Some time ago moderation on EP and 'attitude' of discussions in general have been discussed in various threads, mainly one created for this purpose by @HardWrath. To ensure a pleasant experience for EP users there's the idea to introduce a set of basic rules or rather guidelines for discussions. Of course guidelines shouldn't be imposed on a community by some authority, instead they should be negotiated by the community to organize the interaction within the community. Not negotiable are of course hard rules predefined by laws and similar terms (for example ToU of the hosting provider, etc), also the guidelines should not interfere with the EntropiaPlanets mission statement. In the frame below you can find suggestions up for discussion. From these we could to derive guidelines for moderation, and when that is done look for a couple of moderators to watch over the discussions on EP. That way should be possible to introduce guidelines that are given to "the community" by "the community" and moderated "for the community". EntropiaPlanets discussion guidelines Scope One of the basic principles of EntropiaPlanets is freedom of speech and as any kind of freedom it comes with great responsibilities. Fortunately on EntropiaPlanets the majority of users is perfectly capable of deciding themselves what is acceptable, and what is not. Below you can find guidelines for social interaction on EntropiaPlanets which complement and expand the formal and necessary Terms of Service. These guidelines are not limited to public forum posts but cover all user edited content on EntropiaPlanets. Guidelines do not need to be absolutely hard rules that are enforced at any rate. You are asked to respect these guidelines and not circumvent or abuse them. Moderation Moderators will watch user edited content and may take actions to adjust content considering these guidelines. Entropia Universe focus While you are encouraged to discuss other games, general gaming related topics or completely off-topic content the EntropiaPlanets forums are mainly intended for discussions about Entropia Universe. As a rule of thumb, please don't post more non-EU related content as long as 20% (or more) of the threads displayed on the front page originally involve such content already. An exception would be breacking news. Example: On the frontpage 10 threads are displayed, 8 of them are EU topics, 2 of them are about other games. So 20% are not about EU, in that case please don't post further non-EU content. Accessibility of content To ensure high accessibility for your contributions you might want to keep them on-topic, well-formatted well-structured to post in the most appropriate forum section ... You might want to avoid excessive use of smilies, various fonts and colors, lengthy paragraphs, posting the same content in multiple sections excessive interlinking between posts, posting in very old threads, ... Quality of content To achieve a high quality of content you might want to keep your contributions concise yet comprehensive, understandable for both veterans and newbies, add media such as appropriate images and videos, include appropriate links to sources and/or further information, ... Quality of arguments To improve the quality of arguments and consequently the discussion please stay factual and objective, keep criticism constructive, ... Also you might want to avoid... bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) fallacies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies) Personal disputes Personal disputes can happen but should not negatively affect other content. Please do not continuously pursue personal disputes in public but instead make use of private conversations. Related topic: Content selectionTo enable users to see more of the content they like and less of the content they don't like we have just added two tabs to the "Recent Threads" block on the frontpage. The one displayed by default says "Everything" and displays threads from all sections, the other one says "Entropia Universe" and displays everything except threads from the "Other games" section. So far this is just an exemplary implementation, we can have up to 5 tabs and each can display content from any combination of forum sections. But the more tabs we have the more negative impact on page load time. So the question is, what would be the best set up, and which content to display as default.
*bump* So let's say we leave this open for comments for another 3 days, and if there are no obligations carry the rules from the draft above into effect on Monday, October 13 at 00:00 UTC. That would of course not mean that they are carved in stone, of course we can discuss changes to the rules any time.
Ok, let's get that done asap. Moderating on EP is an easy job: 1. quantity, there aren't as many post as on big boards 2. XF has efficient tools for doing the job
Suggestions for moderators: Wistrel & Alien both seem to have cool heads and open minds Ewok and JC both have experience and knowledge in the area Amber would be good as well I think
