The general rules are no NSFW type pictures and no image macros (and obviously Garry has final say on bans as he is owner), but it seems to be a huge grey area as to what they really are sometimes. I've seen users temp banned for flaming by just calling somebody "stupid", but not for using "artistic" as a way of calling somebody autistic, as a means of insult. Last time I checked, that is flaming another user for something they actually would have no control over, and I'm sure if you were to use any other term, it would be an immediate ban, no question asked (terms involving other mental disabilities, race, or sexuality especially). I don't know if this is the right place to really ask this, and if nothing changes, that's completely up to the moderators; but in it's current state it really is strange that only people from a certain group get singled out, while the others are protected from such nonsense. Please don't take this so much as angry rant or anything, rather just a legitimate question. I actually would like to hear the answer to this.
[URL="http://facepunch.com/fp_rules.php"]Forum Rules[/URL]
These, and talk about Rust while posting in this sub, as far as I know.
I'm not a mod, but from my experience around here, tips for not getting banned:
1) Don't insult people; you can get your point across without calling someone a stupid fucker in pretty much any situation, but some people find it impossible to do. Even if someone is presenting a legitimately stupid idea, you can call the idea dumb without attacking the poster, and there's always the Dumb rating and not replying at all.
2) Don't take ratings so seriously. If someone rates your post dumb, [I]oh well[/I], don't throw a fit in posts, or go to their profile and leave stupid visitor messages (this has happened to me several times recently for as little as one rating), or go through their recent post history spamming it with dumbs. Ratings are a quick way of expressing sentiments about posts when you don't have anything constructive to contribute to the conversation, so that a post gets 50 Agrees instead of 50 "yeah, me too" posts spamming up the thread after it, drowning out legitimate conversation.
3) #1 applies to giving feedback about the game, too; the developers deserve the same respect as any poster, and while bugs and hackers in an alpha game can certainly be frustrating, and you may find the pace of progress unsatisfactory, get your point across without shitting on the devs (especially if you don't actually know what you're talking about and, say, bitch out artists for not fixing bugs by complaining that devs have been adding art assets instead of fixing glitches). As with the other points, I'm not saying that you've been guilty of this specifically, Outback, just in general.
The above really should be common sense, if you think about it, and the same goes for the rest of the rules. Also, if you look at the [URL="http://facepunch.com/fp_events.php"]Events[/URL] log linked in the top nav of the whole site, you'll see all of the things people have had their threads closed/been banned for, and the icons along the top of the log allow you to filter by event type, so you can see just tempbans, and see the reasons why people have been getting banned. The event log also links to the relevant posts whenever an action was applied to a post or thread; as long as the thread is visible to you and the post hasn't been deleted, you'll be able to see exactly what the post was that got someone banned.
FP is too big for the very small volunteer mod team to babysit like it's a classroom. Posters are responsible for learning the rules, and that means looking around to see what others are doing wrong and avoiding it.
Also, when you're banned, the only forum you can see and post in is the Refugee Camp, which is where you can discuss your ban with mods. [I]Generally[/I] speaking, if it's your first time being banned for something, apologizing and promising not to repeat the offending behaviour is enough to have your ban length reduced or entirely removed.
Also, on the topic of any group being "protected" and others "targeted", the Rust subforum as a whole is less interested in Facepunch as a community and more as the official Rust forums, and as a result they tend to show up in busloads with atrocious posting etiquette--they're not interested in learning how to fit in with the forum, they're only here for Rust. garry and the mods have evidently decided that that's not an acceptable solution, and generally the same standards are applied to the Rust subforum as anywhere else. [sp2]In fact, Gold Members are expected to know the rules and are judged a little more harshly by mods when rule breaking happens, so they're less of a protected group than the Rust kids. This also means that they also know the boundaries of the rules and the tolerances of the moderators a lot better, so they can skirt the line and bait clueless newbs over the line into bans.[/sp2]
Thank you very much Elix; that actually explained a lot for me.
I think the biggest here is Elix's #1 rule. I called a cheater OP a faggot once as a joke (the whole OP is always fag thing). Got banned for it by OvB. I learned not to even joke flame, and am not even mad at OvB for doing his job right.
