Code of Conduct/Forum Organization Discussion

[eezstreet]

These are just ideas, not set in stone. Please discuss them.

OVERVIEW

Hi there. I'm a new moderator on the block and I thought I'd like to throw the idea of revitalizing the code of conduct. Primarily, the code of conduct thread seems to suffer from the following:

• There is a code of conduct and posting guidelines. To the average reader, what is the difference? Why not just have one set of rules?
• There are a lot of redundant rules in the post which make it hard to read. There's a posting guidelines enforcement section and a code of conduct enforcement section.
• Some of the rules that are posted are vague and lend themselves to varying interpretations by moderators. For instance, what is flaming? Is flaming saying that you disagree with someone? That would certainly fall under the extent of the "anything that is posted for the intent to anger, intimidate, demoralize, aggravate, threaten, and/or frighten" definition, and seems to have been enforced as such also, which is very worrying to me.
• It's not especially clear what the punishment is for an infraction, and it seems to be up to the moderators themselves to inflict however many warning points they want. I've seen anywhere from 1 to 5 warning points get issued for one offense (for reference, 10 points = temporary, 2 month ban)

On top of this, MB2 has an aliasing problem. There's literally no incentive for people to want to remain as a well-known person, and I think part of this is because of downright draconian rule enforcement and favoritism from moderators that I've seen. I'm not going to name any names, but the moderation has been very terrible from what I've seen and I intend to change that. We ought to be encouraging people to stick around and make names for themselves instead of realiasing every couple of months under a different name. I think that would make people comfortable, anyway.

So here are my proposed changes, and I'd like community feedback on them:


FORUM ORGANIZATION CHANGES

Break the forums into more subsections
Instead of "Movie Battles II" and "Public Area", there would be the following sections:

• Movie Battles II News - Contains News and Developer Diaries
• Community Discussion - Contains the Airlock, Community Discussion, Feedback and Gameplay, Competitions and Events, and Off Topic boards
• Help - Contains the Support, Bug Tracker, and Official Servers boards. You can post in this forum section as a guest, without registering.

Changed Forums
The Mapping and Modification and Media Discussion forums would be more or less merged into a Modification Releases board, as part of the Community Discussion. Here, people would talk about their new and upcoming mod releases, such as the Peneke Pack, supermb2, etc. There would also be a Modification Help board, under the Help section, where people could ask for help in modifying the game and adding new things to it.

New Forums
The following new forums would be added:

• Disputes: A section, under Help, where moderation disputes can be settled. Similar to the application forums, only the devs and the person involved can see them.
• Memes: A section, under Community Discussion, where users can post off-topic memes and discussions. You must be logged in in order to see this forum.

CODE OF CONDUCT CHANGES

This is probably the biggest meat on here. In fact, it will be so different that it won't be Code of Conduct (ayyy lmao no more CoC), it will be called Forum Rules.

1. Duplicate or "sockpuppet" accounts are prohibited. You cannot have more than one account. Any other accounts owned by you will be permanently banned. (You do not need an account to talk about your ban on the forums. See the Disputes section for more details.)

2. Be kind to other users. No doxxing, no flaming. Do not make personal insults towards, or otherwise attack other users on the forum. If someone is arguing with you, attack their arguments, not their character. Also, do not distribute a user's private information, such as their home address or phone number, without their prior consent.

3. Distribution of pirated material, gore or pornography is prohibited. Pirated material and child pornography is illegal under US law, which is where the forums are located. Additionally, explicit material designed to arouse or shock (or maybe both?) have no place on these forums.

4. Post in the right section. Shitposting and memes belong in the Memes forum. Support belongs in the support section. You get the idea.

