[Beskargam]

Not really a newbie (been here for almost 3 years wow), but I clearly don't post all that much. Usually on here reading every day though. I Have been following this thread, but didn't feel like wading in with all you heavy weights who have been around since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. That outa the way:

-I would prefer GD not be shut down. That would be like throwing out the baby with the bath water.
-I don't think that there should be separate rule sets for GD or any of the other sub-forums.
     -In the case of GD, I rarely see any active moderation at all, when all it would take is some PMs or a mod/admin to step in and say "cool it guys". What usually happens is a thread gets locked. Eventually.
     -It was said earlier that some of the admins/mods do not wade into GD due to fearing the reaction of their compatriots. This is not a good way for moderation to take place. If you do notlead because of how you will be thought of, then you should not have that authority. Being in authority can at times make you a lightning rod, but if you accept the position then that does not mean you can shirk the duties of the office.
     -This therefore should change
-What I would like to see in rules/guidelines:
     -A very short list of things that you cannot do "No racism, Sexism, Insults on character etc etc" Oh and add religion bashing to this list. It gets old and destroys useful topics
     -A very short statement describing the way you should behave. You should not need to describe how to be nice. That should be known to everybody.
     -A clause saying that anything not covered is still subject to rule by the admins/mods. Just because it isn't in the rules does not mean you can get away with it
-What I would like to see in behavior:
     -Soft punishments. Not necessarily 3 strikes you are out policy (warning, temp ban, perma ban or something). Give people bans for ~24 hours for minor offenses (this should   cover most 
     cases. A week for more egregious breaches of conduct. If there is a long string of behavior in one particular sub-forum, then ban them from that sub-forum. If they can't behave at all, anywhere, then completely ban them. The wall of shame idea is a good idea. Have it list who is banned, why, and how long the punishment period is.
     -Use of the PM system to explain what the individual did wrong. This also means that the PM system needs to be accessible to people who have been banned.
     -Active Moderation, particularly of GD
     -Discontinuation of the use of the Hammer Account, while funny the first few times I saw it, reading the explanation behind its use in this thread makes me feel that it is bad. Mods/Admins should not hide behind that account, nor should they feel they have to. Mods/Admins should be trusted for their judgment and insight as well as their sense of fair play. They should be respected, and their decisions as well. They should not be be afraid to wade into a thread to do what needs to be done either. This is not to say that they are infallible, an appeal process is bothreasonable and fair.
     -Moderators/Admins should be able to both participate in a thread and moderate it if need be. This requires them to remain level headed at most times. State when you are switching from just participating to laying down the law so to speak   
     

those who have posted earlier are correct in that there has been consensus as to what should be changed moving forward, and that you are choosing not to see it. You can ignore almost the first 3 pages of this thread, maybe more, as backlash before it actually gets constructive.

On an additional note, I am curious as to Fury's statement for transparency on the part of the administration and competency/activity.




GRAR cloudflare issues and such make this only slightly less frustrating than taking my organic chem tests.
             

[Lorric]

Let's see about the latest posts...

The reason I mentioned newbies is that if someone gets into trouble it's nice to have something to point them at to keep them out of trouble. And that's where I feel a proscriptive list (admittedly with a more proactive start than the one we have) is useful.

I agree with this. This was useful to me. It's also a good tool for the mods. And you can have new mods too who it will be useful for. It's not about people not reading it in the first place, as they may never need to. But if they do, then it's there, and they can be directed to it.

Let's try this one.


1) Be nice.

This doesn't mean being polite (although that's certainly part of it). The games and mods here on HLP were made by people willing to give up massive amounts of their free time, often over the course of several years, in order to provide people with something to play. This can only happen when people are willing to be giving. Giving of their time to make games. Giving of the models, graphics and code they make. Giving of their expertise in teaching people how to do what they do. The worst community members just what they're given and then complain about what they were given for free. The best community members are the ones who are willing to give back. Even if you haven't got any game design skills you can still give back. You can still tell people what worked and what didn't. If you find a bug you can give up a few hours to help the person who spent years making the game you're playing ensure that the next person doesn't have the same problem.

