Terms of Service - have your say

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i'm about to start redrafting the Terms of Service, to make them more accessible, and as clear and comprehensive as possible. this revision is needed due to the constant growth of member numbers - hurrah! i'd like to have people's views on what might need changing. so, here's your chance.

please post your suggestions here. the thread will be active for about a week, so i can then collate all the information, the Moderators and Admins will discuss the practicalities, and then the existing TOS will be modified. obviously, there may be suggestions which are impracticable - i shall post here after the redraft to explain why certain things may not have been incorporated. also obviously, Alex has final approval.

please keep your suggestions short and specific. i am going to read everything here, so serious and sensible suggestions only, please. it would also help if people don't debate others' suggestions - could you make your argument for your suggestion as precise as you can, and edit it if you change your mind later. sounds a little proscriptive - sorry - but it makes things clearer.

as examples, you may want clarification of existing points - these could be definitions, processes, etc.; or additions - what's missing that we could do with being there?

for easy reference, the TOS as they are at present are here:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... opic&t=419

if you're really uncomfortable posting publicly, please PM me.

thank you for your input.

Vivi
(as Mod)

Last edited by vetivert on 22 Oct 2005, 7:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have many, I well post them when I am feeling better, I well post them for you.

I have many ideals, that can help us all, not so sure how to put in words yet.

I have 5 suggestions right now (I may make more as time goes on).

1) I suggest that we define the difference between heated debate and personal attacks with heated debates being allowed and personal attacks not allowed.

2) I suggest would also that we define the terms such as homophobic and harassment so that we have a line in the sand that we can point to and say cross it and you will be warned.

3) I suggest that we include the option of advisories for mods in this version. The weight they will carry is if a person continues to act out after being advised, the mods can then lean toward issuing a warning because the person has already been notified of their actions.

4) I am also going to suggest that we take into advisement the difference between debate/opinion speech and hate speech that people may have. For example, I do not believe that having opinions about gay groups that are against them to be hate speech but advocating harm (physically and emotionally) would fall under that category. Plus, emotional harm should not include harm from the fact that people disagree with them.

5) The mods/rules should not be used to win a debate. I have been asked to check into many a heated debate for rules violations only to find that the rules have not been violated but that the person complaining was losing their debate. Silencing the other party does not win a debate in my eyes. In fact, I have seen debates where the loser could clearly have won had they researched what they were saying rather than complain to the mods.

I will probabaly have more (the list went from 2 to 5 in 10 minutes) and will post them here.

opps, three more

6) Harassment done in the IRC chatroom or done through IM and email with addresses/names harvested from the site will constitute a violation on the site and will be dealt with appropriately.

7) People on the site have an expectation not to be harassed and should not be required to say no to a person that initiates the contact. The person initiating the contact should ask if the person wants to talk in such a way prior to doing so.

The advisory/warning/ban system should have a general rule of severity but it should be noted some actions may be severe enough to take an action that does not follow the general procedure (such as issuing a 1st warning without an advisory or banning on the first offense).

My suggestions are:

1. Make the Global Moderators' board open to members to read. Moderators' decisions and discussions regarding decisions whether or not to ban people, suspend them, clear charges or give them warnings should be open to scrutinty.

2. Whenever a Moderator receives a complaint or wants to initiate disciplinary action against someone of their own initiative, they should start a thread in the Global Moderators' board detailing the allegations that someone/people/they are making, and then the Moderator who has started the thread should specify a verdict whether they believe the person should be warned, suspended/temporarily banned, banned or cleared of the charges.

3. Then each Moderator should reply to the thread giving their opinions and then a verdict whether or not they think the person should be warned, suspended/temporarily banned, banned or cleared of the charges. If a majority decision isn't reached to any verdict then alex could decide whether or not to make the decision himself or to give the regular members of the board a referendum via a public thread with a poll.

I think that a moderator should decide which topics are getting out of hand, and they should insist that after any more than three replies to a topic, the person causing the trouble or misunderstanding should PM the moderator.

Also, I disagree with the Global Moderators forum being available for all members to read. I think that if an issue is private, it should stand private. We all want to maintain our honesty.

No shirt, No Shoes, No Service.

Avatar size should be limited by pixel height/width, and not just KB size.

I second Lowfreq

A few comments:

This is very impractical. Certain issues are not the business of the entire site though they may still need to be dealt with. The mods should be allowed to discuss options in private while something is being decided. They deal with a range of issues including things which members have asked to have dealt with in confidence. Also if action is being taken against a member for bad behaviour it may be counter-productive to publicly humiliate them.

I know you asked people not to do that vetivert but I thought it was worth pointing out.



Good idea. My view: The line is where posters suggest that gays/blacks/women/[insert 'out' group here] are inferior, condone violence or harassment towards that group, use deliberately offensive and derogatory language towards that group (eg. fags, n****rs), or make comparisons between that group and, for example, animals or sex offenders. The instances I have just described fall under the existing policy.

I sugest we add the note that any post that messes up the page format, will either be (if its a sensible post) edited till it fits in with the page format, or (if its nonsense) plain and simply deleted....

I agree that there should be something between no action and an actual warning. Also, there should be a certain amount of time after which warnings are lifted from the person's record (for example, if someone gets a warning, and go a month on good behavior, they have it lifted. This is because some people cross lines accidentally, and learn from their mistakes, but may cross more than three new lines in the course of their time here.)

I also think there should be a way to delete posts in every forum. There isn't, for users. It's annoying. but don't know if this fits here.

My issue with this is that it would lead to a double standard. Among women, for example, subtle/not-so-subtle male bashing is common ("Most men are pigs who only want sex" for example). And there's plenty of NT-bashing here. It seems unfair to punish any suggestion that [out-group] is inferior if the same standard is not applied to in-groups.

I do agree with the deliberately offensive/derogatory language comment though.

Yeh, agreed; by out-groups I meant from the poster's perspective.

I believe this is from another member's signature, but:

Prosecuters will be violated.

bump.

I thought this was stickied?