5. No animated or overly large signatures or avatars.
​

Enforcement:

1. Each infraction of the rules above will result in a verbal warning and/or deletion of the content above.
2. Continued posting of content in violation of the rules above will result in a warning.
3. After three warnings, you will be temporarily banned for two weeks.
4. After you return from your ban and you are warned again, you will be banned again for two weeks.
5. If you then return and get warned, you will be permanently banned.
​

Disputes:

Disputes may be settled in the Disputes section of the forums. Note that you do not need an account to post anywhere in the Help section. If you successfully argue your case, anywhere from 0 - all of your warning points may be removed. Note that spamming the Disputes section will not make your case any better to moderators. Please show that you are going to be a good character within the community.
​

Meme Guidelines:

The Memes section of the forum is used exclusively for memes and shitposting. Of course, everyone's opinion of what makes a meme good is different. Please however try to refrain from making/posting memes that disparage a group of people, or are likely to devolve into political or philosophical arguments. We come to the Memes section for memes, not for bickering about SJWs, Trump, communism, socialism, or whatever else.​

 

[Viserys]

• It's not especially clear what the punishment is for an infraction, and it seems to be up to the moderators themselves to inflict however many warning points they want. I've seen anywhere from 1 to 5 warning points get issued for one offense

Certain offenses have a pre-set number of points against them, when you issue a warning you will see this. For example flaming is 3 points, spamming is 1 point, if I remember correctly. But yes, a moderator can still edit this. Let's make sure it's standardized.

• (for reference, 10 points = temporary, 2 month ban)

Incorrect. The ban lasts as long as the warning points are more than 10, and the expiry date of each warning point is set by the moderator issuing the warning. The CoC I think is actually more strict by saying a repeat offense will lead to a week's ban (regardless of warning points, if I read it correctly) Let's standardize that too.

downright draconian rule enforcement and favoritism from moderators that I've seen.

Can you give examples to back up this rather generic statement? Before I gave you mod powers, we had 4 moderators + 2 admins (me and Spag). Out of those 4 moderators, the only activity in a while was Cat Lady, and that only started literally 2 days ago.

I'm not going to name any names, but the moderation has been very terrible from what I've seen

As above.

• Movie Battles II News - Contains News and Developer Diaries
• Community Discussion - Contains the Airlock, Community Discussion, Feedback and Gameplay, Competitions and Events, and Off Topic boards
• Help - Contains the Support, Bug Tracker, and Official Servers boards. You can post in this forum section as a guest, without registering.

I like the idea but not sure about the guest posting, could result in spam?

Changed Forums
The Mapping and Modification and Media Discussion forums would be more or less merged into a Modification Releases board, as part of the Community Discussion. Here, people would talk about their new and upcoming mod releases, such as the Peneke Pack, supermb2, etc. There would also be a Modification Help board, under the Help section, where people could ask for help in modifying the game and adding new things to it.

I think we should try to avoid subboards as much as we can, I'd say keep the modification and media out of the community discussion.

New Forums
The following new forums would be added:

• Disputes: A section, under Help, where moderation disputes can be settled. Similar to the application forums, only the devs and the person involved can see them.

Moderation disputes can be handled via the reporting system, or in the 'contact the dev team' board. We don't want to end up having a 'trial' everytime there is a moderator action (and every moderator action will not be liked by the person being moderated).

• Memes: A section, under Community Discussion, where users can post off-topic memes and discussions. You must be logged in in order to see this forum.

Yes I'd like to make memes viewed by logged in users only and put on an age restriction, but is a single thread worth its own section just for that?

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

Yes I'd like to make memes viewed by logged in users only and put on an age restriction, but is a single thread worth its own section just for that?

It definitely is. That's what the kids of today are all about. They need their modern day sandbox.

Eez's on the right track here. Not going to delve too deep into the minute details here and start parting hairs, but the general jist of it is clearly what would be beneficial for all parts of the community.

Just gonna quickly summarize the simplest solution without any excess details:
Create new Registered Members Only section called the Mos Eisley Cantina. The most wretched hive of scum and villainy. Essentially reserved for shitposting.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourselves that.

You *________* offended me to the point I dont even play anymore. 10 Years.

Good job.

edit; My Bad, I started in 2003.

*_________* ragamuffins. Seriously. You 'effed up.

edit; Sanitized, in case of retro-active Sanitation by a demented dreamer.

 

[eezstreet]

Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourselves that.

You fuckers offended me to the point I dont even play anymore. 10 Years.

Good job.

edit; My Bad, I started in 2003.

Stupid bastards. Serisouly. You fucked up.

Erm...who are you talking to?

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

If you need to ask, then you're not part of it

 

[eezstreet]

o k fam

 

[Noob]

eez love u

 

[eezstreet]

eez love u

love u 2 fam
no homo tho rite?

