Just wondering. We seem to have a myriad of rules, spread across forums in various stickies, and revered by all as the one truth.
If I was a new poster, wanting to join the boards and have some fun, I highly doubt I would read ‘the rules’ before posting. I might be made aware of ‘the rules’, but I, as a new poster, would likely think this was a silly mess and rightly laugh them off as entirely stupid.
So, for whom are the rules actually? Long term posters, who know them, and honor them, but do not bring any fresh thoughts to the site?
Trolls? You know you have a shit load of them, and they probably don’t care.
A potential new poster? Really? You expect them to read all these rules? In 2018? I have doubts that such a noble endeavor will ever be honored.
So, just what are they for?
The more I think of it, the more I come to the conclusion that ‘the rules’ are nothing more than a historic oddity. The old time posters would know them, new posters wouldn’t give a fuck.
They’re the rules. Of course we can’t make new posters read them, but they’ll get enforced, anyway, and the new posters will adapt or leave. Look at the comments section of any unmoderated online source, or something like Yahoo Answers, to see what happens when you don’t have them. The internet doesn’t lack for lawless wastelands, if that’s what folks are looking for.
OK, I agree that we should have rules.
But there seems to be so many of them. And I still doubt new posters would ever read them
But I do get your point, we should have rules.
I guess I am open to discussion - thus this thread.
Some of the rules are silly. Most of them exist because this board attracts rules lawyers like [insulting but demonstrably true characterization of a political, social, or religious group redacted] you wouldn’t believe. It would be nice if “Don’t be a jerk” was sufficient. Sadly, that will never be the case.
Yes, you’re correct. Most new posters probably don’t read the registration agreement, and don’t read the rules. The rules are there to have documentation. When we issue a note or a warning, they give us something to point to rather than just saying “Because I said so.”
In the beginning, there was just one rule: Don’t be a jerk. And that was deemed to be sufficient. And the mods enforced that rule as they saw fit.
But as time went on, it was deemed that some offenses needed to be spelled out more clearly. And as posters found ever more inventive ways to be jerks (we have a very creative membership), and as rules lawyers parsed and nitpick every nuance of the rules (we also have a very argumentative membership), the rules increased and multiplied. And since the board has now been around for almost two decades, there has been plenty of time for them to grow.
Some of the rules may seem trivial or silly, but there is usually a historical antecedent for this. They arose because of some board controversy, and it was decided to spell things out to avoid future misunderstandings.
This is why we tend to go easy on newbies. When I see a newbie insult someone in GQ, I usually issue a note for a first offense (unless it’s really over the top). Once I see that someone has been around long enough that they should be aware of the basic rules, it’s then that I start issuing warnings.
There would actually be a simple solution to the issue, although vBulletin probably doesn’t have such an option:
Instead of just a checkbox claiming you’ve read the rules, put a short multiple choice quiz on five or ten of what are deemed the most important rules (like personal insults and altering quotes) that must be passed before you can post. It shouldn’t be much harder than making new users verify their email address before posting.
That would be a pretty big deterrent to new users.
The current system works pretty well. As Colibri said, we tend to go easy on newbies. We know that most people don’t read the registration agreement or the FAQs. We’re generally happy if they at least manage to post in the right forum. A lot of newbies don’t even get that part right.
There aren’t just rules that newbies have to learn. There is the board culture as well. And it’s not just here. Whenever you are visiting a new forum anywhere on the internet, it’s generally a good idea to read a bit before posting so that you get an idea of what the forum is all about and also so you get an idea of what is and is not acceptable there.
We don’t expect people to be experts on the various rules or on the board’s culture when they first start posting here. Trying to train them to be experts before posting isn’t a very practical solution. Who wants to learn that much stuff just to start posting on a new message board?
The rules here are all basic standards of what should be normal behavior.
If a new poster’s idea of fun was to engage in dialogues about various topics with other people, then they’re never going to have a problem. They can skip the rules and never violate them anyway.
If a new poster’s idea of “fun” is to go around to various message boards and act like an asshole then they’re going to get banned in short order. And their absence will not be a loss for the board.
Well, the rule about not altering quotes is not something everyone would consider a “basic standard”, depending on the reasons for doing so. Altering for a comedic or parody purpose is not uncommon on other MB. There are a few other things, also, but yeah, things that a newbie might be warned for are pretty much things that are outside the lines almost everywhere.
