Mdar

Here at graffe.com we have seen a lot happen over the years, a lot of changes for the better. We have gone from a simple website with forums on bravenet to ezboards and were happy there for a few years until we realized that our success was costing us greatly.

But after years of stagnation, the Arcanist Hall was launched to be the EQ wizard site that graffe.com should have been. This prompted a split and in an effort to save the community, the graffe.com staff decided it was time for a major overhaul and we got it and things were good, more or less.

But lately the rot has been showing through the paint. Graffe.com has lost it's focus and began to stagnate, users becoming more vicious it seems. Though, with this latest storm it seems that the winds of change are once again blowing. Blowing around a lot of shit.

The rules are a joke. Three concrete rules that are easy to enforce with a vague "no harassment" rule that is open to interpretation. Under this current ruleset, nearly everything is allowed. Want to post links to pirated games and movies? Go for it. Want to be an overall asshole, it isn't against the rules. Want to drag out the same shit over and over again, be our guest as it's fully allowed.

Now, my version of the rules may seem excessive, but I don't mind drafting rules that I have to live by where as the current rule set is woefuly inadequate.

Spoiler for my rules:

The following rules are meant as guide for graffe.com moderation staff. All of the below will be taken at their discretion, if they believe a rule as been broken, they will issue take the appropriate action.
Remember, Rules are constant, enforcement is not.

General Rules – These rules are to be enforced on the entirety of the forums.
1. Keep it Civil
a. We should all claim to be over 13, there shouldn’t be need of excessive name calling.
b. Debate the post, not the poster.
2. No personal attacks
a. A personal attack is only considered such if the person that was attacked reports it. Then it is up to mod consideration.
b. 3rd parties can report what they believe to be personal attacks, but keep in mind point A.
3. No spam
a. This includes websites or services that violate a games EULA or TOS. Discussion of these topics is fine, but users should not include links to such sites in their posts
4. No Pornography
a. While pornography can be a wide range subject, for this rule, we’re going to consider any nudity pornography. There are to be no nude images either embedded or hot linked.
b. There are to be no erotic stories posted or hotlinked
c. Discussion of sexual preferences can be considered pornography if too explicit. This part is left up to poster and moderator discretion. In that order.
5. No Pirating Copy Righted Material
a. Graffe.com does not condone illegally downloading of copy righted material. This includes Music, Images, Movies, TV Shows and Video Games.
b. Linking to your own copy righted material, or copy righted material that is legally obtainable else where is alright provided that either condition can be proven and that said material does not violate another rule.
6. Signatures
a. Signatures should follow the above general rules
b. A user should try to mimic a standard banner ad in both file size and horizontal deminsions.
c. If your takes up more space than your post, you should probably disable it for that post
d. Signature rules won’t be strongly enforced unless other users complain or there is an obvious issue

Game Forums.
1) When posting in the related gaming forums, please keep in mind any EULA or TOS of the game when posting
a. No posting ways to hack a game
b. No posting ways to scam players of a game
c. No posting accounts for sale
i. Eve-Online allows the sell of characters for in game currency (ISK) only!
d. No breaking any agreement you may have with the makers of the game, this includes EULA, TOS and/or NDAs
i. If you break an NDA and the party you signed with asks for your personal information, it will be given
2) Post in the appropriate game forum.

Off Topic
1) You will be treated as an adult here. Act like one
2) The Other Games section is for any game that does not have its own forum.
a. Games in Other Games may be given their own forum or may have Game Forums collapsed into Other Games depending on usage.

Off Topic Rants
1) OT rants is not as heavily modded as other sections, but is still covered by all other rules.
2) The mods will not bail you out.
3) There are no edits in rants

Sure, my rules were excessive, but they were better than what we're going to have. What we had was better than what we're about to have. Having a system where there are only 4 things a user can be punished for (porn, spam, releasing personal information of others, and harassing others) where the major one is intentionally vague is a system wide open to abuse and passive agressive petty bickering. Much like what we've been seeing for the last few years.

We can't even lock posts that are doing nothing but causing problems. As long as personal information is left out and there is no porn, a regular user can post what ever they wish with almost no repurcussions. Do I expect multiple incidents where this will be abused? No, I don't. But I do expect users to start complaining about how the actions they have taken are unneeded as they are agaunst the rules.

We have had a few threads, most notably http://www.graffe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58265 , that could stand a good locking as they have gotten far out of hand and it's the same few posters stiring up shit. If it was an important social issue, or a major abuse of power by a moderator I'd be ok with it. But it's about a thread getting locked that was just going to end up with multiple violations of rule #4.

But enough about the rules, it seems the community has chosen the easy way out and is just now realizing they fucked up. Go go good team.

Secondly this done by commity shit is getting out of hand. Asking everyone what they want is going to cause a lot of disapointment and take a lot of time that would be better put to creating new systems from scratch and then putting several of them up for the community to choose from. Large commities just bog this process down and make it nearly impossible to get anything effective done, save for feel good measures. I like to feel good, but I don't want good feelings to be the only thing protecting me as I browse the forums. I want concrete policy that's there for the mods to fall back on. I want new users to come here and see that we have clear rules for how we deal with things and how they are expected to act.

But we're not really doing this for new users, are we? We're doing it for ourselves and no one else. Instead of tearing everything down and starting from scratch we're putting on a different coat of paint and a new fancy facade and calling it fixed. The rot is still there, still spreading and eventually everything will fall down. A majority of the community just wants the status quo with new wording, new meaningless wording.

I really would love to be able to be taken seriously on this, to get people to realize everything is going wrong, but I'm not that charismatic. The most I can do is say "I told you so" but even that would be ignored. I swear there are times where people would only consider taking me seriously the day after I killed myself.