 

[Puppytine]

Hi there. I'm a new moderator on the block

Well hello there. Welcome to the snake pit.

There is a code of conduct and posting guidelines. To the average reader, what is the difference? Why not just have one set of rules?

Agreed.

There are a lot of redundant rules in the post which make it hard to read. There's a posting guidelines enforcement section and a code of conduct enforcement section.

Agreed.

Some of the rules that are posted are vague and lend themselves to varying interpretations by moderators. For instance, what is flaming? Is flaming saying that you disagree with someone? That would certainly fall under the extent of the "anything that is posted for the intent to anger, intimidate, demoralize, aggravate, threaten, and/or frighten" definition, and seems to have been enforced as such also, which is very worrying to me.

Agreed.
It's written in corporate, toxic language, which is hard to read, hard to understand and which can be interpreted too widely.
Seems that somebody who created this "CoC" didn't bother to write it by himself, he copy-pasted it from somewhere else.
Even the title makes me shrug: "Code of Conduct" sounds like a corporate codeword for me. Good ol' forums don't have these "Codes of Conduct", they have rules!

It's not especially clear what the punishment is for an infraction, and it seems to be up to the moderators themselves to inflict however many warning points they want. I've seen anywhere from 1 to 5 warning points get issued for one offense (for reference, 10 points = temporary, 2 month ban)

This whole "warning points" idea is a garbage.
It isn't transparent, it isn't fair, and it gives admins wrong message about how they should moderate forums.

Violations of the rules maybe very different, and they are supposed to have very different reactions from the authority.
For example, Korean (or Chinese, or whatever they were) spammers don't deserve any warnings or warning points; All they need is to be banned on sight.
On other hand, some people shouldn't be banned even if they got 10 warnings in the row; In some cases, banning would be unfair, rude and injustice. Each case should be handled individually.

The worse part is that currently mods tend to hide behind warning points system, saying nonsense like "I didn't ban you hurr durr, you're banned because you've got too much points hurr durr". Absolutely disgusting.
The final solution (about should a person be banned or not) must be decided by admin, taking into account everything that the person did, in similar way as judge does decide how many years a criminal should spend in jail. The admin should have a power to set a ban duration, and he also should be responsible to the community by his decisions, like it used to on other Internet forums.
Warning points system (not a warnings itself) is just a needless entity.

I think part of this is because of downright draconian rule enforcement and favoritism from moderators that I've seen. I'm not going to name any names, but the moderation has been very terrible from what I've seen and I intend to change that.

Agreed.
The moderation of these forums is truly horrible and not professional.
I don't think, though, that this is because of favoritism; It seems that admins/mods just don't take moderation seriously at all, they don't want to spend time and effort to do it best way.
They like "Oh, we have much better things to worry about, so let's not invest any resources into moderation. Just shoot first, ask questions last." This really brings me down, cause I'm heavily into forums. Internet forums became my addiction right after I got Internet.
This beautiful engine, best forum engine on the market, does deserve better mod team.

Break the forums into more subsections
Instead of "Movie Battles II" and "Public Area", there would be the following sections:

• Movie Battles II News - Contains News and Developer Diaries
• Community Discussion - Contains the Airlock, Community Discussion, Feedback and Gameplay, Competitions and Events, and Off Topic boards
• Help - Contains the Support, Bug Tracker, and Official Servers boards. You can post in this forum section as a guest, without registering.

Nah, Official Servers doesn't belong to Help, it should be in the Community boards.
I'd rather break forums into these areas:

• "Movie Battles II" -- Contains News, Developer Diaries and a new section, about this site/forums itself;
• "Public Area" -- Contains the Airlock, Community Discussion, Competitions and Events, Official Servers, and Off Topic sections;
• "Technical Area" -- Contains Support, Bug Tracker, Feedback & Gameplay, Mapping, Modification and Media Discussion;
• "Community Management" and "Applications" areas should be leaved as is.