This community lives or dies on ability of its members to be nice to each other, and for this reason, this is the number one rule on HLP.

And I very much like this, I would support it's insertion into the guidelines. I haven't seen Mr. Rogers, but I may well have a look sometime just to see why he is held up as a paragon of niceness. If he's really that nice, he could be left in the guidelines in a lighthearted way.

[Phantom Hoover]

For ****'s sake, Lorric, do you not realise that half the reason for this discussion is that you've been ruining threads in GD with your attitude of "well I know nothing whatsoever about anything outside of my comfy little box but I think you all need to hear my thoughts on the matter" and nobody's found a workable excuse to ban you yet? Would you please shut up, for once in your entire time in this forum, and actually let the grown-ups talk?

[NGTM-1R]

I'm just...

Karaj, you genuinely seem like you Do Not Want To Do This, as you have resisted it in every possible way, and you're now inventing new (and kinda dubious, as The E pointed out) ways to resist it when you've run out. What is it that you find so objectionable about this that you fight it so hard?

[CommanderDJ]

     -Moderators/Admins should be able to both participate in a thread and moderate it if need be. This requires them to remain level headed at most times. State when you are switching from just participating to laying down the law so to speak   
 
             

I agree with all of your post except this. There's far too much potential for accusation of bias if a mod moderates a thread they're participating in, regardless of if it's actually there or not. This would cause needless drama that could be easily avoided by having a noninvolved moderator take action. If, for example, The E were to take action against Lorric in the feminism thread for whatever reason (not making a statement, just an example), whilst I trust The E and know him to be a very good and fair moderator, there's the possibility that others may read it as a personal attack, and there would likely be backlash which, again, could be really easily avoided.

[General Battuta]

I've said my piece as best as I can. Any questions people have about my points can be answered by rereading my posts in this thread. I don't see any particular difficulties with being newbie-friendly inherent in the suggestions made here.

I can't work on any modding-related stuff right now, and the discussion component of this forum is currently nonfunctional for reasons (a reason) that should be quite apparent from the last few posts. There hasn't been any apparent movement to fix it, and this thread seems to be getting a lot of pushback in spite of the fairly clear and coherent multipolar consensus here. Will anything be done in the near term to get the forums back into a state where we can have discussions? And I'm not talking about the CloudFlare issues here.

[karajorma]

I posted a new version of the first guideline based on the feedback and every single person on this thread except Lorric ignored it.

Are you really pulling the "this discussion is not done by a representative sample of the population, therefore we can discard the results" card?

Of course I'm not saying that.  I did edit my post to better explain what I meant but cloudflare ate it.

Black Wolf posted (And I agreed) that sometimes it's very hard to give the community what they want cause they'll constantly say they want something and then complain when they get it. Past experience has shown me that often the same people who ask for a certain kind of moderation are the first ones to complain about it when it gets applied to them.

What I am saying is that we must remember that we don't even have a representative sample. So even if no one who posted on this thread does that (And I would be very disappointed if anyone did). There's a good chance we could do what people on this thread say is the best thing to do and then face a second ****storm from those people who didn't read this thread and completely disagree with what was done. While part of me would be tempted to say "**** 'em, they had their chance" I'm pretty sure that's the wrong attitude.


What I really don't want to happen is to thrash out a new set of rules on here and then have people come along and tear them apart too. I've seen far too many people reverse their position the second something is put into practice.

I pointed out Battuta's rule set for Gen Dis as a great example of this. It's a complete reversal of many of his earlier points. I'm honestly confused about how we can make a set of guidelines that do what he's been asking for earlier and what that list does. I honestly can't see why that list is a good idea and the one we currently have is a bad idea.
 And the only explanation I've gotten is that the addition of a rule saying that rule lawyering isn't allowed somehow makes it okay. I really, really can't see how. 

