A Complete Overhaul of Forum Moderation

The forums seem to be something of a mess recently, in the same way they were when I first applied to be a moderator. Cool3303 seems to be gone, but necroposting has gone up again, and with so many new members, I think it’s time to completely redo how the forums are moderated.

I. The Current State of Moderation

Simply put, there isn’t really any. We have twelve moderators, but only five of them are one the forum on a regular basis. There are fairly clearly defined rules, but they’re rarely enforced and never enforced consistently. What moderation happens is random and fleeting, and almost never with the consent of the other moderators. Little punishment is dealt out, and with the exception of Cool3303 I don’t think we’ve ever actually stopped anyone from violating the rules.

II. A Solution

a. Creation of New Subforums

I recommend the complete destruction of Area 51 and its replacement with a group of new subforums, which non-moderators can read but not comment in. There is nothing in Area 51 that shouldn’t be out in the open forums.
1.The first one should be a Development Section. Devlogs should be kept here, where they will remain on-topic and uncluttered, and discussion between developers, such as the Server-to-Server Discussion Thread in Area 51, should happen here. There’s no reason to keep that kind of thing where normal members can’t see it, and it would help keep people’s hopes up about the mod someday actually being released.
2.The second one should be a Judicial Section, or something similar. Discussions related to forum moderation should take place here. Like the development discussion, this is stuff that shouldn’t be happening out of the public eye. Members should know whether or not they may be punished. Updates to forum rules and such should also happen in this area.
3.The third one is related to the second. This section is similar to the Judicial Section, but non-moderators should be able to post here. That allows people to discuss forum rules and things in a proper place, or report posts or whatever. None of the actual inter-moderator discussion should happen here. I'm not certain what the name of this section should be. Perhaps 'Forum Concerns'.

b. A New System of Punishment

On the Minecraft Forums, violations of the rules result in Warning Points being added to your account. These points expire after fifteen days. Accumulation of multiple Warning Points results in varying levels of punishment, depending on the number of points. For example, minor insults might result in one point, whereas posting a huge, hateful rant might result in four or five. The first point is an official warning. The second post is a three day posting suspension, if I remember correctly. It goes on from there. If you get ten points at one time, you are automatically banned. I think this is a good system, because it can be easily adjusted to fit changing requirements. When the updated Forum Rules are posted, each rule will be associated with a number of Warning Points you will receive if you violate it. That way, doing two minor things will incur the same punishment as doing one more major thing. The punishments for various numbers of points can be discussed, but I would recommend:

1 – Official warning PM’d to member by a moderator. Official warning should probably read:
“<Member’s username here>,
You have incurred <number> Warning Point(s) for <rule violated>. You currently have <number> Warning Points. This(These) Warning Points will expire on <date>.”
2-3 – Warning and 1-day ban.
4-5 – Warning and 3-day ban.
6-7 – Warning and 1-week ban.
8 – Warning and 2-week ban.
9 – Warning and 1-month ban.
10 – Permanent ban.

This system allows different rules to incur different levels of punishment, and ensures that punishment is consistent for all users. There should be no punishment or warnings issued that do not involve Warning Points. If a rule is serious enough that violating it should result in immediate permanent banning, the way to do that is to make that rule worth ten points. Points added to member accounts should be kept track of in the Judicial Section. Members wanting to appeal points should do so in the third new subforum.

c. Promotion of New Moderators

If we are going to enforce these revised systems, we will need to promote a few new moderators. There are, at the moment, nine people in the Moderators group. They are: Buggy1997123, Keon, Last_Jedi_Standing, Danice123, eazymc, ectrimble20, GroundBurg_Coder13, Professor Fenway, and Wasp2100. There are also three Super Moderators: Shiva, fr0stbyte124, and The Schmetterling. There is also one Coder: cascaid. But before we talk about adding new moderators, I think we should combine the Coders and Moderators groups. I’m not sure why there’s a distinction in the first place. Secondly, several of these moderators aren’t really here. Danice123, ectrimble20, Wasp2100, cascaid, and GroundBurg_Coder13 have not visited the forums in over a month. I suggest that we give them another month to show up, and if they don’t, their moderator status should be removed. From now on, all moderators should have to log on to the forum at least once a month to retain their moderator status. If they’re not on the forum at least that often, all they’re doing is inflating the list and making it look like there are more moderators than there actually are.
That said, we now have nine moderators. That isn’t very many on a forum with nearly five hundred members. I recommend the promotion of three more to start with – say, Iv121, ACH0225, and Tiel. These are all active users who seem reasonably responsible. From this point forward, I would recommend promoting another moderator every time we gain fifty new members. This will maintain a moderator: member ratio that’s high enough to keep the forums running smoothly.

