[NGTM-1R]

Actually - since there seems to be emerging consensus on the current form, perhaps one of the staff could fire a link to this thread in the forum announcements?  A relatively small proportion of the user base looks at site support, and soliciting wide feedback can't hurt.

Definitely agree with this.

[Zacam]

I put it into the News ticker as a start.

[Rhymes]

I read these discussions with big interest and I may say am pleased with the general direction of them. However, given that I am more of a "consumer" than a "builder", and given the OP asked for no "spam comments" without content, etc., I refrained from commenting. Make no mistake though and I think I speak for more people than myself, the discussions and conclusions driven from these threads are really important, the task of moderators and admins are really important, I think the document is pretty good as of this moment, and I couldn't be more grateful for all of it.

So please go on with the knowledge that many will only lurk this thread, but with plenty of interest.

I would like to second this.  Pretty much all the suggestions I had were made by others who worded them far more effectively than I could, but I am very pleased with the direction the new guidelines have taken.  I'm not going to post much in this thread, but it definitely has my attention and support.

[pecenipicek]

Shut down GenDisc

You are not the first person to suggest this, you will not be the last, and it has always been unconvincing in a more than superficial way. GenDisc gets people spending time on the site. It has been immensely educational to myself, and to others, thanks to folks like MP-Ryan. It's a marvelous mechanism for retention as it keeps people interested in visiting during droughts in the release of playable content. And it offers the ability to segregate topics that would otherwise naturally emerge in other places and times for those who really feel they ought to be.

Those who think these things won't come up if GenDisc goes away, I encourage you to remember that even with GenDisc as an outlet Goober's gender-related meltdown which drove Rian out of participating happened in GenFS and we've had several impressive fights over gender, religion, and consent issues in Gaming Discussion, Diaspora, and even Wings of Dawn. Sticking your fingers in your ears is not the answer.

The answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship, something that a lot of people here have struggled with. (c.f. why you ought to reply to rather than ignore people stating intolerant opinions)

also, my somewhat bad memory speaks of a time without gendisc and it sorta spilled out over to the rest of the forums. with it being the way it is, keeping it at the bottom is good enough

[swashmebuckle]

I think I speak for all us ****posters when I say this persecution will not stand

The rules look great, I think it's a solid step forward for the community.

Whether we can actually draw and retain people who would have been driven off under the old ruleset will come down to execution, but it's nice to see the community being treated as a work in progress with actual potential for improvement rather than people just shrugging their shoulders.

[Mongoose]

I want to give the whole thing a better read-through when I'm not distracting myself with 50 things at once (like right now for instance), but so far what I've read looks great.

[General Battuta]

Where do I go to ask for review on Luis' monkeying 

[deathspeed]

What I don't think any of us want to see is an explosion in the more formal warnings that can be issued through the forum software done in private.  They have their place, but the goal should be to deal with problems before it needs to reach that stage.

This is the sort of approach I take when doing performance appraisals at work.  I try to recognize potential/budding problem areas and deal with them immediately and informally, before they require some sort of formal action or notice.  I tell my people they should never be surprised by something negative on an appraisal, but I personally will feel like I have failed them if things get to that point. 

I do really like having the rules and suggestions codified.  Another suggestion may be to add something along the lines of "If you are not sure if something you want to post falls within the rules, it probably doesn't."  Any thoughts on that?

The site support board is far more interesting that I had thought if would be!

[karajorma]

If - as a number of us have been saying - that increase in moderation takes the form of public, informal feedback ("Hey Ryan, you're being a jerk right now, cut it out" in a reply in the thread) versus private and formal action to minor issues, then I doubt you're going to see much of a problem.

The Zacam intervention in the Descent thread is a perfect example of what TO do.  And on the whole, the moderators have gotten much better at this sort of thing.  So those sorts of warnings are expected, justified, and should come more frequently to course-correct threads.

What I don't think any of us want to see is an explosion in the more formal warnings that can be issued through the forum software done in private.  They have their place, but the goal should be to deal with problems before it needs to reach that stage.

I wasn't talking about formal warnings. We've had plenty of cases of people flipping out at being publicly told to behave precisely because they were told to do so in public and felt that they were humiliated in front of their peers as a result. And in several of those cases I couldn't see a thing the moderator in question did wrong.

What I'm getting at is that people need to realise that they are going to get more informal warnings on the thread and not get upset at that. What I'm saying is that there are going to be a lot more cases of an admin or mod saying "Users X, Y and Z. You don't post on this thread any more" in cases where the thread would have been locked before.

