[matt_st3 (Strongrule)]

Now that I have some wi-fi I can start rolling out the upcoming changes. 

* To start I will be starting up a Web Mod team. @[Yellow] Travis1421  will join as our first web mod and our second candidate did not meet height requirements. The web mods will be responsible for the overall moderation of the forums while the server admins will focus primarily on their individual sections. As we eventually fill more mods this will continue until server admins theoretically only need to focus on their sections, but until then you may still see them moderate in the general sections. The web team and server admins will have an evolving set of guidelines built throughout the month's update.

Additionally several rule and moderation tweaks will be made. Some of these have been largely discussed while other issues will see the relevant teams weigh in.

* Posting any IP other than the servers will not be allowed. This will be an addition to the rule on releasing personal information and is fairly self explanatory. The team will also act on more cases where members use personal data from the forums to post in discord and server. E.g. do not pull faces from the dinks thread to post if they are not yours.

* No alt accounts are to be used on the forums. This is an extension to the ruling that alts are not to be used for unbans and alt evasion in general. The majority of such accounts have been used to unban the main (we are moving away from this) or shitpost or drag out some kind of old drama. Or +1 their own apps, ill miss seeing those. If you want an alt account to be deleted or merged into the main account, dm me I can look into it. 

* Posts deleted by admins and *checked by web admin* for moderation purposes will lose the reputation. This is post dated to Sep 1 when it was decided.

* A directory of threads that carry sub-forum specific rules will be made to clarify an issues that sometimes arise.

* Requirements to comment in sub-forums such as applications will be universal. The verbiage from the rules will reflect on the server specific threads. This will mainly clarify that posts must vote towards the app, ask a question, and/or add feedback. This means do not start up back and forth conversations or arguments, do not be posting that someone should not be voting (the admins consider what they will), do not go through and thank individual posts to bump your own thread or otherwise derail the process. Comments that do further a conversation in a necessary way, such as feedback on bans, is fine but all posts should be aimed at the purpose of the thread not the individuals commenting. 

* We are adding escalation to the forum warnings. At 10+ total/historical points a person will be considered a well warned individual and no long receive the lighter to none warnings or general passes that an admin may grant someone new. This is a measure to help prevent staff from choosing favorites to not moderate. Another layer will be decided on how to introduce temp bans into the warn system after the first level of escalation, but this still has yet to be decided a line to cross and what times/levels. As it stands a user who reaches 10 points in a month receives a ban, so we used this as the line.

* General tweaks to rules that need clarifications and other tweaks after this post. 

We have other bug fixes to do and still are trying to roll out a version of dark mode for forums. Ill be adding and responding to this over the next few days.

[Mother Nuru.]

I just wanted to say I hate you for that first comment. Second, I'm happy to see proper changes made. I know people are gunna get pissy, but, this will alleviate a lot of the issues we do have ongoing, that's been circling for years. They'll get over it eventually. If people want to see dinks truly grow, this is how it starts.

edaughter approves but also mattbad

[Linfalas]

 do not pull faces from the dinks thread to post if they are not yours.

Wait does that mean I'm not allowed to say that @Raider Hanks is the long lost brother to the Indianapolis Colt's Kicker Rodrigo Blankenship!?!?

[Foxka]

we (the people of dinks) demand more leniency towards shitposting as long as it is either actually funny or is a valid comment/point through sarcasm/jokes

[matt_st3 (Strongrule)]

we (the people of dinks) demand more leniency towards shitposting as long as it is either actually funny or is a valid comment/point through sarcasm/jokes

Shitposting section- i check far less than i should and you can pretty much go nuts in there.

General sections- this should have leniency outside of things like announcements. The guidelines will address inconsistencies we have had in the past.

Anything with a form/app is the primary focus of the changes.

[RussEfarmer]

A couple of things..
With an all out ban on alt accounts, even for unban requests, what is the process for appealing a community ban? The only way to be able to submit an appeal is through the forums, but if you are banned on the forums you can't do that.. unless you talk to an admin through Discord, but community banned people don't have access to the discord without alt evading. Are alts allowed on the Discord? The only other option would be adding an admin or moderator on steam, which isn't a very elegant process because I'm guessing if someone gets a friend request from what looks like a complete stranger, it's going in the trash.

I was mostly fine with the way warnings were given before this change.. it was definitely the most fair moderation system we've had on the forums. Warnings last about a month, and if you get 5 points against you, you enter moderator approval mode, which I think is a perfect compromise to getting full on banned. A shitposting warning is worth 2 points, so if you an entire three times (god help us, I know) in a whole month, you enter moderator approval mode. I am obviously an extremely funny forum user, one of the funniest if I may add, so I am biased, but I think that's pretty fair. You also say that 10 points in a month is a ban, which I don't even know HOW you get 10 points in a month considering you're set to moderator approval after 5, so I would say that's pretty fair with the current warning system.