[General Battuta]

For the love of God, it's an example of a rules set that works from another forum. I posted it so we could look at it and talk about it. If you can't see how it's compatible, give yourself a minute. 

[General Battuta]

If you think that's incompatible with my earlier points it means that I did not in any way get my earlier points across.

[karajorma]

I don't think it's just me. PhantomHoover was just as confused and MP-Ryan flat out stated that they were prescriptive, as are the current guidelines.

If you feel the rules would work, tell me why they are better than what we have now, cause I really don't understand and it appears I'm not the only one.

[NGTM-1R]

MP-Ryan flat out stated that they were prescriptive

cause I really don't understand

These are not related issues. Why are you equating them?

Because, you know, MP-Ryan was actually supportive of the proposed rules change and appeared to understand it, so saying he's "confused" and "you are not the only one" is kinda disingenuous here.

[karajorma]

Are you guys just ****ing with me now?

Batts' rules are what I would call prescriptive, as are the current guidelines.  Typically they tell you how you should behave, versus how you shouldn't.

I prefer short prohibitive rules (the current guidelines have some features of prohibitive rules as well as prescriptive, but are IMHO way too long) to make it clear absolutely what is not tolerated, and then leave the rest to combined informal community moderation and formal admin moderation.

Seems he's flat out stating he doesn't like the rule set Batt posted for Gen Dis. I agree with him on that, I don't like them either.

[mjn.mixael]

Round and round we go... Let's just go back to one of the most level headed post on the topic...

I think a point (or points) that we need to take away from this situation and evolved conversation is this:

This obviously isn't working out as intended.

Bear in mind that this is just from my own perspective and may not address everything brought up here. If I miss touching on something, it's nothing personal, I'm still into my first cup of coffee

For the longest time (to my perception starting out as a regular member) Administration and Moderation just seemed to be a casual sort of deal. There have been issues, to be sure. There always will be when you have more than 2 human beings in any one place and we're far more diversified than that. But there never seemed to be the kinds of issues that we've been having lately.

Now, some of the issues seem to stem from A: entrenchment and B: entitlement. (I won't go about into which applies to whom, that wouldn't be constructive)

When the initial proposition of trying to create a "Common Page" came up, it all seemed like a really good idea. Maybe I didn't pay as much attention to the details specifically as I could have and as a result, abstracted it to a notion of what I -thought- it would turn out to being, which lead to a sense of being "okay" with the concept that was then presented. I can also see how it naturally could lead to then becoming highly defensive about reacting to the responses that have been given in regards to it. And then like a snowball, momentum makes it bigger and we have a mess on our hands.

And as tired as I am of there being messes, it doesn't do anything or any one any good if I choose to then react to it as "Great, another ****ing mess, isn't THIS just lovely" even if that IS a human reaction to give.

I'm already on record as saying that I don't think the right approach should involve more of an Authoritative stance when it comes to a Community. I'm more than willing and I have the choice however to see how well it can work before trying other options, regardless of my own personal stance. This isn't a compromise of who I am or of my nature, it just means that I can rationally see a need for allowing things to progress naturally and organically to their own conclusions and work on it from there.

I'm more invested (personally) in learning what works and what doesn't and in making mistakes (and apologizing for them in the right way) as a fundamental part of my own personal evolution. But it is a LOT easier to want to try and hold on to what is already established, to want to be right and to just say "This is the way of it, take it or **** off". It is a lot easier to deal with hostility by replying in kind.

I've worked Technical Support in addition to having to work through my own anger management issues as both a child and young adult. Fortunately, rather than taking the "lets medicate it out of you" route (which can still be viable, just wasn't in my case), I got to work through it by developing an understanding of what causes for it and developing the mechanics to help me step aside from it until I can look at it later. Working in technical support really helped with that, as when you pick up a phone and immediately have somebody absolutely SCREAMING at you, it is REALLY easy to default to the fact that they are screaming at YOU and therefor, YOU need to do something about it.

