Forum Rules?

[Terry Shayar]

I was just wondering, once we're fully launched, we may have people trolling around, and we may also have people sitting on the other side of the fence coming here to argue with us. Can we plan for that, and actually come up with a basic set of forum rules so that we can righteously kick out trolls, and have a diplomatic and peaceful way of settling debates and discussions in here? I know most of this should be like pretty obvious, and we shouldn't even need to bring it up, but there are such bigots in the world who just come in here to spam and rant in our forums, and I've seen it in some other forums. So if we can set the rules straight properly in an extremely VISIBLE way, it may be better? I don't know whether it'd be necessary or not. What do you think? I may be overthinking things a little LOL.

[Mikkiness]

good point, I hadn't really thought about that... but we are likely to attract our fair share of idiots.
Some good base rules would probably be no profanity, and no insults directed at other members or their ideas.
I dont know what else we should have.

[rexchanna]

Here are the forum rules:


We will have no tolerance for the following:
- Spamming
- Trolling
- Any sort of dissent/rudeness/hatefulness/intolerance
- Twilight fans ..... (Joke. But, I mean. Really? XD)
- Hazing
- Deceitful behavior, IE someone making any untruthful claims, gossiping (to a ridiculous degree. Some gossip that actually has merit maybe excused, but I'm just talking about shameless trashtalking about ANYONE, fictional, real, or celebrity... unless it involves Twilight... ), or anything such as this.
- Users who use the forums only to advertise their own websites/fiction/art/or anything really. Users of course may do this, but if that's all they're here to do then they can shove it.

Violation of any of these rules (and more may come along, mind you) are grounds for examination. Trolling, as stated, will be grounds for an immediate ban, IP ban, and user removal completely. No questions asked. Other violations will be given a warning, then a second, much sterner warning, probation (for an amount of time to be agreed on by administration), then ultimately, a ban, if after probation said user returns without a changed heart, per se. If said user returns under a different username [if discovered], an IP ban will occur.


I messaged Lance about setting a separate forum so we could actually have this stickied somewhere, but yeah. There are the rules.

[Catty-the-spy]

This is an idea for a rule list. Very tentative, but I thought I'd give it a shot.:

Welcome to SEE Trek Love Forums. We're very happy you decided to join and we hope you engage in the discussions here. There are a few simple rules we request that you follow:
1) No profanity. Please. Keep your comments PG at least.
2) Be polite. People may have different ideas, may not have perfect spelling, and may not be able to fully express themselves, but that doesn't mean you have to be rude.
3)We have a thread specifically for ranting like a maniac. Do your ranting there. Try not to let your anger explode in unreasonable ways.
4) If you're going to reply, reply. If you're going to disagree, disagree. We want discussions here. Please, try and remain coherent, and if you get angry...refer to rules 2 and 3.
5) Spamming: try not to.
6)No personal insults. None of us have met in person, and we don't really know one another. Personal insults are uncalled for and break rules #2.
7) Do your best to post threads in their appropriate places. Don't pimp your fanfiction in SEE Buisiness. Don't introduce yourself in Star Trek: TOS. We want to keep things organized to make everyone's experience pleasant, and that's hard to do if they have to hunt topics down.
8) This isn't the place for hate. See rules 2, 3, and 6.
9)Try to stay coherent. Rember that not everyone understands net-speak, and that some people here may be children. Do your best to keep things eay to understand.
10) This is not a political party. SEE advocates for the equal and unbiased representation of sexual minorities. We are not allied with any specific political party. Do not accuse any one here of being something they are not. This isn't the place, and we don't want you here if all you're going to do is attack people for their beliefs. This is not a site where you are to argue about which party is stupid or which country is better than another. We're all on equal footing here, and it is important that everyone realizes that.
Rember, we want this to be a good experience. Try to follow the rules and help us maintain the air of goodwill we value so much.
Thank you very much,
SEE

Thoughts?
Like I said, it's tentative. In the end, this might not have anything to do with the final rule-set, but I wanted to give it a shot.
Tell me if you like it/take out of it what you like.


ETA: Nevermind then. Ignore this little widget.
E2: Nevermind the nevermind. I'll try again...eventually.

[Lance]

Hey guys. Those rules I sent to the mods are basically just to give them an idea of what I expect. Those will not be the rules (esp not the wording of) that I will post as "Forum Rules." If someone wants to take them and put them more eloquently, that'd be great! Also, there are probably some generalized rules I've missed, so help would be great in this department. As I discovered last night... so much do to... XD

[Catty-the-spy]

What is the official defenition of "trolling"?
Maybe I should change "profanity" to "excess profanity", esp. since not everyone agrees on what is profanity....

[Mikkiness]

I cant find it at an official dictionary, but urban dicionary has some good definitions here
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling
mainly the 3rd, 4th and 5th.
and profanity is anything society agrees you shouldn't say around your grandmother or children under 5.

[Catty-the-spy]

thanks for the def.
The reason profanity is difficult, is because some people think say..."crap" is a swearword, and somepeople don't. A bitch is a female dog, and can be used as a curseword. An ass is generally a donkey, but can also be animals similar.
Some people avoid the words altogether, some only allow use in a general sense. I think it works out to aim for a PG rating. I usually censor myself (in a comment I wrote b*** instead of writing it out), but other people might not feel the need, and we all live in different places, where what is allowed might be different.
Excessive Profanity is easier to rail against (I think) because it's easier to understand someone when they say "I think Stacy is a b---". Versus "That bleepbleep Stacy is a bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep can't find bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep". THe first one is direct and to the point, and you don't lose people halfway through wondering "Is this sentence going to make sense?"
Not that we want people saying that about "Stacy", but...people swear. We need to be able to understand people clearly.
Did that make sense?