Those of us reading this thread get it, but I suspect the wider HLP audience will need to be informed in some way.

[Luis Dias]

Multiple ways of doing so.... when the new regulation is considered finished and polished enough, perhaps you could put this in the announcements, but even better would be an automated way of PM'ing every single one of the posters with the new link to the new regulations, a message which clearly states everyone's being PM'd too (so people don't get paranoid) with an advice to take the regulations seriously and thoughtfully.

[deathspeed]

I just ran across this interesting and somewhat relevant post on constructive criticism: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75164.0

I think it is a good read for anyone posting in the forums.  Even though it is specifically about criticism, it has general principles that can be applied everywhere: be respectful, be specific, don't take it personally, etc.

[MP-Ryan]

Lorric has PM'ed me (and apparently Goober) a lengthy post he would like added to the thread.  I'm not going to add it to the thread without admin/moderator permission, but I will briefly summarize the ideas presented in it and give my take on them.  If people disagree, then we can discuss further and add them as necessary.

The suggestions are as follows:
1.  Split up the rules and post them in their most relevant locations.  Some of the points apply more to certain areas than others.
2.  It appears he is also suggesting that section-specific FAQs be rolled into the guideline posts in those areas.
3.  Split up General Discussion into a section devoted to debate/politics/religion/etc, and a separate section devoted to everything else.
4.  There is a lengthy section on his own behaviour, but a salient point that he brings up is that, the current system of moderation which we are apparently now finally on the way to changing has formalized responses to behaviour, unclear guidelines, and a definitive prohibition on community moderation.  This is problematic because people report people like Lorric, get no feedback, and see nothing happen, but are forbidden from engaging in more informal moderation - public disapproval, basically - that would set him on the right path.  This creates MORE problems, not less.

My response:
1.  While I can see posting the Gudelines in multiple areas, I think they need to remain a single cohesive document.
2.  More section-specific FAQs for help/advice are not necessarily a bad idea, but should be written by the people most knowledgeable in those areas.  That, I think, is a discussion for another day.
3.  Firmly opposed to further splitting the Off-Topic boards.  People can either learn to debate in a meaningful way - which is frankly nothing but educational and a self-improvement exercise, which is GOOD for them - or refrain from posting in debate-style discussions when it becomes clear they have no idea what they're talking about compared to everyone else.  As with all things in life, there are times when it is better to remain silent and thought a fool than speak up and remove all doubt.  IMHO, the formula for the Off-Topic boards is fine; what has been lacking is a cohesive and comprehensive approach to actual moderation there.
4.  I actually agree with this point quite firmly, though I don't think it necessitates a change to these guidelines, but rather the internal mechanisms used by the moderators.  In point of fact, the present guidelines do not prohibit community self-moderation, but rather emphasize the reporting function and that responses are to be respectful and in the form of debate if they are made.  Personal attacks are, as always, out... but there is nothing stopping one community member from reminding another that they are misbehaving in this proposed set, and I think it's important that it stay that way.  Furthermore, I think the ability of the community to self-moderate respectfully should be codified in the new moderator guidelines kara is proposing to write.

If Goober is away and one of the other admins OK's it instead, I'll post Lorric's whole writeup.

[karajorma]

I don't mind community moderation but I will warn people that the penalties will be severe for anyone using it to discourage people from speaking simply because they disagree with their opinion, etc. If you do engage in community moderation, you'd better be damn sure you're in the right about it. Because the last thing I want to see happening is every topic devolving into a "I think the post was okay/I think it was out of order" debate. That is a significant problem with community moderation and is in fact the main reason why HLP moved away from it. I'm willing to give it a try again though.

Furthermore, anyone telling the mods how to do their jobs will also get it in the neck. Calling for thread locks, bans, etc will still get you punished instead of/as well as the other user. That stuff should definitely still be in a report and not in the thread itself. If the infraction isn't bad enough to report it, you shouldn't be calling for the same actions in public.

However I disagree with the argument that community moderation would actually have helped much with the Lorric issue. There are people it would help but I don't believe Lorric is one of them. Lorric's problem was that he didn't do any one particular thing wrong but instead steadily built up to the point where every post he made was like thousands of tiny hammers beating on the inside of your skull. This is exactly the wrong problem to be dealt with via community moderation cause it simply leads to him being shouted down in every single thread he posts in. Different people would get sick of him at different points and the moderation ends up becoming more of an issue than the original problem because there are lots of people sick of Lorric and even more people sick of seeing the same faces on every single thread saying that they are sick of Lorric.
 Situations like that are much better handled by the moderators than the community. The problem was the issue of reporting back on moderation decisions and also of notifying the person who caused the report that while no action was taken, the post was bad enough to trigger a report.

