The change of rules on the forum
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,758
Ladies and gentlemen!
As you have noticed, today we have changed the forum guidelines.
The new rules are available here.
The old rules can be found here.
The change has been made in an attempt to make our rules up-to-date and harmonic, less personal, to unify them with the Terms of service each user has to accept when registering on this site, and to eliminate inconsistencies.
We have changed the rating of this site from "PG-13" to "Teen". PG-13 was an MPAA rating, i.e. a rating used for movies. For games there're other rating systems, one of them is ESRB, which can be used for rating sites as well, as "S" means software.
According to ESRB, "Teen" means that content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language.
This change will exclude the mix the previous rules contained where ratings from different systems were mentioned as if they were the same thing.
Also, this change will be especially important in the wake of our next games.
Another reason is that there were inconsistencies between what we knew as the Site rules and the Terms of Service each user had to accept when registering on this site. Now the Site rules and the Terms of Service are the same.
The report "reasons" on the Flag feature have been updated.
Still, many parts of the new rules repeat our previous rules, so you should easily understand them.
When creating new forum guidelines, we used the experience from site moderation during all these years.
If you have any question about new rules, don't hesitate to ask them here!
As you have noticed, today we have changed the forum guidelines.
The new rules are available here.
The old rules can be found here.
The change has been made in an attempt to make our rules up-to-date and harmonic, less personal, to unify them with the Terms of service each user has to accept when registering on this site, and to eliminate inconsistencies.
We have changed the rating of this site from "PG-13" to "Teen". PG-13 was an MPAA rating, i.e. a rating used for movies. For games there're other rating systems, one of them is ESRB, which can be used for rating sites as well, as "S" means software.
According to ESRB, "Teen" means that content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language.
This change will exclude the mix the previous rules contained where ratings from different systems were mentioned as if they were the same thing.
Also, this change will be especially important in the wake of our next games.
Another reason is that there were inconsistencies between what we knew as the Site rules and the Terms of Service each user had to accept when registering on this site. Now the Site rules and the Terms of Service are the same.
The report "reasons" on the Flag feature have been updated.
Still, many parts of the new rules repeat our previous rules, so you should easily understand them.
When creating new forum guidelines, we used the experience from site moderation during all these years.
If you have any question about new rules, don't hesitate to ask them here!
24
Comments
The previous rules, however, weren't 100% clear about strong calls to fundraise games by other developers. This is one of the reasons we have explained the Advertisement rules in more detail.
Speaking seriously, soliciting for reaching goals set by other developers is in the grey area.
Meanwhile, the rules are open to interpretation by the moderators. Taking into account in that case it was about friendly developers, we have decided to let it stay.
PG-13 - "Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. Parents are urged to be cautious. Some material may be inappropriate for pre-teenagers"
Teen - "Content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language."
So, the first difference is that while under PG-13 only "some material may be inappropriate for children under 13", Teen clearly states that only ages 13 and up can see the content. It's a big difference, actually, meaning that Teen rating is higher, as it doesn't let people under 13 years old to see it in 100% cases.
The second difference is that the ESRB description is quite specific and explanative compared to an almost suggested inference of wording found within the MPAA rating. The ESRB is doing a better job at communicating whom should be seeing what kind of product.
From another source: "One could say that E, E10+, T, and M represent the MPAA’s G, PG, PG-13, and R respectively. While the parallels between these ratings systems could be used to help explain the ESRB to the uninformed, the system seems fairly clear to even the most casual observer. “Everyone,” “10 and Up,” “Teen,” and “Mature” are very clear descriptions of the material contained within the game."
The third difference is methodological. It's always wrong to mix different rating systems. The description in previous rules referred to both "Teen" and "PG-13" in the same paragraph. Also, the MPAA rating is for movies, while this forum is about video games, i.e. an interactive media, and an interactive media is a little more complex than looking at it from a film/movie perspective.
Also, it seems like boobs are not allowed under the Teen rating.
"See a boob, PG-13. Touch a boob, R." -Some sitcom I watched a long time ago.
Also early devoloping girls.
Hi, it's the first time when I want to ask about some legal stuff. I want to clarify the real meaning and origin of this statement:
I don't want to sound like I'm attacking Beamdog/staff etc but lot of things are not clear to me and I always assume the worst possible outcome.
1. What is the reason of such drastic usurp statement? Are you really that this community really need "We own all of you stuff so beware what you post here!" atmosphere?
2. If somebody post a unpublished poem as a forum post, does it theoretically means that Beamdog can sell a short novel with this poem or use it as one of the new NPC dialog in the future Addon Pack? Or worse, sue author after he will sell such content by claiming "copyrights because he posted this at out board"?
3. Consider all mods which are uploaded as an attachment - in the light of quoted statement, does Beamdog owns the right to every mod and other things which is added via attachment? Including custom portraits/code/text?
4. Which exactly country law allows Beamdog to have a right to own this kind of user posted content by using arbitrary statement quoted above?