I would like to point out that we need a new section, dedicated everything that is related to the forums itself, not to MBII.
Like if you have a technical issue with the forums, where you're gonna start a thread about it? Support? But it's about mod. Off-topic? It does not fit such threads. And currently, "Discussion on moderation" is in Off-topic too, but it's supposed to be inside of more specialized section.
Here are examples of such sections, on the forums of other on-line games:
Site / Forum Issues - Lineage II Forums
Site / Forum News & Discussion
ValveTime Feedback
Site Feedback | AUSFIFA | Forums

Here are examples of a threads those should go to "Site Feedback" (or whatever you want to name it) section:
Discussion on forum moderation
Reorganizing tutorials and guides
White theme not available
Forums not displaying/opening
When signing up why do I have to use 10 characters in my name...

Changed Forums
The Mapping and Modification and Media Discussion forums would be more or less merged into a Modification Releases board, as part of the Community Discussion. Here, people would talk about their new and upcoming mod releases, such as the Peneke Pack, supermb2, etc. There would also be a Modification Help board, under the Help section, where people could ask for help in modifying the game and adding new things to it.

No.
Discussions on Penekepack is more like a technical thing, rather than a community one.
Also, modifications are important part of Movie Battles and they do deserve their own top-level section.

New Forums
The following new forums would be added:

• Disputes: A section, under Help, where moderation disputes can be settled. Similar to the application forums, only the devs and the person involved can see them.
• Memes: A section, under Community Discussion, where users can post off-topic memes and discussions. You must be logged in in order to see this forum.

No.
Disputes for not-yet-banned users should go into "Discussion on moderation" thread in "Site Feedback" section.
Disputes for those who are already banned should be handled privately, either on special section ("Contact Us"), Discord, or by email.
Yes we need a special section for memes, which can be viewed only by registered users, but actually, it shouldn't be reduced only to memes. It should be dedicated to any "adult talks", like if somebody would like to discuss politic, history, or recent events in serious way, it should be allowed in the mature section.

it will be called Forum Rules.

Yes!

2. Continued posting of content in violation of the rules above will result in a warning.
3. After three warnings, you will be temporarily banned for two weeks.
4. After you return from your ban and you are warned again, you will be banned again for two weeks.
5. If you then return and get warned, you will be permanently banned.

No.
As I said above, admins should not count warnings and do other formal stuff in order to determine a punishment that is to apply to guilty user. Instead, they have to rely on common sense and logic.
So, I suggest something like this:
"Posting of content in violation of the rules above will result in a punishment (warning or a temporary ban) based on the nature and degree of your offense."

I think we should try to avoid subboards as much as we can

Agreed.

We don't want to end up having a 'trial' everytime there is a moderator action (and every moderator action will not be liked by the person being moderated).

No, this is exact thing that we need to have, and this exactly what is "Discussion on moderation" for.
"Trial" made by users is nothing more than a simple discussion. Blah-blah-blah. No matter how much people talk about your decisions, no matter how much they hate them, users cannot change them. You have admin's permissions and we don't.
But if roasting of moderation coming from the community gives too much trouble, despite the fact it cannot change the damn thing, it does matter that your moderation decisions are wrong and they should be discarded.

 

[Subaru]

Skimming this thread: I agree, warning points are garbage. I'm in favor of either a much stricter three strike system or single warning based system. The current system is applied inconsistently, and it ends up being bad for everyone.

As for discussion of moderation: No. That's a horrible idea, it's just going to lead to trolls circlejerking over mod actions being "admin abuse".

As for "shitpost section": No, please no. Please answer me this: why does the mb2 forum have to be the place to post this sort of thing? Why not use another site? This sort of content makes the site look even less professional than it already does. It's also offensive and attracts the sort of people I'd rather not have on the forums.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

As for discussion of moderation: No. That's a horrible idea, it's just going to lead to trolls circlejerking over mod actions being "admin abuse".

Have to agree on this point, just seems like an excuse to lynch mob moderators and/or developers and just serves to make the situation worse.

 

[Noob]

I guess as devs who hardly play as much as the community you wouldnt understand. We all have our little bonds and to be able to connect further with our memes with only the mb2 community is nice.

 

[eezstreet]

I guess as devs who hardly play as much as the community you wouldnt understand. We all have our little bonds and to be able to connect further with our memes with only the mb2 community is nice.

This is basically why I think having the section is important and why relaxing the rules and enforcement, despite the propensity for there to be unsavory memes, is a good idea.

