Post by Admin on Jul 22, 2015 3:14:12 GMT
The two cardinal rules from which all else follows:
1. Don't be a jerk. Be civil to your fellow posters. Don't troll, insult, flame, spam, or harass. Violations will be dealt with by warning, disemvoweling, deletion, or banning, at management's discretion.
2. Be a good citizen. Remember your forum etiquette, or look it up if you need to. Be helpful about directing newbies to resources and bringing problems to a mod/admin's attention. Occasional lapses in forum etiquette aren't a big deal; habitual ones may get a polite request to knock it off. If the request comes from a mod and you ignore it, there may be a temp-ban in your future.
A few elaborations on jerkitude:
1a. If you come up with a new and creative way to be a jerk that hasn't already been expressly forbidden in the rules, congratulations on your innovation, but common sense and mod judgement still apply.
1b. Being a jerk in the name of a noble cause is still being a jerk. Invoking a social justice issue does not suspend the normal expectations of civil discourse, and using SJ as a trump card, automatic conversation shutdown in your favor, or litmus test for who's allowed to have an opinion will not go over well.
1c. Being a jerk at someone for poor forum etiquette is almost guaranteed to be more offensive than the etiquette faux pas itself. If you're going to bring it up, do so politely.
1d. Disagreeing with you or thinking your opinion/interpretation/headcanon is bullshit =/= being a jerk.
Forum-specific etiquette, policies, and conventions:
2a. I've enabled an experimental hashtag plugin so we can have tag-based as well as category-based organization of posts. To use it, put [square brackets] around the # to distinguish it from normal uses of the number/pound/hash symbol. #rules with the # between brackets displays as [HASH]rules. If it works, I'll set up either an auto-generated tag cloud or a list of standard tags so people can tag consistently. Please use the standard tags and avoid creating variant versions of existing tags: if #agentsofshield exists, avoid tagging posts with #aos.
2b. When posting works to the fanworks forum, start the subject line with FIC:, ART:, VID:, COSPLAY:, etc, as appropriate.
2c. Also allowed on the fanworks forum: prompt memes, discussion of fandom tropes/trends/fanon, discussion of individual fanworks. When talking about other people's work, especially to criticize, politeness and respect are required. Keep it focused on the work itself rather than the creator, and don't say anything you wouldn't stand by if the creator stumbled across the discussion, since it's perfectly possible they will. If you post a work to the forum and you don't want con crit in the thread devoted to it, mention it in the headers and commenters will be expected to abide by that within the thread. In discussion threads, however, where people may be talking about a work but not talking at the author, criticism is allowed by default. (Err on the side of respectful. Opinionated is okay, wanton cruelty is not.)
2d. Link to NSFW images instead of embedding them with the img tag. And label the link as NSFW.
2e. Spoiler policy TBD.
1. Don't be a jerk. Be civil to your fellow posters. Don't troll, insult, flame, spam, or harass. Violations will be dealt with by warning, disemvoweling, deletion, or banning, at management's discretion.
2. Be a good citizen. Remember your forum etiquette, or look it up if you need to. Be helpful about directing newbies to resources and bringing problems to a mod/admin's attention. Occasional lapses in forum etiquette aren't a big deal; habitual ones may get a polite request to knock it off. If the request comes from a mod and you ignore it, there may be a temp-ban in your future.
A few elaborations on jerkitude:
1a. If you come up with a new and creative way to be a jerk that hasn't already been expressly forbidden in the rules, congratulations on your innovation, but common sense and mod judgement still apply.
1b. Being a jerk in the name of a noble cause is still being a jerk. Invoking a social justice issue does not suspend the normal expectations of civil discourse, and using SJ as a trump card, automatic conversation shutdown in your favor, or litmus test for who's allowed to have an opinion will not go over well.
1c. Being a jerk at someone for poor forum etiquette is almost guaranteed to be more offensive than the etiquette faux pas itself. If you're going to bring it up, do so politely.
1d. Disagreeing with you or thinking your opinion/interpretation/headcanon is bullshit =/= being a jerk.
Forum-specific etiquette, policies, and conventions:
2a. I've enabled an experimental hashtag plugin so we can have tag-based as well as category-based organization of posts. To use it, put [square brackets] around the # to distinguish it from normal uses of the number/pound/hash symbol. #rules with the # between brackets displays as [HASH]rules. If it works, I'll set up either an auto-generated tag cloud or a list of standard tags so people can tag consistently. Please use the standard tags and avoid creating variant versions of existing tags: if #agentsofshield exists, avoid tagging posts with #aos.
2b. When posting works to the fanworks forum, start the subject line with FIC:, ART:, VID:, COSPLAY:, etc, as appropriate.
2c. Also allowed on the fanworks forum: prompt memes, discussion of fandom tropes/trends/fanon, discussion of individual fanworks. When talking about other people's work, especially to criticize, politeness and respect are required. Keep it focused on the work itself rather than the creator, and don't say anything you wouldn't stand by if the creator stumbled across the discussion, since it's perfectly possible they will. If you post a work to the forum and you don't want con crit in the thread devoted to it, mention it in the headers and commenters will be expected to abide by that within the thread. In discussion threads, however, where people may be talking about a work but not talking at the author, criticism is allowed by default. (Err on the side of respectful. Opinionated is okay, wanton cruelty is not.)
2d. Link to NSFW images instead of embedding them with the img tag. And label the link as NSFW.
2e. Spoiler policy TBD.