So it's forum drama time again. This stuff seems to happen every few months; the lower forums go through a massive squabble, sometimes there are bans (and then of course more squabble from those who consider the bans unjust). This time, however, it seems to be having significant consequences.
Some people are leaving. That's no news, it happens every time there's a fight. But this time, they, and some of the bansions, are setting up an unofficial forum. That's the first 1776ism: they're declaring independence. Now, since I have no wish to get myself banned, I'm not going to link to these new forums (though I'm sure someone will soon enough), nor even comment on whether they are a reasonable action to take. But it does indicate that we can't go on ignoring the state of things any more, and people who keep saying "There is nothing wrong with Bay12Forums" are deluding themselves.
So we come to the second reason why I've called this thread '1776': reference to the Continental Congress. What do I mean by this? Simply, that if we want to calm this shit down long-term, we're going to have to devise a voluntary code of conduct.
Some things are already covered in the official rules, and we need not discuss them. Some things, however, while appearing in the rules, do so in an ambiguous manner. Not everyone is in agreement on what constitutes 'intentionally garbled language'. Many things are not mentioned in the rules at all, but cause some people massive annoyance. And of course there have been several large arguments and discussions about how people should handle said annoyance.
Therefore I would like to hereby open a congress whose remit is to devise a voluntary code of conduct, and invite submissions from interested parties.
As a small matter of housekeeping, here are some things which I would not like to see in this thread.
"If you don't like Bay12Forums go somewhere else." If you don't like the congress, don't post in it. No-one is going to force you to sign up to our code of conduct. It is voluntary.
"It's not up to you to tell us what to do." As I say. The code is voluntary. We are not forcing anything on anybody.
"There is nothing wrong with the forums." If you like the forums as they are, you're welcome to not sign. However, if you're not going to be constructive, please don't fill up the thread with your arguments. If you really want to discuss the issues from yesterday's Sad Thread clusterf***, I am informed that a meta-thread is under construction.
"You're in league with / dogpiling for / bandodging for the guys from IRC." While it is true that I hang out on IRC a lot, I also spend a lot of time reading these forums (albeit mostly lurking). I enjoy these forums (particularly the succession forts) and don't want to see them killed. Also, I disagree with most of the IRC 'personalities' quite often; you should see some of our legendary-scale debates. I am not here to white-knight for Captain, Retro, or anyone else. I am here to try and cure the issues that cause ban-worthy clusterf***s in the first place.
A few final notes for this post:
Although I've talked a bit about 1776, I'm not a Yank, and please don't feel this is some sort of US imperialism or that you need to be American to contribute.
I shall add a second post below this one for collection and collation of the points of consensus as they evolve.
Edit: I've changed the title as it was causing some confusion and some people found it pretentious. I guess I just tend to use that kind of language.
Edit 2: changed some of the 'housekeeping' text; discussion on whether our CoC should exist at all is acceptable, so long as it doesn't turn into a hijack.
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Topic: IDEA - Unofficial Code of Conduct (aka The 1776 Thread) (Read 6332 times)