Ultimately we want this place to be a place where people talk about the game, yes? Start maybe with removing a lot of the posting guidelines that try to stifle actual discussion about the game. If people are talking, they'll be talking about the game.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

I guess as devs who hardly play as much as the community you wouldnt understand. We all have our little bonds and to be able to connect further with our memes with only the mb2 community is nice.

It is almost as if developing a game takes away time from playing it. SHOCKING I KNOW!

 

[Noob]

It is almost as if developing a game takes away time from playing it. SHOCKING I KNOW!

I didnt say you didnt play as much as us out of ignorance

 

[Hessu]

It's also offensive and attracts the sort of people I'd rather not have on the forums.

HOW IS POSTING EDGY AND FUNNY MEMES OFFENSIVE (which have enjoyed in the past and still does)? And it attracts "bad" kind of people? Lol i dont think so, thats just bullshit

 

[eezstreet]

HOW IS POSTING EDGY AND FUNNY MEMES OFFENSIVE (which have enjoyed in the past and still does)? And it attracts "bad" kind of people? Lol i dont think so, thats just bullshit

It depends a lot on what kind of meme it is. If it's a kind of meme that say, glorifies Hitler or something, there are people who are too dumb to realize that you are being ironic and think you're actually glorifying Hitler. Or if there's a meme that praises throwing mixed-race babies off of a rooftop, there's people who are too dumb to realize that you're making a joke and/or being ironic and totally 100% agree that interracial babies should be thrown off a building. I think he's concerned about the quality of discourse getting progressively worse and worse when people get more ironic and it blurs the lines a bit. It sounds dumb (like yea obviously nobody on this forum really thinks throwing mixed-race babies off of rooftops is a good idea or that Hitler did nothing wrong) but it's based on an interesting phenomena.

 

[Subaru]

Going to try and be communicative here. If this devolves into more shitposting, or it feels like people aren't taking this seriously I'll stop responding.

I guess as devs who hardly play as much as the community you wouldnt understand. We all have our little bonds and to be able to connect further with our memes with only the mb2 community is nice.

I totally understand. You think I've not made any bonds with members of the community? All I'm saying is that mb2 forums don't need to be the venue for all types of content. You can invite all your mb2 friends to somewhere else that is more welcoming to your content. Surely you can agree that the forums don't need to host all content out there - for example, if someone makes a porn thread (or some fetish like scat), do you think we should let it stay?

HOW IS POSTING EDGY AND FUNNY MEMES OFFENSIVE (which have enjoyed in the past and still does)? And it attracts "bad" kind of people? Lol i dont think so, thats just bullshit

One recent example is the comparison of black people to apes. It's my belief that it is offensive to black people and perpetuates racism. I'd rather not get into a discussion about what kinds of things are racist and what aren't, but surely you recognize that some "edgy" memes are "edgy" because they touch on sensitive subjects. If you can't recognize this, I don't see a point to discussing this, it won't be productive.

 

[Subaru]

It depends a lot on what kind of meme it is. If it's a kind of meme that say, glorifies Hitler or something, there are people who are too dumb to realize that you are being ironic and think you're actually glorifying Hitler. Or if there's a meme that praises throwing mixed-race babies off of a rooftop, there's people who are too dumb to realize that you're making a joke and/or being ironic and totally 100% agree that interracial babies should be thrown off a building. I think he's concerned about the quality of discourse getting progressively worse and worse when people get more ironic and it blurs the lines a bit. It sounds dumb (like yea obviously nobody on this forum really thinks throwing mixed-race babies off of rooftops is a good idea or that Hitler did nothing wrong) but it's based on an interesting phenomena.

As I told Helix in Slack earlier, some people do take it seriously. Unfortunately, by posting this sort of stuff, you perpetuate racism. Even assuming the poster of such a thing isn't "actually racist" (which isn't a productive thing to discuss right now, I guess), "actual racists" see this stuff and think that regular people agree with them. Directly invoking Poe's law, how am I supposed to know the difference? If an "actual racist" started posting racist images, what then? I know Europe is at times more isolated from this sort of stuff, but in America we have actual KKK members and NeoNazis marching. They do exist. I'd rather not do things to encourage them.