So, what does any of the above so far have to do with where we are right now? Well, let me refer back to:
A: entrenchment
B: entitlement

Yes, we need to have -something- that the community can be behind that lets people know who they can turn to and what we can do about things and when it becomes necessary for things to be done. Social urges of being a social creature wants control and structure in the face of chaos (and perversely the more of that you have, the more you'll generate the need for chaos).

So while I do think that the idea and the approach -as ideas- are still good and solid and necessary, I'd like to see more of a engagement with regards to what WOULD work, rather than a focus on tearing down or bring up what HASN'T worked or what people feel might be wrong about the existing idea.

We took it as a top level discussion and a top level collaboration to try and create this set up. As a result, it got created in a vacuum that allowed for both entitlement and entrenchment to take place. We took it as our responsibility to try and come up with something for the Community, which we did and we then presented to the Community. But we (I don't think) took into account that the community (in light of the whole reason behind WHY we did this in the first place) might not see it as more of an Authoritarian move of imposing a system in place, instead of as a "rough draft" seed for us to all collectively germinate and process and turn into a upheld Pearl.

Part of that may have been due the presentation of how it got put forth to the community. For something that would require Community involvement and acknowledgement and participation in, the feedback is as a reaction to it being (perceptually at the very least) as being now already "in effect" with no sense of having actually contributed anything towards it in a fashion that makes it tailor made for the very Community it is purportedly in place to support.

There have been throughout the posts a few wonderful examples of the right kind of feedback that we should take a look at. PA's and SA's guidelines have been pointed out as being a format that we can look at. So rather than trying to recreate a wheel in a void, I think there is merit in soliciting from the community the question of:

What do you see, in terms of other forums, as rule-sets or means that you feel would be potentially applicable to HLP that would allow for it to become the Community that you feel would provide the proper environment that will allow it to live up to the declared nature of its existence of "Bringing Modders Together"?


Now, I also need to acknowledge that: We cannot ignore our past. Serious things have taken place. We cannot blindly insist on "moving forward" to a resolution without taking even the slightest moments to actually acknowledge how we got to where we are. What few (public) apologies that have taken place have been grudgingly given and ALWAYS in the context of "but so are you!" or as an attempt to refute a point to prove a point.

The bottom line is NOT in being "right". The bottom line is: address the situation, even if it never gets resolved initially, it will eventually but only when it is properly acknowledged for what it is.

In Technical Support terms, this means: You say "sorry" to the angry caller for their issue, even when they are screaming at you, because god damn it, somebody had better be! You need to let go of the personal matter of not actually being at fault in this situation and still manage to deliver a sincere apology (and for ****s sake, one that you actually MEAN and can uphold) for them being angry before you can start working on the technical problem they are having. If you continue to insist on not being at fault, if you continue to assert that you don't deserve them screaming at you (and yes, we already know you don't, they'll eventually realize that too) you will NEVER get the actual fundamental technical problem resolved.

And I think by and large, that is one of the BIGGEST problems that we have going on here right now. People are screaming at each other. They all have valid points. They are all, in their own way, absolutely right in the position that they are coming from. But we're getting FAR too focused on who is actually MORE RIGHT than the other that we're not getting anywhere, and I would really like if it could stop for even just a moment please, because you are turning rather unhealthy shades of purple and I'm concerned you might have a heart attack.

Now, I don't know whether or not we should engage the conversation on the question above (in bold) within this thread or if we should have a new Topic of discussion regarding it. I'm leaning more in favor of the latter with the emphasis that the topic should start out with, and be purely contained to, the bold part directly and by itself.

In any case, my personal apologies for the mess and my lack of time to properly pay attention to it. Can we please start looking at how we can get this properly sorted now?

[NGTM-1R]

Seems he's flat out stating he doesn't like the rule set Batt posted for Gen Dis. I agree with him on that, I don't like them either.

At any rate, most of the non-moderators (and some of the moderators) now giving input to this thread are saying essentially the same thing - fewer guidelines, a couple hard-and-fast rules, and earlier, softer, flexible intervention by the moderation staff is the right direction.  A strict crime-and-punishment regime is neither what this board needs nor what we are advocating.

