The Rules

fallacies

Well-Known Member
#76
No.

My suggestions sums it up well. "Personal attacks, while hard to define, are usually identifiable on sight. If they aren't, it will be the responsibility of the reporter to convey the attack. The mods will use their discretion here on if further punishment might be needed, but the offending attack may always be removed on request, without censoring the intent of the post."

If it's an attack, then mods take care of it. However, if the mods can't identify it as an attack (they're missing information that makes it a personal attack), then it's the responsibility of the reporter to supply the information of why it's a personal attack to the mods.
The moment that a target reports an attack, the first course of action will naturally be for the staff to investigate the issue and read through the thread -- so "showing the attack" is a given that will happen anyhow.
It remains unnecessary, because defining the context and history of an offense would be part of the standard due process of complaint submission and the subsequent investigation of the issue in the first place.
And the phrasing ("That is to say, in the absence of absolute evidence of harmful intent, no action will be taken") still makes it look like the mods won't take any action at all unless the target definitively proves that there has in fact been an attack.
(What does "absolute evidence of harmful intent" mean? What sort of "evidence" does it take to produce any action? The problem of "Dude, that guy takes things too seriously. I was just messin'" looking like it might be the answer to any complaint still exists.)
Effectively, this is positioned toward /preventing/ complaint submissions from being made or received.

How do you absolutely prove harmful intent? The examples you cite would involve some sort of demonstration that the accused actually knows real world information about you. Unless there is some sort of record of the public exposure of this information on TFF (i.e. Rant Thread: My Mother Just Died -> "Happy Mother's Day"), this isn't possible. And why is this process supposed to be so glaringly unsupportive of possible victims in the first place? Why can't somebody just take offense at something and request moderation without bothering with all this? In the end, the moderators will be the ones sorting out whether the request is reasonable or not, per context provided.

tl;dr The contents of this extra clause really just rephrases a standard due process procedure in a way that makes it sound painful to a victim. Leave it to the moderators to figure out whether a case brought to them is reasonable.
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#77
Why are you still harping on about the rules that are going to be clarified?

You really just sound like you're arguing to argue.
 

fallacies

Well-Known Member
#78
Why are you still harping on about the rules that are going to be clarified?
You really just sound like you're arguing to argue.
Because "That is to say, in the absence of absolute evidence of harmful intent, no action will be taken" frankly doesn't need to be there, unless the intent is to be unpleasantly obfuscating to a prospective victim. See above.
And "Personal attacks, while hard to define, are usually identifiable on sight. If they aren't, it will be the responsibility of the reporter to convey the attack. The mods will use their discretion here on if further punishment might be needed, but the offending attack may always be removed on request, without censoring the intent of the post" doesn't really contribute anything that wouldn't be in standard due process anyhow.
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#79
Have you not noticed the part where we're rewriting that rule.

Like, at all.
 

fallacies

Well-Known Member
#80
I've perceived suggestions to the end of preserving the specific wording of a clause I've taken argument to.
I've deemed it necessary to respond accordingly. Is this behavior something to be interpreted to my diminutive?
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#81
You have a problem with the specific wording of the old problem, and are assuming it means something it does not.

The wording of the new rule, as well as the intent of the original rule, has been clarified for you multiple times by several people.

I would advise reading them before you continue making a fool of yourself.
 

fallacies

Well-Known Member
#82
Stating a possible interpretation of a line of text is not actually equivalent to believing in said interpretation to be perfectly valid.
But if you say so, then I must have wholly missed the various moderators' official interpretations all of the times they made comment, here and elsewhere.
Your ability to accurately interpret what goes on inside my mind and awareness is amazing. I applaud you for your insight, and I do apologize immensely.

But for simplicity, the argument being made is that:
a) The old wording -- particularly of the problem clause -- can be plausibly misinterpreted by prospective victims to the effect of discouraging them from reporting offense.
b) If any version of this clause survives at all in the new wording, it should be presented in a manner that can't misinterpreted as above. It would be best if it simply doesn't survive.

This argument is being made with redundant emphasis because I believe strongly in it. I have nothing else to say here.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#83
It's taken me a LOT of thought on how to modify my proposal while trying to keep everyone satisfied. In the end, I felt that a demonstration would be the easiest way to handle things.

The point I want to make, is that there will be NO modifications to the officially voted rules. Heck, I've even left the spelling mistakes as they were.

Secondly, the 'clarifications' are just that - clarifications. If any action needs to be taken by forum staff against someone, it will ONLY be with reference to the official rules; not the clarifications that were issued. I hope this brings to an end any worries/concerns that the staff were trying to 'sneak in' modifications/rewrites to the rules. We are NOT.

Now, on the matter of 'evidence of harmful intent'; it is a difficult thing to write down, because it truly varies from circumstance to circumstance.

