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JJJ/Havaco/Nate/Solo -- we need some guidelines for using the Forums. In the past, I've said to use your best judgement to delete innapropriate messages, but I'm afraid that "inappropriate" isn't very clearly defined. Let's discuss the direction you'd like to see the forums go.

Note that this is just a temporary message, to be deleted once the guidelines are done. I've posted this to the ADV ED forum b/c this is the least used forum. I figure this is much easier than trying to use PMs and since we don't have an "administrators" forum, this temporary message will have to do.

1.  Lets make an administration forum, lol.

Basic list, open for moderation for moderators.

No flamming (Directly attacking another member FOR NO REASON)
No Spamming on a post (Only subject to moving and only if its very noticeable)
No posting in the wrong forums (Subject to moving)
No using religions, or race/sexual preferance/gender as an insult (Deletion)

i agree with 3js post that starts with "1.  Lets make an administration forum, lol..."with a few adjustments, so lets start there.

my first change would be to add name calling to #1. name calling is always a direct attack of another member.

also, i dont think there should be ANY attacking of another member, for reason or not.

spamming should be deleted, atleast in every forum other than the lounge. in the lounge, ill agree to just moving it to its own thread. maybe having one big thread where all spam goes... we get enough of it to keep that thread alive lol

personally, the whole religion thing is a thorn in the side of the world. especially right now. i have my faith, and people have even heard me claim to be Christian. not once have i gotten into a fight with anyone or drug the forums down by arguing about it. (atleast i dont remember doing that.) so i, in closing, will not have a strong opinion about using religion in the forums. i am against the rest of the choices (race, sex etc...)

nate

I am pleased that this has finally come up. the way i see it is the only forums that have the troubles are the Lounge, Newbie, and Parlor rooms. they have, unlike the other forums, the opportunity for too much opinion rather than directed talk. for the other forums there is a direct reason for posting there, ie. bug, feature wishing well and so forth. to correct the problem in these other forums i think that these rules would minimize problems,

1. No name calling. period. personally, i think that if you cant get your point across without calling people names then you are not mature enough to be on here writing games. that goes back to the whole "cappucino" feel that you wanted alex, if you remember that talk lol

2. as it stands, spam is looked down apon. from what i understand, saying Who likes the mets is spam. personally, i dont have a problem with stuff like this. its when people start name calling and stuff to that effect. however, i am guilty of deleting some that are stupid, Who likes cheese whiz? the lounge should never be touched unless its offensive.

2.1. Offensive material, whenever someone calls someone else a name, whenever a game is blatanly attacked so forth should always be deleted. while its important we get rid of the games that have no meaning or point to them, lets remember that if a game stays on the site we should never berate it or insult it. we are to build writers up not tear them down.

nate

i may have more opinion about this later. 

it isnt a play area, but we are adults. and we are supposed to be helping others. if you think a game sucks, then you have 3 options: either report it to alex and he can delete it, do something even more constructive and tell the person why it sucks. its a comments area, make the most of it. or you dont have to leave a comment. you can still rate it and never think of it again.

free speech rocks and all, but when its abused then we need to encourage other alternatives.

nate

True true.

Also, you can be drunk on anything so don't tell anybody that you can't.

I tend to agree with Nate on this ... no, we're not all adults, but I think that we should all be mature about things. The whole purpose of this community is to create text-based interactive fiction. That, in and of it self, requires a certain level of maturity -- all you guys have demonstrated this maturity, so, I don't see why there's a need to be immature on the forums.

The other big concern I have is that a hostile environment on the forums is going to turn off new members, especially writers. Think about it, you're putting your material out there, do you really want "mean people" to jump all over you and call you names? We'll never get good (but timid) writers that way.

I'm not saying that the forums are currently like this, but I'm just trying to explain where i'm comig from.

YES - we need to delete the crap storygames. You all know what I'm talkinga bout. The only thing that's stopping you guys from doing this is a bunch of programming that I need to do.

NO - we don't want to "ban free speech" but there are a lot better ways to critisize someone's work than "this sucks". I would expect that you guys would be able to help newbies improve, or be gentle and expalin that their content is not appropriate.