[Mikkiness]

yeah, I dunno, go with excessive profanity, but how do you define that? one curse per sentence? I'm just realising that I have never heard more than the occasional swearword at once so I have no way to define excessive.

[Catty-the-spy]

I'm thinking "no more than four a sentence", because after a while words might start repeating obnoxiously.

[SLunacy]

Ah, I've just refrained from profanity (as I have a rather potty mouth at times in RL) because I figured it would, er, help the cause.

Then again, I live by swinging from extreme to extreme. ^^;

[Terry Shayar]

Okay, just reading through suggestions and seeing if I can offer anything else.

Well, I guess we can't really baby-proof the forum, but when it comes to issues such as the more colorful language, I'd think that it's your own personal responsibility as to whether you wish to read/write such language. Being on the internet means you gotta get used to it, because loads of people use it casually here. But the one thing we can do is probably set up a separate chat thread for 18 and above if you really want to discuss the more M18 stuff. Like, enter at your own risk. We pretty much know each other's ages from the Intro thread, so we can boot out people who're not supposed to be there. My only problem is that it creates a sense of exclusivity in the forum community, which isn't very good in my honest opinion.

I would kinda add that everyone should always consider what they're gonna post here , because there's no body language here. We can't tell if you're joking, or if you really mean things. And we won't know until we get to really know each other.

I like the rest of what Catty has suggested. Erm, I did suggest it in the first post, but do you guys think we should have an entirely different discussion thread for people who want to have intellectual discussions with us about certain issues, or do you just want them to come in and post in our own discussion threads? For the sake of more organization, I mean. So if we want to find out what others are saying, go here. But if you just wanna find out what other members have been up to for SEE, go there. Thoughts?

[Mikkiness]

I'm mainly interested in stopping profanity because it tends to get pulled into disagreements and I find it hard to follow a debate when every other word has optional asterisks. Besides, this is supposed to be a professional site to convince really important people to overtly support homosexuality in mainstream media, they aren't likely to be impressed if we're all carrying on like fishwives, well, no, they may be impressed by the variety, but we dont want them to dismiss us as a bunch of foulmouthed brats, which is even more likely when you consider how so many of us arent even thirty yet.

[Terry Shayar]

Hm... then how about we restrict the use of such language to the ranting thread? When you want to curse and swear about certain issues and such. Stuff like erm. Can I use examples? Shit, crap, damn. I mean, that's what the ranting thread is for right? And enforce the rule once again that we do not insult, curse, or swear at anyone in the forum. Or mods will go into limit break mode and own your ass.

Edit: Right. I'm sorry about the profanities and I hope no one is insulted. I will try to censor my language.

[Catty-the-spy]

Tentative Rule List:

Welcome to SEE Trek Love Forums. We’re very happy you decided to join and we hope you engagein the discussions here. Before you post, there are a few simple rules we request that you follow:
1) Try not to swear. Keep your profanity to a minimum. It’s a lot easier to understand what you’re saying if the words used do something to further understanding. That, and we’d like your comments to stay PG. If you really want to let your potty-mouth run free, we have a thread just for rants.
2) Be polite. People may have different ideas, may not have perfect spelling, and may not be able to fully express themselves, but that doesn’t mmean you have to be rude.
3) We have a threat specifically for ranting like a maniac. Do your ranting there. Try not to let your anger explode in unreasonable ways.
4) Spamming: try not to.
5) No personal insults. None of us have met in person, and we don’t really know each other. Personal insults are uncalled for and break rule #2.
6) Do your best to post threads in their appropriate places. Don’t pimp your fanfiction in SEE Buisiness. Don’t introduce yourself in Star Trek: TOS. We want to keep things organized to make ecervyone’s experience pleasant, and that’s hard to do if they have to hunt topics down.
7) This isn’t the place for hate. See rules 2, 3, and 5.
8) Try to stay coherent. Remember that not everyone understands net-speak, that some people here might be children, and that not everyone speaks the same language. Do your best to keep things easy to understand.
9) Stay honest. Don’t gossip excessively – specifically, no shameless trashing of anyone (human, animal, vegitable, alien…real or no). Don’t make stuff up and try and pass it off as the truth.
10) There is a place here for you to advertise your website/forum/fiction/art/etc. Don’t abuse it. Don’t join this forum just for adspace: We want discussions here, thank you very much. This isn’t a commercial, or an infomercial. If you’re only here to post an ad, go away.
11) No trolling! At all! It’s rude, and extremely unnecessary.
12) Think before you post. We can’t see you, and we might not know if you’re joking or serious. Check to see if your question has already been asked/answered. Try and keep your cool. Make sure that, your post is relevant to the discussion or forumtopic.
Violation of any of these rules are grounds for examination. Trolling will get you banned immediatlly, no questions asked. Other violations get
1) A warning (Whoa, slow doen, check yourself)
2) A sterner warning (No really, check yourself)
3) Probation for an amount of time to be agreed upon by the administration (Last chance, buddy)
4) A ban if – after probation – said user returns without a changed heart (Sorry, bye)
Remember, we want this to be a good experience for everyone. Try to follow the rules and help us maintain the air of goodwill we value so much.
Thank you,
SEE
Thoughts? I took into account what was said about profanity...so...yeah. My second contribution.
Seperate discussion forum?
*shrugs*
(This is also an insight into my crazy brain. The list origional only had 11 when I started. I have this thing about...well...I like getting things in 3's, 7's, and even numbers. I do it with cookies, and I did it with this. I couldn't leave it on eleven. The same thing happened the first time, where I had to add the extra rule to because it felt incomplete with an odd number. I'm only lucky I didn't have to pull any of these out of thin air. *feels a bit insane*)