"The Prime Directive"

[Tiberius]

The Staff have noticed an increase in the amount of negativity involving discussions, especially with sensitive issues where many people disagree. This has been a problem since the forum began, and over the years we have tried various methods to try and control it. With several recent incidents the staff had a long discussion about how we want the forum to proceed, be more fun for its membership, and cut down on the flaming and trolling.

We have therefore made three changes to the rules and punishment system:

1. Discussion of pedophilia / child pornography / accusations of pedophilia is not allowed. While discussion of pedophilia / child pornography in relation to news-worthy stories is allowed, general discussion of the subjects and accusations of pedophilia is not.

These kinds of threads often quickly dissolve into flaming, especially when people start accusing other members of pedophilia or generalizing entire groups in a similar way.

2. The Prime Directive

The following new "rule" sets out our vision for how we want discussions to develop:

The purpose of these forums is first and foremost to allow members to discuss various topics with people who may disagree. The staff believe that the best discussions are those that stay polite and friendly, and it is with this in mind that we implement the following rules.

The staff are aware that any thread may devolve into flaming, either indirect or direct, over time. Staff reserve the right to ban certain members from these threads if they are deemed to be flaming or trolling. Posts which are comprised of mostly insulting language, name calling rather than addressing points, generalizing entire groups of people, etc. will be considered as flaming. Posts which are comprised of outrageous misrepresentations of events within the public record will be considered as trolling.
The staff are aware that any thread may devolve into flaming, either indirect or direct, over time. Staff reserve the right to ban certain members from these threads if they are deemed to be flaming or trolling. Posts which are comprised of mostly insulting language, name calling rather than addressing points, overly negative generalizations of entire groups of people (unless strongly supported by evidence), etc. will be considered as flaming. Posts which are comprised of outrageous misrepresentations of events within the public record will be considered as trolling. Staff reserve the right to close or delete threads which were created for the purposes of flaming or trolling, and not for discussion.

Thread ban durations are decided by staff and may be lifted if the member in question agrees to keep a more level-headed approach to the discussion. Threads that continue to devolve into flaming and/or trolling will be closed.

Repeat violations of the Prime Directive will result in site-wide bans, possibly permanent.

It allows staff to remove certain individuals from threads which they are degrading into flame wars and/or trolling.

3. Thread Bans

As noted in the above rule, we have a new system which allows us to ban members from certain threads, rather than the forum as a whole. We will use this in conjunction with flaming / trolling by regular users to avoid having to ban people from the entire forum, or close a thread which has an active discussion (but is being ruined by a small number of people).