Even though you may be joking, try to keep it professional and courteous. Sometimes people just misread or misunderstand your post and just need that pointed out.
Don't be pissed at criticis/ arguments or bans either, mods need to keep an inbiased position and you should always take feedback as constructive, even if they dumb x1 your posts ;)
*Dumbs elix's post as a friendly nod and to poke at him :p *
[QUOTE=Outback;47903607]I've seen users temp banned for flaming by just calling somebody "stupid", but not for using "artistic" as a way of calling somebody autistic, as a means of insult. Last time I checked, that is flaming another user for something they actually would have no control over, and I'm sure if you were to use any other term, it would be an immediate ban, no question asked (terms involving other mental disabilities, race, or sexuality especially). I don't know if this is the right place to really ask this, and if nothing changes, that's completely up to the moderators; but in it's current state it really is strange that only people from a certain group get singled out, while the others are protected from such nonsense. [/QUOTE]
It is kind of the wild west here, but I don't think the mods care at all if you insult someone with homophobic, sexist, or insulting terms. They wont care in my experience. They will ban someone for being rude and argumentative, or generally insulting. But they seem to make a point about not caring about language that is insulting to groups, like people who are disabled or gay. It is not like other forums where people would look down upon doing that.
FP is also completely not caring about racist language as far as I can tell. It's like the wild west and they think players can do and say whatever they want. Except the mods here will ban someone if they think they are being too rude or immature/insulting in a post.
This is also a international forum, so something extremely harsh and insulting in the US might be common in the UK and allowed on these forums.
If you talk to people relatively decently, even if you argue, you will be OK. The language you use here is less important IMO.
From experience, I'm gonna say that if you legitimately called a poster a faggot nigger with clear intent to hurt them, you're probably going to find yourself taking a vacation in Club Red. I've seen plenty of bans for bigotry be handed out.
Mods can't catch everything, either. I've seen posts that [I]very clearly[/I] break the rules go without punishment just because a mod didn't see and act on it. If someone's horseshitting up a thread, report their posts (it takes two reports to put a post in the mod queue), or PM a mod directly if it's particularly bad or mods seem to be ignoring a problem.
What about advertising? I remember getting a long ban for advertising my server a while back. I think it was perma too. Yet now it seems irrelevant, people 1 post ads and leave with nothing happening. I was not a one post wonder, but seemed like one.
[URL="http://facepunch.com/fp_events.php?type=pban"]Check the permaban event log to see how accounts who register only to post Rust server ad threads are treated these days.[/URL] (Ignore the big block of bans on Swebonny, the mods were being silly while testing some changes to the forum that required someone to test functionality when you're banned.) If you look at the general eventlog you'll see that the threads are usually flat-out deleted, not just sent to the thread graveyard subforum (DDT).
Server advertisement thread spam used to be [I]much[/I] worse when advertising servers was still allowed here. One guy spent eight hours creating 54 threads advertising his server--an average of one every ~9 minutes. And, actually, he created #54 while postal was deleting the other 53 and hadn't banned him yet. Hundreds of accounts registered to post one thread and then bump it as often as they could. Some people registered two or three accounts so they could alternate bumps to get around the automerge. Some even created sockpuppets to not only bump but [I]praise[/I] the server so it seemed more popular and less shit than it actually was.
Now when the threads come in, they don't hang around long and don't become a problem. They very definitely were a problem before, which is likely why the mods are basically treating server ad threads like an infection. The other difference is now the community has developed a number of different server list sites, so the forum doesn't have to host server threads anymore.
I don't have a problem with the server advertisements. There are not too many, and it doesn't hurt the forums - even if it is against the "rules".
EDIT: Hmm ... posted the same time as Elix's post. Which is pretty informative. I guess the mods are handling server posts right.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47904344Server advertisement thread spam used to be [I]much[/I] worse when advertising servers was still allowed here. [/QUOTE]
The biggest problem with the server advertisements were the users who would post about their server, then bump their thread dozens of times with dozens of low-quality daily or weekly "updates". As in, "check out this helpful video we just posted on how to construct building plans" or "another great weekend on the server, thanks for playing everyone!". Basically using the forums as a community site for their server.
I don't see this at the moment, so maybe it's under control now.
