Comment pins are broken, so I'm reposting this as its own thread. Everyone made thoughtful contributions - thank you.
edit: I will be updating the rules tomorrow
edit: I hear everyone with concerns over archiving and other norms, but I think it's better for the community to enforce that kind of stuff for now. We'll see how it goes - nothing will be set in stone.
This draft is a living document, unlike the US Constitution
- Do not advocate for illegal violence or post other illegal activity. (Be aware of your local laws.)
- Don't threaten, harass, or impersonate users. Also: don't be a psycho. New users will be held to a higher standard.
- Do not post porn.
- NSFW/NSFL content must be flaired NSFW.
- No vote manipulation. Do not break communities.win's features.
- No spam or reposts. Do not make more than 5 threads a day.
- Do not post falsehoods and hoaxes that are obvious to an uncontroversial degree.
Notes:
- R16 has to go. That much is obvious. Anyway, the mod team is already diverse by 4chan's standard, not reddit's.
- "illegal violence" might seem redundant, but there are a million cases of civil/legal advocacy of violence, such as supporting the invasion of Venezuela. On the other hand, advocating for assassination can understandably earn you a visit from the Secret Service.
- R2 has replaced the original R3 and is
specifically tied to the "community standard" as a minor safeguard against mod abusenow tied to the "psycho" standard. As many have noted here, we need a general purpose "don't be a fag" rule. - The spam rule has been expanded.
- R7 is to prevent low IQ posting. It has been slightly retooled to, again, add a minor safeguard against mods banning posts due to differences of political opinion.
- The original R7, the brigading rule, has been deleted. This community is too small to brigade even random Twitter posts, and if we get raided then the new R2 will cover it.
For anyone confused about the "fag" and "psycho" discussion, these are previous drafts of R2:
- Don't be a fag, a psycho, or anything else that breaches the community's standard of conversation. New users will be held to a higher standard.
- Don't threaten, harass, or impersonate users, or anything else that breaches the community's standard of conversation. New users will be held to a higher standard.
Much better than the previous reddit-style rules.
Edit 4 to include NSFL specifically in the woeding alongside NSFW. Some tards will try and use that absense as a loophole.
Isn't NSFL content part of NSFW?
I guess maybe some people consider themselves dead inside at work so not safe for life has no overlap.
Adding it might seem kind of unnecessary but also fairly harmless I guess. I wouldn't like to bloat everything just to retard proof the rules, if some retard thinks they can post untagged NSFL "because it only says NSFW" I'd say that's on them not the rules. But adding "/NSFL" is a very small addition.
Fair enough
6 should probably read "threads" rather than "posts".
Good point
As I said in the other thread, before I saw you created a new one:
Sorry to nitpick, but new R2 is both too vague and too vulgar. As funny as "don't be a fag" is, it's not really the tone I personally would like to go for.
Other than that, it's looking good. We trimmed a lot of the fat, while still keeping the necessary stuff.
"Don't be fag" leaves some doors open that I'm hesitant about but with the current team and the experience of the last several years I think it's an acceptable risk. That's not to say I'm against trying to refine it further.
Bit of crudeness could be good for gatekeeping, though.
What constitutes being a fag, though?
Are we applying 90s faggotry standards, which is some middle stage between being an asshole and being a fucking asshole? Or do we lean in literally, and say "no gay stuff"? Or some other vague standard?
I ask because, for example, I routinely get called a fag by randoms whenever someone wants to religionpost, and I reply some variant of "keep your god in your pants, thanks". Does that fall afoul of “don't be a fag"?
As much as using this as a variant on the nigger license to keep the flies off sounds funny, I don't know if it's the best practice.
What a fag thing to say
Well, I am a mod now so...
I'm so sorry about your loss.
(Nice to see a new mod that can take jabs in stride and isn't too prideful for some self-deprecating humor.)
If mods can't take the 'mods are fags' joke, they've got no business being a mod.
How is "don't be a fag" less vague?
Hell, I don't even know if being a Power Bottom violates rule 2 by that logic.
I want to ask about enforcement. Outside of The Imp, Dom was kinda quick with the permaban. Has there been any discussions surrounding the punishment for breaking a rule?
Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm going to be extremely hesitant to dish out a permaban, outside of obvious brigaders who were never a part of the community.
People have brought up Ableist a few times already, so I'll use that as an example. He called for the rape and murder of Muslims today, and I merely verbally warned him, told him not to do that again. No enforcement against him or his thread. If he does it again, I still won't even be timing him out. Merely removing the thread and warning him again. If he can't stop, we'll have to take it from there, but I certainly won't be jumping to a permaban.
I hope to never have to ban anyone. Outside of the brigaders, as mentioned. The point is to keep the community running smoothly. I'm not looking to exclude anyone but the worst of the worst, who are actively shitting up the place. None of the regulars qualify for that.
I'm about to permaban bunnymochifan once the rules go live. Pretty easy decision.
Now when it comes to people who actually post content, I would go to a much, much higher threshold.
Yeah go ahead. I'm the one who let the stray stay a little longer, so I'm also more than happy to clean up my own mess too. Chk-chk
He obviously didn't take the hint or the olive branch and is still trying the same dumb shit as well as immediately trying to shit up the mod coms. Literally no-one upvoted any of his shit so apparently no-one enjoys his antics and I'm not in danger of just enforcing a personal preference. I've only been waiting because the new rules are still in flux and just because I said I would.
Yeah, that's the kind crap that the don't be a fag rule covers. I get that the new team is hesitant to deploy the ban hammer and that hesitation comes from a good place but we want you to be more aggressive about modding bad faith users as much as we want you to be less aggressive about modding good faith users.
Considering how quick dom was to pull the trigger, will there be any review of previous permabans to see if what they did would have been permissible under the new rules?
After the new rules are in, I was actually thinking of making a thread for unban recommendations. I skimmed the ban list but it's 40 pages of stuff like "ModsAreCucks" and "URgay420" and there are no connected notes on who got banned for what.
Maybe you can put a note on the sidebar telling people who think they were unjustly nuked by the prior regime to PM a mod with their argument for why they should be let back in?
Yeah, I think we've all thought about it. But The_Shadow_of_Intent wasn't being remotely hyperbolic, there are currently just a hair over 1200 pernanent bans on record, and for the overwhelming majority we literally just have "brigand" to go off as to why they're banned, as the post history gets purged if they get "nuked".
And yes, maybe half of the usernames are some elaborate permutation of "domsafag". It's like spergatory in there.
What do you think about the permanent for bad faith trolls? We had a few of those in the past
110%. Fuck 'em. They're not members of the community, they're not here in good faith, and they don't deserve human rights.
That's tongue in cheek, obviously but, yeah, that's the main reason for the new rule where new arrivals are held to higher standards. If they're not from here, and want to shit up the place, they get deported.
I'm really happy with how this is turning out. The "don't be a fag" clause will require a lot of good faith on the part of the mods (anyone who remembers the dickwolf nonsense from half KIA can attest to that) but that's not something we're short on and the last several years have convinced me it's necessary. My only suggestion is more clarity on where the line in drawn for the new rule 1. Ableist's latest post illustrates the problem. I like the approach u/BandageBandolier took and I'm obviously an advocate of it being as narrow as possible, but regardless of where the line is drawn I think it should be clear to everyone. I think u/Kienan brought up the idea of short and long form rules, and the latter could be used to clarify things without making the former too verbose.
I already ruined and/or fixed that. Sorry and/or you're welcome.
Appreciate it! I hope to be able to both improve things and, more importantly, keep things running smoothly.
Personally, I just warned him, as I don't like censorship...but I'd remove the thread if it happened again. That shit just isn't productive, and is dangerous to the site if someone took notice...which they probably won't, to be fair. But it's still not a good idea.
That's likely going to be my approach in general, at least to regular users; warnings, but no action, but then removal of violative content if behavior continues and, hopefully, not having to even reach the point of time outs.
But, yeah, can't say I was a fan of that titling of that.
As long as the spirt of the rule lives on I'm good with it. I just don't want to see outsiders like Bluestorm shitting up the board for months on end again.