Which leads to a suggestion. Moderators have an "Issue a warning because of this message" button. Since when reading a reported thread we will probably already be looking at the post that was reported, an idea might be to simply click on that and send a message saying "This post was reported for being insulting, etc. The decision of the moderation team is that while the post is impolite no action will be taken as a result of this report." i.e a no consequences warning. If you get one of those messages, you know that whatever you did wasn't anything the moderators considered too bad, but that someone, somewhere thinks you crossed a line. So you might want to avoid doing things in quite the same way next time. If you start seeing these appearing very often, you know you're acting like Lorric, annoying people but never doing anything bad enough to actually trigger a response.

Cause the biggest problem with the posts that we saw report from Lorric was that very few of them were actionable. So they were simply closed. Doing this gives us a good way to get feedback to the person causing the trouble without actually punishing them in any way.

[MP-Ryan]

Which leads to a suggestion. Moderators have an "Issue a warning because of this message" button. Since when reading a reported thread we will probably already be looking at the post that was reported, an idea might be to simply click on that and send a message saying "This post was reported for being insulting, etc. The decision of the moderation team is that while the post is impolite no action will be taken as a result of this report." i.e a no consequences warning. If you get one of those messages, you know that whatever you did wasn't anything the moderators considered too bad, but that someone, somewhere thinks you crossed a line. So you might want to avoid doing things in quite the same way next time. If you start seeing these appearing very often, you know you're acting like Lorric, annoying people but never doing anything bad enough to actually trigger a response.

Might not be a bad idea.

[Luis Dias]

This idea is potentially capable of being more annoying and irritating than the things we are trying to solve, it really depends on the execution, implementation of it. I can also see it being used as a form of bullying. People do have different sensitivities to what is nice or rude (see Scotty vs Spoon 2014), and some people will always be under the spotlight for their traits.

I wrote a lot of words regarding this, but it's a hard subject and I can't quite grasp it.

[karajorma]

If the number of reports stays constant, I doubt it.

It would only become a problem if people started abusing it, in which case they run the risk of having that backfire on them quite badly. Trying to bully someone by repeatedly sending emails to every single admin and moderator (which is what happens on a report) is likely to end up annoying the **** out of the admins.

[NGTM-1R]

3.  Split up General Discussion into a section devoted to debate/politics/religion/etc, and a separate section devoted to everything else.

I think this was attempted once, and we eventually folded it back into GenDisc because it wasn't working. (And because people abused the distinction.)

[Mongoose]

Yeah, we definitely tried that once, and it didn't last very long.

[Goober5000]

Lorric has PM'ed me (and apparently Goober) a lengthy post he would like added to the thread.  I'm not going to add it to the thread without admin/moderator permission, but I will briefly summarize the ideas presented in it and give my take on them.  If people disagree, then we can discuss further and add them as necessary.

Thanks for extracting the ideas.  I had gotten pretty oversaturated with Lorric stuff this past week and didn't have time to sift through all the chaff for the few kernels of grain.

Since Lorric has been obeying the terms of the ban and since MP-Ryan has already summarized it, I'll post Lorric's entire message unfiltered:

Hello everyone.

First, I would like to share an idea I have on the structure of this system of guidelines. I’ll start with this early post:

This seems pretty good. I might add something explicit about criticism:

Criticism is a valuable part of the creative process, but please remember that creators can't work without motivation, and criticism usually stings. Try to be compassionate and constructive when providing feedback - think of the process as a collaboration, working together to build something better. It's okay to say 'this doesn't work for me', but try to point to things you liked as well and offer a path forward. Conversely, please value thoughtful feedback you receive, even when you decide not to act on it.

My concern, as with the original discussion on this back in June, is that we end up with a massive set of guidelines.  I'd be hesitant about including nice to haves in the rules, so perhaps this should be filed under "Points to Keep in Mind" which can be separated by a line or something from the main guidelines.  The main guidelines should be short and to the point so people frickin' read them.

While you could keep the whole set of guidelines together in one place, like Getting Started, Announcements or Site Support, I think it would be good to split it up into different boards as well or instead. This one for instance has no place in General Discussion, but would be very valuable on the forums where we do what this forum exists to do. I have seen plenty of flare-ups on these forums over the way criticism is delivered and received, and this is excellent advice for both the critic and the one being critiqued, and would be more likely to be followed if placed on the appropriate forum/s.

The mood is very different in Gaming than it is in General Discussion. You could have tweaked guidelines accounting for this stickied at the top of each forum.