And even more so, the fact that we aren’t noting/warning/banning any large number of new users would imply that either they’re reading them or that the rules are common-sense. The mass problems the OP fears just aren’t happening.
And even if it does get to Warnings, well, those are just what the name says.
I once received a Warning on a different message board (not going to go into specifics, because I don’t want a board war), for something that would have been regarded as just fine here. I had actually read the rules there, but didn’t realize that they were interpreted quite that strictly. So I got one warning, and learned more about the rules and their enforcement, and didn’t repeat the offense, and everyone’s happy.
I’ve been posting here for give or take 15 years, and I still haven’t read the rules. I lurked for a while before posting, and kinda also picked things up on the fly.
Then again, I also once stuck a fork in an electrical outlet as a child, even though I knew better.
Don’t be like me, is the lesson to be learned here.
You’d have to really want to post here if taking a rules quiz was part of registering. On boards where your first X posts don’t appear until a mod approves them (which could take up to a day or two), I’ve just never come back because I forgot about them. If I had to take a quiz, there’s a good chance I’d just continue on my search or find another board to post at. While I’ve never posted to them, stackexchange, gardenweb, quora, reddit etc are all available to anyone as well.
As far as the rules, we need to have them, but no, no one is going to read them. Sure, maybe they should but there’s just.so.many. And when a new user does something wrong, they always get the line ‘maybe you should read the rules and get a feel for the board before you post’, but who’s going to read all this:
Registration Agreement FAQs, ‘please read first’, which contains links tomoreFAQs.
Both that first and third link contain more links. Upon clicking through them, I see they’re just links to individual posts within the thread, but on first glance it looks like it’s going to be pages and pages of rules. For example"Rules For Posting" contains 17 links in the OP. GD/Elections Rules CS Rules, which contain links to other rules threads such as FAQs-Guidelines and Etiquette. Game Room Rules, which contains a dead/broken link and a link to the main forum, described as ‘description of all forums’, to make sure no one posts in the Game Room by accident. Thread Games Rules
Oddly, the only thing pinned to the top of CS is a post explaining how to use polls.
MPSIMS a disclaimer about meeting IRL, Forum Rules and a post specifically dedicated to political jabs.
Marketplace has their own rules, as well as a post called ‘editing posts’ that says that’s nothing more than a line saying you can only edit posts for 5 minutes, like the rest of the board. There’s also a post, separate from the rules, that contains rules about posting images.
The pit, we all knew this one was coming. What’s pit worthy, restricted language and the rules.
There’s also a Terms Of Use/Privacy Policy, which actually doesn’t appear to boilerplate C&P’d from some random place on the internet.
There’s a link at the top of all the pages called FAQ, that I’ve clearly never clicked on. It’s an odd looking page (that is, it’s physically laid out different than anything I’ve ever seen here in the past). Unlike the terms of use/privacy policy, the FAQ link at the top must have come with the software and should probably be turned off. We probably don’t need directions about how to get to the podcast, see the member list, set up avatars or edit our picture album, amongst other things…this is the one post that appears on every single page you can view while on the SDMB.
If I got them all and didn’t duplicate anything, then I lost count at 18 threads worth of rules. Yes, the rules are needed, even beyond ‘don’t be a jerk’, but no one is going to read all that before posting and certainly not before registering. It’s also an unorganized mess. It took me quite a while to find all of those.
I’d suggest that they get cleaned up and condensed a bit. I didn’t read them, not sure if I ever have, but I’d bet all of those could get combined into one or two threads which could be pinned to the top of all the forums. I’m sure this is the result of each forum having their own mod with their own rules and 20 years worth of tweaking them. Maybe it’s time for some house cleaning.
At least then when there’s an issue, you’re not pointing to some rule in a thread that someone didn’t even know existed.
…and this is why I try not to post so early in the morning.
I don’t know just when I read through the rules but it was early on. I believe it was for something (probably a warning or mod note) that cropped up here in ATMB that inspired me to invest the time. IMHO I wouldn’t be surprised if its happened that way for others. The discussions/threads here are a little more open and frank than the usual “at this message board” type of things I have seen other places.