d. Revised Forum Rules

1. The Forum Rules as they Currently Are
“1. No Flaming! None, at all, ever! I will never hesitate to use my almighty Admin-strength Banhammer.
2. No Trolling! Same as above.
3. Be respectful of other members. Don't insult or otherwise harass another member. We're all equals here (except for Mods and Admins! In which case, insulting or harassing one of us has the DEFINITE potential to get you smashed with a banhammer!)
4. This place is an exchange of ideas - so let the topic flow freely, to a point; try not to derail threads. Even the dumbest (related) ideas sometimes have one great part which can be incorporated elsewhere.
5. No spamming useless posts - Memes, one-word replies that have no value whatsoever, etc., < there will be punishment>
6. No necroposting <what we consider necroposting>, < there will be MORE punishment>
7. No curse words - They will be redacted and the user placed on an internal warn list. If we have to warn you 5 times, you're permabanned.
8. No pornographic material - Come on, seriously guys? I should NOT have to hear about idiots posting this stuff! You should know better. 3 strikes and you're out rule on this.
9. No gory, uber-violent material (graphic depictions of torture, dismemberment, realistic/non-Hollywood death (includes certain horror movies, i.e., SAW), rape, etc.) - A no-brainer. Don't post it if you wouldn't show it to your kid or your grandparents. 3 strike rule.
Basically, act like an adult. Other than that, have fun, and enjoy the events as the mod unfolds!”

These are good rules, but they’re not very specific. We have ‘No Flaming’ and ‘No Trolling’, but no definitions of those terms. We don’t have a definition of or punishment for necroposting, despite the blanks that were left there and the number of questions about it that show up on the forum. Nearly every rule ends with the thread of banishment, but that’s it as far as punishment goes.

2. Revised Rules
There will need to be several sets of rules. There must be one major set, that covers the entire forum. This should be posted in stickies in every subforum. There should also be minor sets that apply to particular subforums. The rules in the Off-Topic Area will be noticeably different from those in the Ship Design Area. These sets of rules are the most malleable part of my forum moderation plan. They are designed to be altered as the situation on the forum evolves. As such, I haven’t spent all that much time writing them out here, because this is something that will happen with time. Proposed rule changes should happen in the third new subforum. Whole Forum Rules:

No deliberately antagonizing other forum users. This includes everything from minor insults to simply being very critical. Penalty: 1 Warning Point.

No deliberately seriously antagonizing other forum users. This includes serious insults and posting for no reason other than ripping on someone else. This also includes minor antagonism that seems to be directed at one member repeatedly. Penalty: 2 Warning Points.

No cursing. That means the 7 Dirty Words. If any of those words appears in a post, it will be edited out by a moderator. Penalty: 1 Warning Point.

No necroposting. Necroposting is posting in a thread that has not had replies in two weeks or more. There is one exception to this rule: It is acceptable to post in your own ship thread no matter how long it has been dead. Penalty: 1 Warning Point.

No off-topic that’s not in the Off-Topic Area. This includes posting threads that do not belong in that subforum and derailing threads that are in the correct place. Off-topic posts and threads will either be deleted or moved to the proper place. Penalty: 1 Warning Point.

No spamming posts. Everyone can see how many posts you make in a day. If it’s an unusually large number, a moderator will look at your recent posts to see if you have been spamming to get your post count up. If you have, the posts will be deleted. Penalty: 2 Warning Points.

No posting pornographic material in any form. This is a no-brainer, and it will get you permanently banned immediately. Penalty: 10 Warning Points.

Do not create alternate accounts. If an account is suspected to be an alt, it will be examined. If it is found to be an alt, the account will be permanently banned and the original account will receive 3 Warning Points.

These rules are open to debate and refinement as time goes on, but I think this is a good start for now.

e. New Members

When members first join the forum, they should have some limited privileges. They should be able to create threads only in the Ship Design area and Idea Center. They should be able to reply to posts in the Members Lounge but not post new threads, if possible. Brand new members should not be able to post in the Off-Topic Area or third new subforum at all. Once they have a certain number of posts, they will be reviewed individually by moderators. If they seem to be a useful addition to the community, they will then be promoted to full membership.

f. Rules Applying to Moderators

In general, moderators must follow the normal rules of the forum or they risk losing their moderator status. The only exception is necroposting. If a moderator needs to necropost for some reason, that is allowed. However, if moderators don’t either log in every month or at least post that they will be gone, they will lose their moderator status and be replaced by a different member. If a moderator violates the rules of the forum, the penalty should be even more severe than for a normal member. Also, if a moderator does not enforce the rules of the forum, that moderator should lose his or her moderator status.

g. Slightly Expanded Moderator Abilities

I don’t know about the rest of the moderators, but I don’t think I can make stickies or announcements. It would be nice to be able to do those things.


I apologize for the lack of formatting. I wrote this in a Word document, and I lost all of that. For ease of reading, the Word document is
here.

