Hello. A select bit of mods have been deliberating for a while on how to improve the forum experience, and we've discussed the idea of implementing Forum Rules. This is something that we want to include the community in, so your feedback/opinions are worthwhile.
Here's a rough draft for what we have in mind.
Every subforum that isnt OT is going to be moderated more heavily for off-topic posts, and moderators will reserve the right to delete your post. Don't ruin threads with your banter, go to OT for that.
We're going to try and be harder about flaming/harassment on the forums. We want to try and make the place more friendly and while it might be a bit of a change we're asking that you be patient with us and what we have in mind is merely things to be discussed.
Negative and constructive criticism is fine. We're not going to silence your opinion for disagreeing or being abrasive, just never make it personal. That's all we ask. We understand that mafia is a competitive game at it's nature and that things are bound to get heated, but that doesn't mean we have to let things get out of control.
Trolling will be treated as the same as trolling in-game. A user has a right to report you if he believes that you are trolling them or their thread. Punishments will be handed out accordingly after we readjust what the repercussions will be for forum trolling.
OT will be moderated lightly, and GD will be at the discretion of the person making the topic. All rules are going to be in effect for all other subforums.
All mods reserve to delete your posts if they are off-topic.
deletedover 10 years
i feel like under this new set of rules i would've gotten violations for making topics about israeli domestic policy, because lokito would've insisted i was trying to troll him by bringing it up
deletedover 10 years
in which case things remain exactly as they were before this list of rules was put up, except that now you can get a violation if anyone "feels trolled," and mods have carte blanche to delete posts they don't like
deletedover 10 years
It specifically says "personal insults". Calling people out for sucking at mafia, or modding, is definitely not personal. It's the Ad Hominem they're banning.
deletedover 10 years
seriously this is the most randomly cobbled together word filter list i've ever seen
deletedover 10 years
and being tougher on real, actual harassment would be a step in the right direction
being able to report someone because they said you suck at mafia or called you is the opposite of a step in the right direction
deletedover 10 years
Harassment is too lenient as is, though. There are too many loopholes and the nonsense of "Notes for Harassment" has got to stop.
deletedover 10 years
it sucks, because you can't just give mods full discretion to insta-vio anyone who might be making an insult, because there's so much friendly ribbing around here, but you also can't make it a reportable violation because the same people will constantly report everyone that disagrees with them
deletedover 10 years
harassment violations have always been taken pretty seriously. it seems like this rule is changing it from something that actually matters to slapping people around for calling someone an idiot
The thread trolling wasn't something I had an issue with, it was the bolded part.
Edit; doesn't seem to have bolded in the quotes? I tried to bold the "Trolling them" section.
deletedover 10 years
I think the very best thing would be to moderate personal attacks and moderate the Complaints subforum and we'd be great
deletedover 10 years
i mean, as the rules are currently written users already have recourse against those they feel are personally insulting them. harassment violations exist for a good reason. i don't see the need to equate ingame, game-derailing trolling to posting in a forum topic
deletedover 10 years
the personal insults thing as an idea isn't the issue, it's moreso the inevitable overreporting of "trolling" that you and i both know is inevitable from certain people. combine that with how subjective the idea of trolling posted in the OP is and you're setting yourself up for disaster.
deletedover 10 years
I'm not really sure cutting out personal insults can be deemed a bad thing. The OT posts it merely remains to be seen. If it's hilariously bad I'm sure they will relax the rule to an appropriate level. I don't care if they trial things on these forums; they won't make anyone leave the site by deleting a few posts.
deletedover 10 years
forgot to switch to your justrec alt, dude
deletedover 10 years
the sandbox community also has a larger and more social-based community, seeing as sandbox mafia really isn't actually mafia so much as it is a chatroom where you can kill people
deletedover 10 years
There definitely is a circle of users on the forum that stick to their own circle and everyone else isn't welcome to join them in posting
deletedover 10 years
I don't think anyone really believed Training would start running. The Sandbox forums has a much larger number of posters relative to their lobby size because they don't have as unfriendly a bunch of forumers.
deletedover 10 years
No one's going to sit around saying "man, thank God those old users are gone, now I can finally start posting"
deletedover 10 years
Isn't that just a repurposed version of the "if we delete training all the training players will immediately want to join the competition and start trophy running" argument, because it wasn't true then and it isn't true now. The toxicity of the forums isn't what scares off new forum posters; they can't be scared off if they have an aversion to forums in general in the first place
deletedover 10 years
To be fair, running off most of the active forum posters (who are also less likely to actually play Mafia) would probably increase activity from other people (who do actually play mafia) on the forums.
deletedover 10 years
The proper solution, by the way, is to more strictly moderate complaints and add an equally strictly moderated site suggestions forum, as those are the only two boards that could lead to constructive debate in the first place. Handing out trolling violations for food and drink topics doesn't increase community solidarity, unless you think solidarity involves running off most of the active forum posters with petty violations
deletedover 10 years
Most people with good ideas aren't eloquent enough to express them, and even if they are it's difficult to gain a ton of popular support for an issue thanks to the goldfish esque attention span of the user base, and even if you get people on board there's at least a 50% chance Phil will blackball the idea because his pillow wasn't fluffed properly the night before
It's cute that you guys have such an idealistic view of this website but you really need a reality check if you think this is going to encourage positive, constructive discussion
deletedover 10 years
People have convinced themselves that the forums should be a place in which everyone constructively shares ideas, because people have forgotten that this is epic mafia.