The servers subforum literally no longer exists, and server advertising isn't allowed here and offending threads are locked/deleted, so, yes, it's under control, the way anthrax is under control.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47903754]Also, on the topic of any group being "protected" and others "targeted", the Rust subforum as a whole is less interested in Facepunch as a community and more as the official Rust forums, and as a result they tend to show up in busloads with atrocious posting etiquette--they're not interested in learning how to fit in with the forum, they're only here for Rust. garry and the mods have evidently decided that that's not an acceptable solution, and generally the same standards are applied to the Rust subforum as anywhere else. In fact, Gold Members are expected to know the rules and are judged a little more harshly by mods when rule breaking happens, so they're less of a protected group than the Rust kids. This also means that they also know the boundaries of the rules and the tolerances of the moderators a lot better, so they can skirt the line and bait clueless newbs over the line into bans.[/sp2][/QUOTE]
That sounds horrible, but it is probably true. This paragraph should be in a sticky rule post, to show new members how is the forum they are going to post in. But I dont think that the mods target gold members, I believe they are kind of objective when banning dumb posts and dumb behaviors.
[QUOTE=Grangoko;47905211]That sounds horrible, but it is probably true. This paragraph should be in a sticky rule post, to show new members how is the forum they are going to post in. But I dont think that the mods target gold members, I believe they are kind of objective when banning dumb posts and dumb behaviors.[/QUOTE]
Doubt most new users would bother even reading it. The Rules, ToS, Disclaimers, people avoid it for lack of care or laziness.
This is what it used to be like when postal did his weekly round of merely enforcing the rules that were stickyposted at the top of the Rust Servers subforum (I made this gif):
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/DHUJ0re.gif[/IMG]
The place is better off without allowing server spam to drown out actual conversation, and people don't read sticky posts. The rules sticky that used to be pinned to the top of the Rust subforum said "READ THIS OR GET BANNED" in the title and people still clicked the new thread button without reading anything at all.
I've seen people make three or four threads (in less than 48 hours) because they're impatient to get their Rust technical issue fixed and they think being obnoxious will do the job -- and then when they get banned for spamming identical threads they create an alt and ban evade just to make another thread (or three) saying "I don't know how to fit in here and I don't care, please fix my problem". Those people don't care about the forum or the community, they're only here to get their problem fixed. If this was the [I]only[/I] way to contact the devs for any kind of support this might be more acceptable a situation, but it isn't and here we are.
Also, I said that Golds are [I]judged a little more harshly by mods [U]when rule breaking happens[/U][/I], which is not the same as Golds being [I]targeted[/I]. Golds are expected to know better, so when they fuck up, the mods tend to be less generous about ban length and chances for apology reduction/unban, but the Gold still has to post some shit in order to get in trouble for it.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47905160]server advertising isn't allowed here and offending threads are locked/deleted[/QUOTE]
What about clan advertising?
[QUOTE=Maximum Over;48019840]What about clan advertising?[/QUOTE]
I'm still not a mod so I am not an authority on this, but from what I've seen, if you are otherwise following the rules (not spam-bumping your thread to keep it on top, for example), clan threads appear to be tolerated. I take no responsibility if this turns out not to be true for some poor bastard, though. :v:
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;48019888](not spam-bumping your thread to keep it on top, for example)[/QUOTE]
That's why I asked. There have been a handful of server and clan advertisement threads where they come back every few days and post meaningless content like "this server is still a lot of fun, come join us!" or "here's how to build a hammer". Take this year-long thread, for example:
[url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1391903[/url]
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's reported it, but it's still alive and well for over a year thanks to posts like "Are you hungry? Then go get something to eat" and "Stop playing alone, come meet new people". I think it's these kinds of posts that lead to the "the others are protected from such nonsense" mentality.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47905160]The servers subforum literally no longer exists, and server advertising isn't allowed here and offending threads are locked/deleted, so, yes, it's under control, the way anthrax is under control.[/QUOTE]
I just got perma-banned and un-banned again for posting about my modded server, I wanted to talk about the mods I have on it and the mods I want to develop for it and yeah kinda advertise it's existence at the same time.
We could do with a sub-forum for discussing modded servers, as you can't tell from just looking the server listing what kind of server it is if you have dozens of custom mods on it.