The Fred Forum could perhaps contain tips for asking for help and receiving it, how to solve your own problems before asking for help, and detail the solutions to some of the most common problems.

Personally, I would split General Discussion into two separate boards. We have a separate one for Gaming. How about a split from general discussion, something like Religion, Politics and Debate? Name up for discussion. I want something to reflect what I say next. Here is where the serious discussing and debating takes place, and it is not acceptable to enter topics without a good grounding on the facts of the issue at hand. Topics posted here are expected to be discussed by people educated on the subject, or who are able to grasp it quickly, and those who are not, and/or who spout uninformed opinions or stream of consciousness posts are not welcome and will be ejected. A Political Prisoners group for this specific forum could be created to keep repeat offenders out.

General Discussion would remain, and be a place where people can discuss topics of a lighter nature or without pissing off the big debaters in general discussion as they’d have their own place to discuss subjects under their own social expectations, while at the opposite end of the scale, someone could post a Youtube video of some cat doing something funny or meander off topic and it not be regarded as annoying ****posting. Here, people who are not well versed on certain topics could discuss them. You could have two topics with exactly the same subject matter running at the same time, and the less educated/aware could still be able to discuss it while the more educated would also be able to discuss it without the topic veering off course when someone like me is there trying to learn and asking questions and slowing things down. As much as the better debaters feel aggrieved by certain actions on threads of this nature, it slams the door on other forumites getting their teeth into subject matter and expressing their opinions.

We have a tremendous diversity of boards on the subjects that HLP exists primarily to cater for, but just two for anything else. I would like to see further split for more diversity besides my single split idea, but my idea for a single split I think would be a great start. Imagine what HLP would be like if we had only two boards for our primary reason for existing. We have too many strong personalities. Too many people who will clash over what is perceived to be socially right or wrong on a forum. We can do more I think to accommodate all types and allow all types to be themselves when discussing non-Freespace issues, and end up in threads with likeminded people. The current system cuts down people’s options for discussion and expression.

It gratifies me that the person driving this understands me so very well. I refer to this, which is exactly what I am and exactly what I need:

The major issue that I think most of us have with how things are run around here is the complete lack of transparency when there is no need for secrecy.  Everyone could point out that Lorric was being a problem, but it was improper to discuss that outside the admin internal.  Why?  Like I keep emphasizing, this is one of the communities most fit to self-policing of any I've been a part of.  And by self-policing I don't mean giving admin rights to everyone, but I do mean that admins/mods should be making their informal and formal actions transparently within the expectations of the broader community.

That guideline in the thread would cover every possible justification for both the community and the admin/mod team saying "enough" to the disruptive elements and dealing with them immediately.  No, Lorric hadn't broken any particular rule, but virtually everyone on this bloody board could tell you that his behaviour was destructive and disruptive, and the issue could have been dealt with much sooner.  As it is, the fellow really doesn't have a clue what he's doing that gets everyone so perturbed; if the shackles came off the community at large and the mod team intervened early, directly, and with the minimum force required (there I go channeling work again) then it would not have reached this point... or if it did, we could at least say we've tried everything.  As it stands, can anyone here REALLY say that?

Frankly, the admin board should only exist to discuss internal, technical issues with the site management.  For that, limited access by trusted community members is appropriate.

All the design, rules, disciplinary measures, disruption, etc should be part of a board that can at least be publicly read, if not necessarily commented on.  There is no need for policing of posting behaviour, etc to be a secretive thing, and the fact that it is - and is done by a very small percentage of community members - is perhaps one of the biggest reasons you get pushback.  If moderation were a community activity enforced technically by moderators and admins, it would be a much less controversial thing.  And that has to be preciptated by both a rulset change and a governance structure change.

I struggle to understand social rules that are not clearly defined. I do not break the forum rules because the forum rules are clearly defined, so I understand and obey them.

I am a big believer in treat others as you would wish to be treated. I do not set out to offend anyone. If another Lorric came to HLP, that Lorric wouldn’t cause me any offence.

People can't talk to me for backseat moderation, so they report me, then the forum mods and admins talk about me in their internal forum, and I can't see any of it so I don't know what is happening and just carry on as normal. These new guidelines fill me with hope that I can coexist with you, as both of these things would be reversed under them.

I am sincerely sorry for all I might have done to hurt any of you. I hope you understand me better now, and why I do the things that I do, and that when my ban expires we can all get along. I hope you all enjoy the peace and quiet while I am away. I mean this sincerely.

Lorric

[MP-Ryan]

Just a reminder, folks, 24 hours until the arbitrary deadline expires =)