new rules

Right now what we have set as warnings barely reflect what our rules our. We should use this topic to discuss and decide on a new set of warnings, points, and warning lengths. As it is, things are too fluid and depend to much on the specific moderator handling things. While this isn't a bad thing necessarily, in this case it definitely is, thus the creation of this topic.


First, the new proposed warnings, lengths, and points. These are based off of the former warning flags. You'll notice that most of them have the lengths set to never expire, or are set to not expire for a relatively long period of time. With expiring warnings, it can be too easy to set the length too low, trivializing the severity of such warnings. This is another reason to standardize the warnings set to reflect the rules. Below I have listed all the warnings that I think should be added, along with details for each. Information about points and length for each will be added as this topic is discussed. To keep things a bit simpler, we should try to limit each warning type to 2 variations of severity/length. For example, a verbal warning with 0 points and an actual warning, or a warning for a minor break of a rule and another for a more severe break of a rule with a higher point count and length.


Spam (irrelevance, unintelligibility) - This category is mainly reserved for posting irrelevant material in a thread. It's important to note that to qualify for this category the spam has to be unintentional.

Spam (malicious, intentional) - This category is for intentional or malicious spam. Malicious intentions are the enemy, and so the warning length for this is much longer.

Signature violation - This is only for violating the 4 lines/300px limitations of the signatures. The first time, a 0 point warning is given. For every warning after that, an actual warning with points is given.

Inappropriate content (signature) - This category is for either distasteful or PG-13+ material in signatures. Points and length vary based on how distasteful or inappropriate it is.

Inappropriate content (post) - This category is for either distasteful or PG-13+ material in posts. Points and length vary based on how distasteful or inappropriate it is.

Flaming - This category is for abusive behavior on the forums. Cyberbullying falls into this category. Points and length vary based on how severe the abuse is.

Language - This category is for language. Deliberately evading the censor falls under this without exception. Excessive swearing (close to or greater than 1 swear per post) falls under this. Infrequent swearing should be met with a shorter warning length.

Multiaccounting - This category is for people who create alternate accounts without informing the staff. Mods will then mark the user's admin note with "+M (name)" only if the reason given for the creation of the account is valid. Don't allow people to create accounts just because they asked.

Abuse of the Report System  - This category is for people who report things that should not be reported. This should be met with a 0 point verbal warning, followed by an actual warning for every instance after that.

Abuse of the Reputation System - This category is for people who spam rep or break the limitations surrounding rep (youtube videos, images, etc).


To go along with this, I think we should revise the rules to be more specific. Right now the rules don't specifically lay out what things will cause a warning and what won't. The Do not... section of the rules is a great example of this. It includes things that you will not be warned for and things that you will side by side. Rule 2a does this internally, by having 2 types of warnings covered in 1 rule, and rule 2b exists even though nobody's ever been warned for this.