Which is a defensible approach. Less permissible than what I would want but I know I'm an outlier on the topic. It does a seem a little contradictory with BandageBandolier's approach which is why I'm bringing it up. It's probably a hard cases make bad law situation especially since he advocated for gay rape of all things.
As long as I live and breath, you won't see that repeat.
As I've said, shit like that (Bluestorm, Imp alts, pedo jeet, gore jeet, porn jeet, incel jeet, etc.), is the main reason I was interested in mod status at all.
I'd rather fucking not bother. But I like the community, and want to protect it. That's it.
Yup. Thankfully, I think we're all pretty restrained, but it certainly is interesting adding six new mods at the same time, who have no connection with each other outside of all being members here. I don't foresee any clashes of personality, but we will have to all decide how we want to handle these things.
I think Ableist's thread was clearly violative, so I see no problem removing similar ones in the future, but I hope it doesn't come to that. Thus, the warning. If he (or others, not trying to single him out) can't moderate their approach, that's on them.
I'm not after anyone and, just to be clear, even if it did happen again, I'm not even timing him out. Just removing the thread, and giving another warning. He'd be immediately welcome to repost with a nonviolent title. I'm not looking to declare war on anyone here, and want to be as hands off as possible.
"pedo jeet, gore jeet, porn jeet, incel jeet, etc"
Just put "No Jeet behavior"
This kind of insanity normally disqualifies someone from being a moderator.
I'll be honest, had I seen Kienan's sticky comment lower down the thread I probably wouldn't have offered another opinion. Not trying to give contradictory info, we've just been focused on figuring out the general rules to abide by and otherwise working autonomously on our own understandings of expectations without stepping on each other's toes until something gets formalized. It's part of why I've been very sparse with the mod marked comments so far, until the new rules are formalized I can't really say I speak for the moderation team as a whole.
I've already had the pleasure of banning the latest iteration of pedo-jeet, my bloodlust is sated now and I my primary interests are making sure no normal users are getting auto-filtered anymore and not doing anything irreversible until things are settled and agreed upon.
That's a good point as well. I just retooled it to be more specific and moderate (although I think "don't be a psycho" would cover 90% of the moronic posts here).
I do want to keep the "community standard" in there to prevent rules lawyering, though.
Yeah I'll be honest, I don't really know where I stand on Ableist's post. Lol.
Seconding Kieran on the putting the psycho bit back in. It's less vague than fag even though fag covers pretty much everything lol.
Lol OK, I tried adding it again.
Yeah, tbh psycho pretty much perfectly covers the edge case users I'm concerned about.
Sure, add back in the 'psycho' bit. Seems like a solid middle ground.
I think it was definitely violative. If I wanted to come down heavy, I could definitely justify removing it. And, as I said, I would remove it going forward, if he wanted to keep posting that sort of thing.
Oh he will lol. You know his history. Any time he gets into a dispute over loli he calls for his opponents to be raped and sex trafficked.
And, when that happens, I will have to time him out. I don't want to, but if he can't help himself, I will.
I'm happy to be soft on a lot of the other stuff, as I've said, but that sort of threat to other users here is just super uncalled for, and super disruptive. And he's been warned for it before, numerous times.
I think this is where the good faith of the moderators comes into play. Exercising enough good judgement to allow the rules to bend a little before dropping the hammer in order to gauge user intent. Someone stepping over the line is different from someone sprinting past it and the tempered response we've seen so far is encouraging. Whatever the final rules end up being I think it'll still hinge on you guys being good faith actors at the end of the day if we want any of it to work.
So you know, no pressure or anything.
That's what it's going to boil down to at the end of the day. As I've said repeatedly no ruleset would have stopped DOM from pulling the crap he did. The fact that the rules are even being discussed and the community is being listened to is more important than the exact details of the final ruleset.
As I said in the first rules thread, sadly, it's an unavoidable fact.
Just like with any political system. Democracy? Republicanism? Monarchy? Even socialism or communism. It all comes down to how the people wielding the power want to behave.
Thankfully, I do think we've got a good bunch here, but we should still try to set up a rule system where, if we were to abuse our power, it would be blatant and enraging, so the angry masses could proverbially cut our heads off.