For users with above 10 points in their history (usually this happens through shitposting a little more than ur supposed to, crazy right?), what exactly would this "escalation" be? Would the warning points you get for shitposting increase? Will the moderator approval mode translate into a temp ban? Also how does this translate for people with historic punishments? I have a whopping 8 point warning from Scoovie I got back in 2017, plus a couple of shitposting warnings, so I'm already well above that 10 point threshold. If I shitpost right now do I get temp banned, or is the logic different for old punishments?

Foxka said it jokingly but I do think that shitposting has its place here in dinks.. do you think I visit the forums just to fall asleep reading some guys sleezy staff application or yet another gun rebalancing thread? I do, but that would be a lot less boring without seeing peoples wise cracks.. it's a gaming community forum, not a Microsoft Yammer board for an accounting firm.. if I wanted to look at boring crap all day I would just drive back to work.

[HONG]

Foxka said it jokingly but I do think that shitposting has its place here in dinks.. do you think I visit the forums just to fall asleep reading some guys sleezy staff application or yet another gun rebalancing thread? I do, but that would be a lot less boring without seeing peoples wise cracks.. it's a gaming community forum, not a Microsoft Yammer board for an accounting firm.. if I wanted to look at boring crap all day I would just drive back to work.

pretty much this, the community should be a fun place to be in 

This totally won’t make people even more annoyed with how forums are handled beyond mindless internet point complaints, right? Right? 

im also gonna pretend i didnt just see you call the balance changelogs i spend 5+ minutes of my precious precious time on BORING

[matt_st3 (Strongrule)]

Russ,
I have tried to impress upon the current admin team the severity of what a community ban should be and it’s handling so that we do not see something like 2019. I will not see a congested mass community ban that could and should have been handled differently prior while I hold a say, or at the very least will not condone such on the forums. That being said I do not believe a community ban should be appealed. It is my opinion and not all agree with me, tho do have a proportionally high bar to get there. As it is you can only make an unban appeal through the account anyways, this would change it to the one account so forcing it to be through the main. It does fall apart if discord upholds such a standard, but they don’t and I’m not sure they actually can detect and prevent that as well as the forums can allow. As I see it the ban should cut contact with the person from the community best as we can and so if such a ban means they can’t contact io come from it then well that’s kinda the point. I would hope at least one admin would see if a ban is complete bullshit and be able to guide the person out of their ban.
There is also not a moderator mode. It led to admins having to cherry pick posts for x amount of time. At 6 points it’s a week suspension, at 8 points 2 weeks, and 10 a ban of 0 length. The rework may tweak that when introducing a temp ban system, but those are mostly dependent on “repeat offenders” in the escalation stage. The escalation means an admin should not use a lighter or no warn for deleting say a shitpost, or just moving the shitpost into shitposting therefore making it no longer an issue. Unfortunately there has been a bit of cherry picking who gets more free passes than others with that kind of move so I am adding that and more verbiage to prevent inconsistent moderation.
I won’t be upholding the random value 2017-18 warns. I don’t want to go THAT far back for ping counting, plus back then it was random assignment that didn’t utilize any automated system. It was basically just how mad the admin was back then on a scale of 1 to 10. I will be counting using the warn system as established. Idk if I’ll even bother converting old ones yet, and some might be too random to try and guess at anyways. As to temp ban escaltion that we are still decking on, I don’t know yet. It may be a certain number of warns, it may be a certain point cap again, or it may be a certain level/importance of warn. All have their own cons.
As to shitposting having its place sure. Not in staff sections tho. I get we used to shit on every murder app that came through but we’re actually trying to get those off the ground. Idc what little quip you put in there, but you need to be pointed at the app/request in spirit. Otherwise someone gets butthurt that they were told their opinion isn’t valid.
Several of these are pointed at the feedback of the survey I made. Some are at specific issues seen over the last year. I left this open for further feedback on how to implement moderation, but not for people to be upset that they won’t get their daily dose of toxicity. Try 4chan or Reddit. Or Twitter. Or join both left and right winged Facebook groups and bait boomers for fun. But as it is a lot of people are run off the forums because of a much smaller number of people shitting in the street. Wise crack if you want, but don’t be mad if you get dinged for telling players to get out of sections Bc they play a different subgame of the 10 year old game everyone still plays. (Those aren’t directed at you).

[conversion software version 7.0]

It's simple. If someone is forum banned then they only see one subforum: the forum unban subforum. This is something my RuneScape clan managed to do in 2006 on a shitty invisionfree forum so there's no way it can't be done in 2021.

[matt_st3 (Strongrule)]

It's simple. If someone is forum banned then they only see one subforum: the forum unban subforum. This is something my RuneScape clan managed to do in 2006 on a shitty invisionfree forum so there's no way it can't be done in 2021.

The problem would be that banned doesn't differentiate who is banned and who is community banned. Because i do not want someone who is community banned, usually for illegal/sexual activities these days, to have an open spot to post whatever they want before an admin can maybe watch it. Tho some kind of moderated hybrid on the ban could catch it, tho you still have it technically there. Or i could have a community ban rank to differentiate...
I did intend to get travis on making that list so its possible and maybe even a better idea to have a separate rank for that.