I hope that you will explain my concerns so I will have clear view of the ownership stuff.
First of all, this paragraph repeats and explains the part of previous Terms of Service (each user has to accept them when registering on the forum), so nothing new has appeared here.
I'd like to draw attention to "materials you post related to Beamdog's licensed intellectual property" line. It means that yes, a user gives a right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display created content about BG and IWD.
This gives us a way to promote community's work on the blog, twitter etc.
For example, the Valentine cards Buttercheese created - we used them on our blog and thus promoted Buttercheese.
So, not all user created content automatically belongs to Beamdog, only the content related to Beamdog's products.
As for mods, I believe mods have this "otherwise expressly stated" part. This is why Beamdog in the past asked modders for permission before using/improving certain components.
I don't wanna have to take all my stuff down.
Which are?
Time to go full Konami with this company.
Image source: http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1974-D-D-Slot-Machines#.WL3yRBLysW0
There's even a review of it: http://www.slotsinvegas.com/konami/dungeons-dragons/
"Excessive cursing and profanity ... are not allowed" - this is pleonastic and confusing. the actual meaning as i gather is that all, not some cursing is prohibited, so just "use of profanity is not allowed" is more correct and sufficient
"unapologetic bigotry" is a bad term because expressing your bigotry is not prohibited as long as it's not hateful, offensive or defamatory, and technically it doesn't have to be. Bigotry and hatred are really not the same thing. If a declared christian says that someone will go to hell, according to their religion, it is bigotry by definition, but it is not justifiable to punish expressing such an opinion (unless it's just a form of provocation), because then it would be an act of intolerance towards the christian religion. Bigotry is not a robust enough notion for what the rules are trying to communicate.
Also the word unapologetic has no function because if you've insulted someone through your bigotry, saying "sorry", or saying "i'm sorry i have to say this but you're a /something offensive/" won't automatically protect you from moderator's action. I have a feeling that "unapologetic bigotry" is a euphemism for "hate speech". There is no need for one.
"pornographic materials or other offensive content" i don't like this because the phrasing communicates that pornography is offensive, and to a large portion of people in the West now, and around the world, pornography is no longer offensive, so to deem it offensive in nature is injecting a moral notion that is unnecessary for a clear set of rules. Just drop the word "other".
"Any discussion of piracy is not allowed" is unfortunately phrased because a discussion about/on piracy is in fact allowed and "discussion of" subsumes that meaning so it looks like opinions about piracy can't be expressed in the forums. A good phrasing would be something like "no piracy: commiting or encouraging piracy including ... is not allowed"
""junk mail", "chain letters", "pyramid schemes", " unnecessary quotation marks
"Posting frequent, annoying, and/or nonsensical posts will not be tolerated." The meaning of "frequent posts" is completely unclear. The first thing that comes to mind is posting frequently. Frequent posting is not just not prohibited, it is encouraged as everyone wants more rather then less forum activity. The problem is not with frequent posters and their many posts but with repeated identical or similar posts, posted anywhere in the forums
"If you have a question you want answered about a series of topics, the best way to go about it is with a single thread asking all of the questions, not a series of several threads..." this sentence breaks the mold of normative statements while masking as a rule so I'd start this sentence with "NOTE:" or "ADVICE:"
"Only in case you lose access to your old account, forget password and/or email you use, you can create a new account. In these cases you should send a Private Message (PM) to the forum moderators immediately." you can only create a temporary second account for the purposes of restoring access to your actual accout so you must send a PM asking for help and afterwards you won't be able to keep the new account (am i right?)
"Flaming ... will not be tolerated. ... Trolling will not be tolerated as well. Being belligerent and antagonistic, or provoking other members intentionally, will be considered in the same light as trolling."
the bolded part just means flaming (exactly that) and you've already said that flaming is not allowed so why then put it under trolling?
"Due to privacy concerns, your comments and wall posts should not contain sensitive personal information, including account information. If discussing Support interactions, comments must be kept constructive, civil, and should not reveal personal or account information."
Whose information? For me it's vital to point out that revealing other's RL information is suuuuper prohibited and revealing your own information must necessarily be, for practical reasons, equally prohibited since no one can know if it's really you posting your personal information or someone falsely presenting themselves as you in order to harm your privacy or security, but as an exception, you may still post some innocuous pieces information about yourself
"If you're going to discuss content from any game, movie, book etc. that pertains to the story or plot, please use spoiler tags " Technically, this is too vague because it means you can't ever talk about any story without spoilers, unless it's a spoiler-marked thread, and it's just not practical. I'd like to formulate this more precisely: "If it's reasonable to expect that something in a post will reveal a plot element of a narrative-containing product to someone who only wants to learn this during their own subsequent enjoyment of this product, it is not allowed to post this outside of spoiler tags. This is not enforced in threads that have "SPOILER" in the title (must be placed at the beggining)"
So, the words like "sex" are still allowed.
(tip of the towel to Douglas Adams