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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.