I'm impressed by the proposals in question, and they're formatted in such a way that I personally think is most efficient. Well done,
Fox .
That being said, I can't say I agree with all of them. Here's my breakdown of your suggestions (and the TL;DR for anyone who needs it), and my responses to each:
1. Implement the ban guidelines to the Rules page.
That honestly slipped our minds. I'll add that in after this response.
EDIT:
Actually, they're already on there. They're just under a Spoiler tag at the very top of the Rules page.
2. "giving an emphasis abiding to, lets say, the ban guidelines of the community"
This phrase absolutely confounds me, since it's so ambiguous that I'm hesitant to even call it a suggestion. But from the following statements, it seems as though you are suggesting that we give the ban guide more exposure in order to encourage players to be more mindful of our rules.
I think the underlying logic with the entire first section seems to be, "if players knew our rules, they would not break them. But since no one knows our rules, they break them anyways!"
This logic is valid, but unsound. The entire argument is not practical.
It is common sense not to abuse players and insult them; people do it anyways.
It is common sense not to spam incessantly to be annoying; people do it anyways.
It is common sense not to spread pornography across a game whose demographic is tweens and teens; people do it anyways.
People are aware of these common sense rules, but their intent is to break them anyways. Shoving a rules page in their face, or warning them of potential punishment, will do nothing; they have made up their minds that they are going to do something bad, and they don't care at all.
Secondly, just because people are shown the rules does not mean they will read or even abide by them. How many people actually read the Terms and Conditions statements that they're prompted with? A vast majority of people don't care and just hit, "I agree and accept". Especially amongst our demographic, who seem to avoid reading in general, that isn't going to fly. They will ignore that rules page as quickly as it appears.
Lastly, even if someone reads the rules, that doesn't guarantee that they will always abide by them. They will simply be aware of the rules they're breaking, and most people seem content to do just that.
Overall, this would not be effective at addressing rule breakers; it'd just make the rule breakers slightly more aware of the rules they'll be breaking.
3. Add a tab with a link to the Rules.
It's in the works. We need to hear back from our front end web developer for that.
4. Change the layout of the Rules page to a flowchart format.
Good idea, but utterly impractical. The flowchart is going to be so giant and bloated with information that it will be even harder to navigate than our current list of rules. A list is easy because it can list each individual entity without requiring contexts or introductions. Flowcharts require a logical progression of things paired with branches to address each rule, which is not great. Flowcharts are good for mapping progressions of things, but rules are static entities.
The MCGamer Problem Solver actually works on a flowchart-esque approach. I should update that.
5. New Rule: if a link is NSFW, the link must be tagged as NSFW in its text.
First of all, that rule is easily ignored by people who want to link people to malicious stuff.
Secondly, there really shouldn't even be any NSFW links on this site. We're supposed to be a family friendly community, and our age demographics are definitely not old enough to buy a Playboy in a store (or to be more current, legally create an account on Brazzers).
I just don't see what this would accomplish that shouldn't already be prohibited on this site. If you want to share such links,
don't do it here.
6. Add a Link Shortener, and filter which websites can be seen on here.
A better idea, but I still don't see the point. Not only do the two above statements still apply, but the most popular tactic that we're seeing by trolls to lure people into viewing shocking content is to hide it in a commonly used site where the public can upload anything. I just watched a .gif of a man getting his head cut off, but it came from a seemingly-innocent imgur.com link. There are too many bad sites to filter from, and most trolls are using the previous tactic to begin with, so there isn't much of a point to a link shortener.
I just don't see much of a point to the link augmentation that can't be better addressed with regular reporting methods. NSFW links are already against the rules, and the link redirector has already done a good job at reducing the amount of malicious links being spread around.
7. Whenever a new player joins the forums, include a Welcome message that includes a link to the rules.
I like this idea, and will look into it.
But again, as my above statements have shown, just because someone is aware of the rules doesn't mean they will abide by them.
On top of that, not everyone who plays on our network visits our forums, so there's even less of a point to be had.
7. Add a conversation box to inform players of new amendments to rules and such
I like the idea of conversation boxes, but I definitely don't trust them not to be defaced on a near-constant level nowadays. Might not be worth the risk, especially if it seems like most people don't really care about reading any updates to rules anyways (unless it affects them directly, like that Multi-Logging prohibition announcement)
That being said, I do make a point to bump the Rules and FAQ pages if I change anything. It might not be a dedicated convo-box, but it accomplishes the same thing.
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Overall, these were some good suggestions, but I just don't think all of them will work as they're intended to.