I am again resorting to the counter-Lorric tactic.

I should not have to be resorting to the counter-Lorric tactic.

The rules are examples, not proposals. Nobody has treated them as proposals.

[General Battuta]

The miscommunication here is that someone thinks I posted a proposed set of rules for GenDisc. Can't type now

[MP-Ryan]

Oh good grief.  If hackers would quit making HLP impossible to load I could actually clear this up.

Batts' posted a suggestion for discussion, as far as I can tell.  I like the spirit of the prohibitive items listed; I do not want to see further prescriptive rulesets adopted here.

Actually, kara's "be nice" suggestion wasn't all that bad and would be a step in the right direction (coupled with the deletion of the current guidelines), but needs refinement.

Let's try this:

The primary rule on HLP is simply "Be Nice."  That doesn't mean you must always be in agreement, or even always be polite, but it does mean you have to be respectful of the person if not their views.  This also means that racism, homophobic language, sexism, personal attacks, and harassment are behaviours that can earn you an immediate ban.  All warnings, temporary restrictions, and bans are at the discretion of the moderating team, based on the "be nice" principle.  HLP's moderators will strive to intervene early to correct unacceptable behaviour instead of resorting to immediate formal actions; if you are the subject of a warning, this is an opportunity to change your behaviour and learn from it.

The games and mods here on HLP were made by people willing to give up massive amounts of their free time, often over the course of several years, in order to provide people with something to play. This can only happen when people are willing to be giving. Giving of their time to make games. Giving of the models, graphics and code they make. Giving of their expertise in teaching people how to do what they do. The worst community members just what they're given and then complain about what they were given for free. The best community members are the ones who are willing to give back. Even if you haven't got any game design skills you can still give back. You can still tell people what worked and what didn't. If you find a bug you can give up a few hours to help the person who spent years making the game you're playing ensure that the next person doesn't have the same problem.

The discussion in the off-topic areas are also only productive because of members who also give up their free time to participate.  HLP has many passionate and often highly-educated members.  Please don't take our membership for granted.  Making any areas of the forums hostile places, and especially the truly optional areas, will merely eliminate them.

This community lives or dies on ability of its members to be nice to each other, and for this reason, this is the only real rule on HLP.

Just a couple additions I thought were worthwhile.

[karajorma]

Well the plan was to make a couple of other rules if people liked the first one. But I'm fine with your version for the most part. I can always link to old guidelines if someone really needs things explained to them in more black and white terms.

[Lorric]

Well the plan was to make a couple of other rules if people liked the first one. But I'm fine with your version for the most part. I can always link to old guidelines if someone really needs things explained to them in more black and white terms.

That does seem like a good way to get the best of both worlds.

Oh and happy birthday Karajorma! 

You've been up against it in this thread the last few days, so I truly wish you a happy one.

[Scourge of Ages]

For what it's worth, I've been following this thread too. I'd like to say first that I actually really do trust and respect the mods and admins here. I'm glad that Karajorma is engaging in this dialogue; it can't be easy to do, I'm sure, what with all these communication problems flying around.

I also like MP-Ryan's new proposed guidelines, and really appreciated Beskargam's post, he said a lot of what I'd been thinking as I read through this thread.

If I could add a couple of things though, it would be to edit the guidelines down just a bit for space, and to add a short list of non-obvious things that could garner a warning ("inb4" stuff, posting image macros instead of a post that contributes something, things like that). EDIT: Just noticed those are in there.

As for being able to moderate a thread that a mod is involved in, I'd say it was not a great idea to exclude that possibility entirely, but that it should naturally be reserved for things like splitting a topic if necessary, or emergency purging of posts/users in situations where taking the time to contact another mod(s) would lead to the thread falling apart and/or exploding before any action could be taken.

[Beskargam]

Upon further thought, Scourge's idea is probably a better one regarding mod/admin impartiality