liable to editing,relocation,merging or deletion by the moderating team.
Bigotry:
- Text or media that denigrates or devalues others based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion etc will not be tolerated. This includes sexually exploitative material, racial slurs, homophobia etc.
- If there is doubt as to whether certain content fits the criteria for bigotry, ask a mod to check it before posting.
Members posting bigoted material will be asked to remove or modify the content.
- For a first offense, if the moderators as a group consider the transgression sufficiently minor and the member complies willingly with their requests, that will be sufficient.
- For subsequent offenses, or if the moderators agree that the first transgression is sufficiently abusive to warrant it, members will receive an immediate warning.
- If a member receives 3 warnings in a 6 month period that member will be banned.
- If a member refuses to modify or remove content that the moderators have deemed to contain bigotry, that member will be banned.
- Members can contest whether their content is bigoted or not, but final decision rests with the moderators.
- If the moderators disagree, the final decision will be made by majority vote (of the moderators).
This is one of the more simpler ones that clearly states what is and what isn't allowed ... use this and modify it and tailor it for your needs.
So I'm not quite sure why you're suggesting this? Do you think those rules have something specific we should look at, or do you think there's something wrong with the current working set of rules that should be highlighted?
A lot of users here wish to implement House rules (and of course there's nothing wrong with house rules)
These are usually very specific though. They can be good or bad...
I'm personally wary of rules being too specific. I prefer rules that remain objective in nature.
In that regard I rather enjoy Unreal's rule 11 as being well laid out without bias.
"
[11] This forum is not rated M. Please keep the potential audience in mind when posting. No extreme violence, highly offensive content, nudity or sexual content.
"
It covers the base for what has recently been a source of contention.
Regardless, In the end I comply happily with whatever the admin's decide.
Rating systems don't deal with the kinds of systemic sexist or racist issues that you've found so oddly contentious. If they did, we wouldn't need the Bechdel test as an object lesson. I'm lobbying for poor apostrophe usage being grounds for immediate teleportation to Azkaban.
*Edit* I know it used to be like this but it probably wont be from now on right ?
Anyway, that aside, currently I understand that those who were voted into committee positions were given mod rights. I don't think most of them ever used them but I think the idea was that major modding decisions went through the people voted in to run the community through the committee.
I'm not sure why you would vote someone into a committee of you didn't think they should have mod rights? Or that they may be able to make to change rules.
The same should probably go for committee members as well...
but the system is at risk if the roles/duties aren't segregated.
It's like separating the head of a newspaper from politics.
It's like being a software developer and NOT having access to the production data of clients...
There is a level of security by segregating duties...
That security works for everybody both ways.
That's how I see the way it should be.
As a whole, both groups of volunteers would share the bulk of their goals and directives and I expect that there will be and should be a substantial overlap between them.
@Pierre, your examples are only of entities with obviously conflicting agendas. That really doesn't apply here. Why should they be separated in your POV? What security/risk are you talking about here?
One person may indeed be capable of being the whole package, but this doesn't mean that they HAVE to assume all the roles.
As an ideal, both groups of volunteers should indeed share directives...
Overlap might occur but it should not be encouraged.
Moderators should be objective. I'm sure we agree on that. One way of ensuring that is segregation of duties. The moment a moderator has personal investment in the information being posted, his integrity is liable to compromise.
My recommendation for segregation of duty is not an accusation. It is a preventative measure that indemnifies all parties involved. (both moderators and committee members)
Soon, this community will involve a monetary element and the forum members will have a valuable investment in how things are handled...
I have/am dealing with SOX auditing in this regard, where tremendous amounts of money are being handled by a small group of people. It is important to have certain structures in place, to prevent the possibility of any conflict of interest.
It is a sound system. (All though we haven't even touched on the process of change and authorization yet.)
You may profess that a conflict of interest will never occur...
But going with my the recommendation of segregated duties is a lot more preventative and beneficial than NOT doing so just because we hope it won't ever be an issue.
One person doesn't need to have all the power. It doesn't serve the interest of a community. Rather it detracts from the definition of community.
Admins are: @Bensonance, @dislekcia, @Fengol & @Nitrogen
As the rest of your conclusions stem from a false assumption, they're not relevant, but I'd like to address the idea of "objective moderators". Besides being a worryingly GamerGate-sounding argument, it's useless: Forum moderation always requires some form of judgement call to determine what is going to best serve the goals of the forum/community. We know from the whole "objective reviews" argument that judgement calls are always going to be subjective in nature, so what you're actually saying is that you don't believe that any judgements are going to be made in ways that you agree with.
Seeing as you've already run afoul of the community and multiple mods for your views, I think that's a fair point. No, you won't agree with the necessary subjective calls made by mods expressing the wishes of the community and the goals that MGSA sets for the forum. I don't, however, think that's a problem :)
I'm not sure about the argument of separation of state and religion, since, in essence, MGSA would fall into a religion with the committee being the Vatican in this weird analogy.
It goes without saying, I'm sure, that mods should strive to be fair. They should uphold and apply the rules equally, whether it's a friend or someone they personally dislike.
It isn't completely unreasonable to point out that, with contentious issues, a moderator may become 'too close' to the debate and lose some of that even-handedness.
In that case, hopefully, discussion by the moderators as a group can reach a fair and balanced outcome.
Of course admission and participation in the forum is unrelated to membership fees, but with that being the case, doesn't it make sense that committee membership also remain unrelated to forum moderation.
Objective moderation is a common thought and the implied connotation to gamergate is irrelevant.