It will always come down to the mod team, but we should still make the rules as clear as possible, to hold the mods accountable if nothing else.
Thanks, appreciate it, and that's exactly how I feel. I don't want to have to do anything to the steppers outside of a verbal warning, if they do be steppin'. My main goal is to stop the sprinters; outsiders who are here for bad purposes, and aren't members of the community. In the past, due to lax moderation, they have been given free reign for a while, before they were banned, letting them do much more damage than they should have. Stopping that has always been my primary intent.
100%. Just how things work, for better or worse.
but are we allowed to be niggers?
/s
Also, I feel like R7 should be expanded to cover posts like this one https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/1ARwLIEYJ2/-you-just-created-1000-renee-goo/c/ , which is not necessarily a falsehood, just an incredibly low effort post.
additionally I feel like we should keep the rule about not posting social media accounts with under x amount of followers, that way we don't get social media spam of literal whos talking nonsense, which always exist on the internet.
I would say that user (bunnymochifan) is in violation of "don't spam" because how could a substanceless post like that be anything else than spam? If it was funny that would count as content, but it's either antagonistic or just crazy.
That user's post history is 100% this stuff. Probably mental and seeking attention.
Possibly, I think the community would naturally filter those posts though.
It's also a don't be a fag violation.
you have more faith in anonymous forums than I do
Well, it's worked so far
FML R2 is gonna kill me 😂
I can see where Kienan is coming from, so I'm moderating it lol
I think the new version is okay. I still think we should unofficially refer to it as as the "don't be a fag clause" because community standards does too much of the heavy lifting in the new version.
Looks fine to me.
Re: Rule 7 Is Holocaust denial/skepticism a violation of this rule?
No. It's not uncontroversial.
Gotcha, thanks. The canary lives another day.
I would have one possible addition to the proposed rules list, one that I think is overdue given how many Twitter/X posts I've seen vanish into the void:
ALWAYS ARCHIVE (caps intentional)
My proposal is that live links would still be allowed in the comments, but archives would be given top priority when submitting posts. To make it a little easier to follow, I would suggest linking to archive.today and ghostarchive in the sidebar, and point out ghostarchive as being the best option for Twitter/X posts. I would also add the stipulation that headlines found in images should be traced to their original source and archived before being submitted.
I'm wary of making that an actual rule because I don't want to set up any precedents for selective enforcement, but I also don't want to have to remove an already active discussion just because someone forgot to archive.
I'm certainly happy to make it a habit to sticky any comments (if/when we can get sticky to work reliably) with an actual archive link in any thread that is a live link. I'll even try and do the archive link generation myself more often, but this job is unpaid, and you get what you pay for :P
New rules are looking good. So, when do they go active?
If nobody raises serious objections, we can enact them today.
u/BandageBandolier u/Kienan u/Smith1980 u/SocraticMethod1 u/CarmenOfSandiego are you guys good with that?
Huh, weird, it didn't ping me about this specific @, I even went back and double checked my notifications. I just happened to skim down the thread and see it. Maybe there's some auto ignore kind of function when you try and tag too many people at once.
Anyway, it's an aye from me to move forward.
Maybe it will work to do the notifications round robin style, u/Kienan you're up next, how do you feel about finalizing the new rules?
I'm good with the rules, and your tag worked for me. I didn't get Shadow's either.
I did change a setting though; check your profile settings, over on Communities if they don't work here; there's a setting to allow pings. Which is weird, because it was off, but I still got pings in the past. I have no clue what's up with this retard site...
I'll try tagging everyone else, see if it helps.
u/Smith1980 u/SocraticMethod1 u/CarmenOfSandiego - check the comment tree above, Shadow wants final input on new rules. Let me know if these tags work too. Thanks.
Looks good
Did you get the ping?
That you tagged me? Yes. Or maybe I’m not understanding correctly
Yeah. Thanks. Some people haven't been getting user pings. Just wanted to check.
Tagging individually to see if that works: u/Smith1980
Got it
u/SocraticMethod1
u/CarmenOfSandiego
This worked 👍
Got it