There already is a forum for discussing modded servers -- the Oxide forums (after looking, I've found that to actually list your server you need an account upgrade that likely goes to paying the server bills--but discussing plugins should be unrestricted). Modding is not [I]officially[/I] supported by the devs right now; basically they're doing what's needed at minimum to allow server mods like Oxide to work, and then not doing much of anything to help them beyond making sure they don't make a change that makes server mods utterly impossible.
There was a (server) modding subforum; it boiled down to 3-4 active, long-lived threads for things like Oxide and the Rusty rcon tool, and then a lot of shitty useless threads by people who didn't read or search (and just as often was used as server subforum #2). It was eliminated by garry a good while back when he pared the section down to only the Rust general and Rust servers subforums (and then later the servers subforum was also euthanized).
[editline]21st June 2015[/editline]
And, yeah, I gave up on reporting clan threads when it was obvious that the mods were not interested in curating them, no matter how dumb and thinly-disguised the bumps were. I can't blame postal for spending as little time in here as he has to.
[QUOTE=Maximum Over;48020002][url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1391903[/url]
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's reported it, but it's still alive and well for over a year thanks to posts like "Are you hungry? Then go get something to eat" and "Stop playing alone, come meet new people". I think it's these kinds of posts that lead to the "the others are protected from such nonsense" mentality.[/QUOTE]
i think it comes down to how invasive the bumps are; in this case they only bump about every week. not sure if everyone could do it, but it seems they have found the delicate balance to allow the thread.
I thought the purpose of subforums was to prevent people who didn't want to read irrelevant posts from having to sort through them to find the relevant ones. But some genius decided that a game as complex and popular as Rust only needs one goddamn forum for every discussion related to it.
[QUOTE=dustNbone;48028015]I thought the purpose of subforums was to prevent people who didn't want to read irrelevant posts from having to sort through them to find the relevant ones. But some genius decided that a game as complex and popular as Rust only needs one goddamn forum for every discussion related to it.[/QUOTE]
It's not like people used the subforums for their correct topics 50% of the time, anyway. Server advertisements were going into Rust General and Rust Modding, people were making help threads for technical problems [I]anywhere[/I], and users gradually consolidated to only using the Rust General Discussion subforum for anything other than spamming the server subforum with server ads. The Rust Modding subforum became a wasteland where only about 4 threads were actively in use, along with occasional duplicate shit threads by people who didn't read or search.
garry made the decision to consolidate the Rust subforums into one because that's how the community was using it. As someone who's actively been here for two years and watched how things have evolved, I don't blame him.
How much time have you spent around here in the last year where this has been a problem for you?
The problem arises every time I read the list of thread titles. I see bug reports, accusations of cheating, people asking for gameplay help, people making suggestions, general whining (complaints), and general discussion about the state of the game.
The only way to know what the post is about is by the thread title, which often as not contains no useful information at all, or by opening and reading each and every post to see if it's something I'm interested in reading or maybe can help with.
The decision to amalgamate them seems more like a "hands in the air, I give up" solution rather than a legitimate attempt at improving their usefulness. It makes things easier for noone other than those charged with moderating it.
Post count is not a reliable way of judging how frequent someone browses the forum, and anyone who uses post count as a way of feeling superior to others is a moron, but I [I]do[/I] have to ask again, [I]how much time have you spent around here in the last year[/I] such that the forum's organization (or apparent lack of) has been a problem for you?
Because I've been here every few days, if not more frequent, for two years, so I have a certain perspective on the way the forum's been run over time, but I don't know what perspective you have and the only numbers I've got, join date and post count, are not reliable indicators.
The fact that you have to read thread titles to figure out what they're about is known as a normal consequence of forums. I don't think you'll get much sympathy there.
It's the poster's responsibility to make sure their thread title is descriptive enough, and bans [I]do[/I] get handed out for UTT or undescriptive thread title on this forum. The Rust section is bad for this because the majority of active posters at any given time are new to the forums, but there's no easy way to fix that without unnecessarily heavy-handed moves.
Mods are unpaid volunteers, btw, and it's not even up to them if garry decides to eliminate a subforum -- also reread my comments about how people often didn't care what subforum they were posting in, making the categories more trouble than they ultimately were worth.
