I was having a discussion with a member of our staff team that brought up an important issue prominent among the forum. I'd like to know your guys' opinions.
More often that not, if you find a technical support or media support forum, etc., you'll find yourself with a user-base smaller than what we have, if you factor in how long Rune Gear has been around. Most of these forums are fairly small and not as active as our forum, but one thing that the majority of them do not fail to deliver is quality users as well as almost perfect conduct. I'm not sure if it's because our user-base is much younger than that of those forums but everything is usually well-organized and the rules and regulations are followed to code.
I haven't been on Rune Gear since it's early days but I've been here long enough to affirm that a lot of our rules over-lap each other. On Rune Gear, if you break a rule, you can get away with it if you manage to reason your way out of it. For instance;
yet, there are instances that users voice their opinion but are almost immediately warned or silenced. In theory, staff and management need to exercise judgement and tally-up all the rules and regulations when accessing a situation before they can conclude whether or not to warn a user for said post.
On other forums, the rules are clear, concise and in most cases, can't be misinterpreted. For example, on a tech support forum, we may see a regulation that clearly reads "No cross-posting" but on Rune Gear, we have rules that say;
That's where the problems comes in and the reason I think there are so many issues with regards to misinterpretations on the forum. The rules over-lap each other. For instance, a member could have published a topic that is demeaning to someone or something, which in turn, may offend someone, thus forcing management to punish said user. But if that user were to plea his case, he would say something along the lines of 'Well, your policies state that I have a valid right to enjoy myself and posting such topics allows me to do so, therefore I can't be punished' when in reality, the rules also mentioned that flaming other users is forbidden.
The point I'm trying to get across is that there's too much work of exercising one's judgement involved in issuing warnings and punishing ill-behaved users. Rules should be clear, concise and very difficult to be interpreted differently than in their actual sense. That's what starts problems and arguments when users get into trouble. We should be able to look at a user's post/report and say 'Oh, OK, he violated this rule without question. Warning. Boom.' Done.
Having said that, I'd like to ask you guys something.
Would you rather have a very active forum with half-way rule-compliant users, threads in disarray (in wrong sections), etc., or a significantly less active/smaller user-base but for which users clearly follow the rules as they are indicated? Please vote in the poll above as well as leave a comment if need be.
I'd like to see what the majority vote is first and depending on which direction this forum is more inclined, I'll suggest an alternative to maintaining Rune Gear adequately.
More often that not, if you find a technical support or media support forum, etc., you'll find yourself with a user-base smaller than what we have, if you factor in how long Rune Gear has been around. Most of these forums are fairly small and not as active as our forum, but one thing that the majority of them do not fail to deliver is quality users as well as almost perfect conduct. I'm not sure if it's because our user-base is much younger than that of those forums but everything is usually well-organized and the rules and regulations are followed to code.
I haven't been on Rune Gear since it's early days but I've been here long enough to affirm that a lot of our rules over-lap each other. On Rune Gear, if you break a rule, you can get away with it if you manage to reason your way out of it. For instance;
yet, there are instances that users voice their opinion but are almost immediately warned or silenced. In theory, staff and management need to exercise judgement and tally-up all the rules and regulations when accessing a situation before they can conclude whether or not to warn a user for said post.
On other forums, the rules are clear, concise and in most cases, can't be misinterpreted. For example, on a tech support forum, we may see a regulation that clearly reads "No cross-posting" but on Rune Gear, we have rules that say;
That's where the problems comes in and the reason I think there are so many issues with regards to misinterpretations on the forum. The rules over-lap each other. For instance, a member could have published a topic that is demeaning to someone or something, which in turn, may offend someone, thus forcing management to punish said user. But if that user were to plea his case, he would say something along the lines of 'Well, your policies state that I have a valid right to enjoy myself and posting such topics allows me to do so, therefore I can't be punished' when in reality, the rules also mentioned that flaming other users is forbidden.
The point I'm trying to get across is that there's too much work of exercising one's judgement involved in issuing warnings and punishing ill-behaved users. Rules should be clear, concise and very difficult to be interpreted differently than in their actual sense. That's what starts problems and arguments when users get into trouble. We should be able to look at a user's post/report and say 'Oh, OK, he violated this rule without question. Warning. Boom.' Done.
Having said that, I'd like to ask you guys something.
Would you rather have a very active forum with half-way rule-compliant users, threads in disarray (in wrong sections), etc., or a significantly less active/smaller user-base but for which users clearly follow the rules as they are indicated? Please vote in the poll above as well as leave a comment if need be.
I'd like to see what the majority vote is first and depending on which direction this forum is more inclined, I'll suggest an alternative to maintaining Rune Gear adequately.