Does htis make sense? I typed it in a bit of a rush

You said you didn't want to delete the games that "sucked" (Face it, we have hundreds of them), you said you only wanted to delete the innapropriate ones.  All along I was saying that we should be deleting the bad ones.  Picture it this way.

A writer (timid) comes on to the site and see's a load of stupid, bad adventure games (4:1 ratio of bad to good, at least! So the chances of playing a good one are slim (Unless he plays top games but thats not always true either) he isn't going to want to spend time writing, is he?  It's not like anyone else put an effort in...

while i agree that games are still in their infancy around here, people shouldnt find too many bad games because of the filter for rating that was implimented. something that practically everyone supported. therefore, when someone new comes along, they will see a solid level of gaming. then be encouraged to write some themself. besides, writers write cause they have it in their blood. not cause they want to one up others or something to that effect.

nate

people can write and not be "writers". we are looking for writers. they have it in their blood to write. if people have it in their blood to be mean or rude or immature, they need to go somewhere else. name calling doesnt prove or show anything. it is a waste, just like spamming, its a waste of space.

nate

i never said name calling would discourage writers. what i said was that name calling is a primitive form of expression. if you cant be constructive and build people up it needs to be said by someone else who can.

nate

not what im saying at all... have no idea where you are getting that. your second comment...refering to the FWW thing or what?

nate

I've thought about this some more.

I don't like the idea of deleting storygames, because I feel it's like taking away someone's work (as good/bad as it may be). At the same time, I don't like the idea of having "below minimum quality" storygames published and being visible. So, in the future, you guys will be able "suspend" a storygame; what this means is that the storygame will not be visible or playable by anyone but the author and mods. For the storygame to be published, the author would have to contact you to unsuspend it.

You're right, there are a lot of "below minimum quality" (this is a much clearer way, especially coming from a moderator, of saying "sucks") storygames. I don't think 75% are BMQ, perhaps 10%. So what makes something BMQ? I'd say a key factor is level of effort -- you can tell if the author spent no time and just copy/pasted crap. That needs to be suspended. But, it's also possible to have 1/2 star storygames that aren't BMQ, but are still pretty bad.

Make sense?

But we're getting off topic -- the point of this thread is to discuss the forums.

Way, way more then 10% but thats not the issue.  About the forums, why does there need to be a code for all the mods?  The way I see it is, why not have each mod submit a code of what they will delete.  You can also include things you "think" shouldn't be deleted.

Then Alex will have all of these different codes and he'll make one set lf guidelines that everyone follows.

i think that is what this thread is for. we post our opinions on what is deleteable on the forums and alex will most likely pick and choose. btw 3j, what happened to last nites portion of this talk?

nate

I deleted it -- it didn't seem to contribute to much as you may have remembered :-)

I'd really like to see you guys run the site as far as content goes -- I'd prefer to be spending 99% of my time in the FWW and B&P forum, and only doing coding and features.

So, come to a consensus on what you think the forums should be and then follow it.

I'm going to just sit back and watch. You guys know the direction we're (as in, the "owners") pushing for as far as the "big picture".

Here is the quickest way to do this.

Every mod who wants to remain a mod sends alex a list of everything he thinks should be deleted, and everything he isn't prepared to delete.

Alex looks over these different pm's and puts together a list.  Then he PM's it back to all of us and we celebrate or pout but that doesn't matter because we will have a fair set of rules.

Works perfectly.

This is a level of involvement I do not want. I want *you guys* to work out what you think the guidelines should be, and them work with eachother to follow them.

Be a team. Work as a team.  Live Long. Prosper.

OK.  Well, here is what I'm prepared to have deleted and what I really dont think should be.

I will delete spam when I catch it, this includes any wrong-forum posting, which will be moved, going of topic, which will either be deleted or moved to a new thread or any useless posts such as "who lieks cheese whiz."  I dont think we ned to hear, who lieks the mets? again and again.  I will also delete uselessly long posts that have gone way off topic.

I will delete flamming such as "You sucK".  I dont include retaliation as flamming and I wont delete the retaliation, except as it may have been inconsequentially linked to the flamming, in which case it and everything else about it will be deleted.

I dont think provakativenesss should be deleted and I wont stand for it being deleted.  Should it be deleted, I will repost immediately.  Do not delete provokativeness.  We arn't gods and we shouldn't be drunk on power.