Sounds good, we really do need an overhaul of this forum...

I think that we're a small enough community that we don't really need that complicated of a judicial system. It would be nice to tidy up a bit, though.

I like the idea

Tiel, IV, and ACH can be counted as yes, I think.

I accept the nomination.

Seriously, thanks though. And you're right, we do need an overhaul, maybe not quite as extreme as this, but plenty of parts of it do have considerable merit.

I think this would be a good idea.

Hey, if you're going to venture out and say the system is too complicated or you only like certain parts of it, at least say why. I read the document in its entirety and it seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

The judicial section isn't needed, and warn points would have to be directly implemented, or kept tally somewhere.

I think there is no need to enforce heavier rules on newcomers. There are 500 users on our forum as you said but only a very small portion of them is actually active. We want to encourage people to reply to threads not to deny them the ability to do it.

I agree with the new rules convention.
Let the reformation begin!

ACH0225 wrote:

The judicial section isn't needed, and warn points would have to be directly implemented, or kept tally somewhere.

Tally would be kept in the Judicial Section.

Or Shiva could install a mod.

Tiel wrote:

Or Shiva could install a mod.

There are Forumotion mods?
didn´t know.
also, I thought even the admin has quite limited access to the forum, compared to a full-scale forum server.

There's no such thing as a 'full scale forum server'. There's a forum, and there's the piece of ***t known as forumotion. There are certain mods that the latter allows admins to install on their forums, typically modified to suit the company's interests.

Tiel wrote:

There's no such thing as a 'full scale forum server'. There's a forum, and there's the piece of ***t known as forumotion. There are certain mods that the latter allows admins to install on their forums, typically modified to suit the company's interests.

Actually, I´m no expert, so I´ll just believe whatever you said and shut my mouth on this.

I second this motion.

A wonderful revision LJS, but I have one question; would the posting of memes be considered trolling? Even if, for example it was in the Off Topic section?

Dux Tell31 wrote:

A wonderful revision LJS, but I have one question; would the posting of memes be considered trolling? Even if, for example it was in the Off Topic section?

No, in general it would not. I specifically did not include a rule about trolling, because it's such a vague term. I think that unless you were using the memes in some weird way that negatively impacted the forum, there's no way that would be against the rules, even when not in the Off-Topic Area. Now, if a particular member got into the habit of replying solely with memes, or used memes in hurtful ways, that might be an issue. It's unlikely though.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Dux Tell31 wrote:

A wonderful revision LJS, but I have one question; would the posting of memes be considered trolling? Even if, for example it was in the Off Topic section?

No, in general it would not. I specifically did not include a rule about trolling, because it's such a vague term. I think that unless you were using the memes in some weird way that negatively impacted the forum, there's no way that would be against the rules, even when not in the Off-Topic Area. Now, if a particular member got into the habit of replying solely with memes, or used memes in hurtful ways, that might be an issue. It's unlikely though.

Right. I agree almost entirely with this thread. However, I think the juridical section should be closed to public viewing. We also should have another moderators-only area, just in case we need to hide secrets (e.g Aprils Fools jokes).

There is a PM system.

Tiel wrote:

There is a PM system.

Yeah, and you can copy multiple people on the same PM. I tested that yesterday. If there's going to be any kind of moderator scheme, that's how it should be done.


Why should the Judicial Section be closed? I can sorta understand moderators not wanting other members to know how they voted on bans and stuff, but the easy solution to that is to use the built-in poll feature. The Judicial Section should be used mostly to keep track of how many points members have, (Although it's just occurred to me that that could be done on their profiles, too) and I guess it makes sense that people don't need to see how many points other people have gotten. At the same time, though, I think transparency is the best policy. The point system should eliminate most of the need for debate, anyway. There won't need to be any more ban councils, because if someone has earned a ban it'll be obvious by their points. I suppose it could go either way.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Tiel wrote:

There is a PM system.

Yeah, and you can copy multiple people on the same PM. I tested that yesterday. If there's going to be any kind of moderator scheme, that's how it should be done.


Why should the Judicial Section be closed? I can sorta understand moderators not wanting other members to know how they voted on bans and stuff, but the easy solution to that is to use the built-in poll feature. The Judicial Section should be used mostly to keep track of how many points members have, (Although it's just occurred to me that that could be done on their profiles, too) and I guess it makes sense that people don't need to see how many points other people have gotten. At the same time, though, I think transparency is the best policy. The point system should eliminate most of the need for debate, anyway. There won't need to be any more ban councils, because if someone has earned a ban it'll be obvious by their points. I suppose it could go either way.

Well spoken!
You have a really good point there.
Now let´s hope SHiva agrees when she next visits the forum.

But for something as serious as a lifetime ban, there should at least be a trial.

I apply to be Jurry! I have almost all of Spacecores rant memorised.