Over the last year I would say I've read at least 60% of all the thread titles, and probably read about 15% of everything posted. I have around 2000 hours in the game, have been highly interested in the game and it's development since I discovered it about 1.5 years ago.
I've been reading and posting on internet forums for as long as they've been around, and even before that on various echonets, etc. Once traffic in a given forum reaches a certain point, it's customary to split it off into more specific subforums to allow people to filter things down to where their skills/interests are more suited. It's really a matter of efficiency.
I get that expecting such things as descriptive thread titles, and posting in the correct forum might be too much to ask from a gaming community. In particular a game of this type. Moderating it most likely is a nightmare, but it still needs to be done for this to remain a useful tool for the community and for the developers.
I'd bet my left nut that since the subforums were killed off, the number of posts in total has declined in spite of the actual community being bigger. Both because of the decreased readability I mentioned before, and also because posting into a megaforum like this one is like screaming into the void for some people. It's hard to bring yourself to take the time to make a post that's being crammed into a pile with a bunch of other mostly unrelated ones.
[QUOTE=dustNbone;48029684]I'd bet my left nut that since the subforums were killed off, the number of posts in total has declined in spite of the actual community being bigger.[/QUOTE]
I don't have any way of providing reliable statistics in any easy form (it's not like I've been collecting them), but in my personal experience, the rate of posting has not declined appreciably (even when I wish it would) if we exclude things that used to be allowed but are now actively discouraged, such as the highly spammy server subforum -- however, that wasn't a source of productive conversation anyway, so nothing of value was lost there.
The Rust Suggestions subforum being closed was arguably the wrong decision, but by the time it was closed, no joke, 50% of the time people were just posting their suggestions in the main Rust forum and [I]weren't even aware there was a Rust Suggestions subforum directly underneath[/I]. Things have to be done a little differently on forums with 2000+ active users at any given time.
The active community's declined in size about in line with the active player stats for Rust itself, and this is normal, as there's a burst of popularity because a thing is new, and then there's a long gradual attrition as the initial gamers settle out into people who weren't actually interested in the game after all (but bought it not knowing), people who were interested but have had their fill and have gotten bored (and with an Early Access title like Rust, there's the chance of getting them back when things have advanced a bunch), people who are going to wait until the game is ready, and then people who stick with it and keep playing because they like what is available.
However, I don't feel that the rearrangement and simplifying of the Rust subforums into one single section has discouraged many people from participating. There are other factors at work that need to be considered.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;48029784]
The Rust Suggestions subforum being closed was arguably the wrong decision, but by the time it was closed, no joke, 50% of the time people were just posting their suggestions in the main Rust forum and [I]weren't even aware there was a Rust Suggestions subforum directly underneath[/I]. Things have to be done a little differently on forums with 2000+ active users at any given time.
[/QUOTE]
This. Just reminded me that the General forum was given prominence over the other subforums, and I think that was the mistake. It all could have worked so much better, like it has and does on so many other forums, if the "General Discussion" or whatever forum was given equal prominence to the other subforums. That's how it is on the majority of forums I've participated in, especially software support forums. It keeps people from being lazy about deciding where to post, because there's no obvious "catch all". General (IMHO) should be for the odd stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere else.
Subforums like that in my experience make things EASIER for the mods, not harder. As long as there's fairly simple rules, clearly visible (at least to the poster), and consistently enforced. Individual subforums can be moderated by individual people, mature users that frequent that particular forum.
I'm not ripping on the moderators, I don't even know how many of them there are. I've moderated before, forums that were centered around debating issues of very personal (for nerds) nature. I understand the need to sometimes take drastic measures to try and sort out a big mess, I just don't think this was the right answer.
For example. I'm most commonly on here looking for/at bug reports. It's good to know what's broken so I can pass it on to my community. I see a thread title that says "Rad Towns". Is this a bug report? A complaint? Suggestion? A story? The only way to find out is to open and read it. And sometimes have to read nearly the entire post to discover that it's just someone whining that rad towns are OP.
Say I have a suggestion in mind. Knowing I'll get my head shit all over if I suggest something that's already been suggested, I need to search the forum to make sure it hasn't. I search the entire goddamn forum. Not just the suggestions. The whole thing. In this case "simplifying" is not the right word.
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