That's just for comments.

This is a good start, but i see a lot of "I" and very little "we".

So, I'd sum it up, have everyone else agree to it, and then follow those guidelines.

They should also be posted to Nate's forums article too, atleast, summarized so that members know what's allowed and what isn't.

just give me the go ahead and ill type it right up. im not wanting to touch the last 2 articles just yet lol. they are toughies for me for some reason.

nate

for those who havent looked, these rules were posted on the Forums article that AP mentioned above:

The Rules

Last but certainly not least, there are a rew rules to keep in mind when posting to the forums. The forums are patrolled by moderators who will ensure that these rules are followed.

1. No racial or bigoted comments are tolerated. Really, there's no need for that.
2. No cussing or insulting other members. Though it's ok to use "dirty" words on occasion, remember that everyone, including your Mom, can read this. So please, try to keep it clean.
3. While the Lounge is a place to talk about most anything, we ask that the topics be useful and clear. No nonsense stuff will be aloud on the forums.
4. Try to stay on topic, especially when not in the Lounge. This rule is strictly enforced in the in the FWW and the Bugs forums, because those are used by the admins to fix and improve the site.

Minus the cussing rule, #2, i think violations of the others should be deleted. while i myself dont like the cussing i can allow it to be said by others. as long as it doesnt insult other members. we have all dealt with being "attacked" and no one likes it. so there is no need for it. all in favor to making this the final draft say? say I lol

nate

2.  No insulting other members.  Cussing is ok.

Other then that "I"

i can second that 3j. no insulting, but cussing is acceptable.

so "I" lol now we just need the others.

nate

Alright, I think I can (REALLY GRUDGINGLY) agree with Nate and Alex, if havacoman will promies to stop deleting anything that is simply provakative.

What JJJ's rules are basically saying that provokative stuff shouldn't be used.

Also, no bragging about I have most games and what not.  That's just rude.
Oh, since it's been a problem no Dissing other people's thoughts.  The main problem comes from religion.
NO Politics! This is a intercountry site.
No cursing/cusing!

Deletion Check page would be a good thing.  Before things are completly deleted they are checked first.  1 worders won't be shown.

Well, you seem to disagree with everything don't you?  Have you ever heard of Tomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton?  They fought over everything to.  Mabey we need something in the center.  A compromise.

No flamming - That's good.  Example of it is saying: No shit!

Deletion Check-It is needed.  What exactly happened to Provokative?

Try not posting lols and stuff like that.  Explain yourself or something.

----------------------------------------------------------

Also, with the minimum effort on games can be found but not by Box52.  The games he made are still bad (no offense) but at least he took effort at making them.  Another one like that is Minefield.

THANK YOU SOLOSTRIKE!

okay, I am agreeing with solostrike.  I quess bragging could be okay as long as it's done in a way that dosen't undermine other people.  Examples of what I mean.

Good:  Yay!  I just made the longest game on the site.  I'm so happy!
Bad:  I have 33 games and you have how many games?  Oh that's right no real one!

Hey, Hey, Hey.  Go read up on that conversation and see who started it and with what.  You brought in dirt on me, I put a dump truck of dirt on you.  Your complaining about it because you are a sore loser and I'm not.  Go cry me a river.

I'm just curious -- have you guys come up with a agreement / consensus? I see a lot of good ideas, but remember I want you guys to all agree to make the rules, and all agree to follow them. I'm trying to be "hands off" here ...

Let me explain this new "hands off" goal ...

I find myself spending far too much time on the forums, games, PMs, etc, and so on. I'm not complaining -- that's fun -- but that means that I spend less time programming for the site. Programming is my #1 motivation for this site (it's why I invested countless hours in making it) -- but the problem is I'm not doing enough of it -- anyone see a new feature in a while? I need (and want) to focus on that stuff.

This is where you come in. Someone has to moderate the site, help the users, do that sorta stuff. You have all been doing a fantastic job of it, and I want to expand that role as much as possible.

You all know what the long term vision of the site is (a more mature feel that is ChooseYourStory) and know what features I reaaally want to do (just look in FWW). So, let's all work together and make this happen :-)

(Feel free to ask for clarifications)