To take some of the examples mentioned on this thread,

pidl said:
you can't insult someone first and then report him when he returns the favour
Shirotsume said:
e.g. Let's say you have cancer. Asshole A knows this, lets say from MSN, and wishes to exploit it.
Mods do not know that you have cancer.
If asshole A says "You're a cancer on society," that's not really a thing that would get the person in too much trouble, because the mods don't know you have cancer and so to them it's just a random comment- e.g. it's your job to tell the mods "Hey, not cool, I have cancer and he knew that and is trying to be a douche about it."
pidl said:
Making 'your mother' jokes while the person knows your mother just passed away?
To whom should we assign 'burden of proof' for these scenarios? If you ask me, its kind of insensitive to dump it all on the 'victim' - they just went through a horrible experience; why make their lives difficult? But at the same time, its unreasonable to expect the mods to conduct a full fledged investigation - we're a fanficiton community, not some forensics lab. And lets not forget the 'attacker' either. While it might look/appear that they were behaving rudely, it could be the case that they honestly didn't know.

Way I see it, we need a middle ground somewhere. Which is why I feel "It is an extremely complicated matter and will vary case-to-case" addresses the matter sufficiently.

-chronodekar
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#84
Fallacies, you're basically just arguing to argue at this point. It's a given that when clarifying a statement so it can't be misinterpreted, you make sure it can't be misinterpreted.

Chrono, "It's complicated" is not a rule. That's a cop-out that is infinitely abusable by all, and spits in the face of every single person in this thread who is trying to improve the clarity of the rule.

I don't know why the needlessly pointless clusterfuck that is the demonstration thread even exists. It demonstrated nothing, is a frankensteined mash of quotes from several different people, muddles AND changes the rule, is in the wrong forum, and was done unilaterally by one mod in a situation where all mods/admins should be weighing in.

It most certainly does not clarify anything.
 

Knyght

The Collector
#85
This does feel overcomplicated. The abridged rules we've got set up look fine to me. If someone crosses a line then deal with it at the time, which would make a solid example of the type of things we don't want people doing.
 

Watashiwa

Administrator
Staff member
#86
Sorry chrono, I'm going to step in to say that your rules "clarification" thread has been moved to an area where they can be made into clarifications instead of further obfuscations.

The rules as they are what the community at large have decided should be our rules. Changes to the rules thus need to be brought up with the forum at large, and clarifications should be added only if there's considerable confusion about them and not "what if" scenarios. I'm leaving the thread open because this is obviously an issue people feel passionately about, but I really wouldn't expect much out of it at this point.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#87
Shirotsume said:
Chrono, "It's complicated" is not a rule. That's a cop-out that is infinitely abusable by all,
And I keep repeating; we're NOT making new rules here. Why do you keep suggesting that?

Is it abusable? I suppose so. But I do not think its possible to actually write down some guidelines that would satisfy everyone without turning into some 100-page document which no-one would bother reading.

was done unilaterally by one mod in a situation where all mods/admins should be weighing in.
I like to think that the idea of a second clarification post was my idea. It most certainly has NOT been talked/discussed with by the rest of the staff. I want to get some kind of consensus here before doing that.

-chronodekar
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#88
Here's my thoughts: Changing the wording of the unabridged rules is fine, as long as it doesn't change the rules. Attempting to add later 'clarifications' is going to turn into a clusterfuck that no one will read and lead to the rules being ignored.

We basically need to take the rules for the section and turn them into a clarified version of the old rules.

I'm still hoping for people to chime in on my suggestion to see if anything can be improved.

1. Non-directed slurs, crude language, and insults are allowed.
2. Personal attacks, whether slurs, crude language, or harmfully-intended insults, may be taken down at the target's request- you post them at your own peril, and will be advised not to do it again.
3. Personal attacks, while hard to define, are usually identifiable on sight. If they aren't, it will be the responsibility of the reporter to convey the attack. The mods will use their discretion here on if further punishment might be needed, but the offending attack may always be removed on request, without censoring the intent of the post.

Fallacies' suggestion I dislike because the change in wording changes the rules, and it has the same problem GH's did- while in spirit it's meant to be the same, in practice it bans all insults and crude language because it becomes an issue the second someone reports it.

Just because someone reports something doesn't mean it's an issue- and just because there's an issue doens't mean someone reports it. In both of the cases, nothing is done.

EDIT: Chrono, I keep saying people are adding new rules because the wording of the 'clarifications' people are suggesting CHANGES the rule instead of clarifying it- thus leading to a new rule.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#89
Shirotsume said:
Changing the wording of the unabridged rules is fine, as long as it doesn't change the rules.
I disagree with this on principle Shiro. While I wasn't there during the rule vote, a lot of effort went in to get the rules as they currently are. The ONLY way I'll permit ANY change to their wordings (barring VERY limited spelling corrections) is with a community vote.

No offense, but even if we (miraculously) got some wording that satisfied everyone posting in this thread, what's to stop another forum member from complaining that we're 'changing the rules' to something else? Technically speaking, they would be correct.

I'm still a bit miffed that the rules were put in without my participation, but I'll raise HELL if any attempt is made to change their EXACT wording without a community vote. :mad: It goes against too much of what I stand for.

That said, I'm not really in a mood to organize another forum political poll right now. If any of the other staff wants, I'll probably support them, but I don't want to organize it. Which brings me to my proposal,

Issuing a second post with 'clarifications'. I've already said that if any 'action' would be taken by staff, it would be on the basis of the unabridged rules, not the clarifications. They would be there to help/assist those confused with our rule-set.

Attempting to add later 'clarifications' is going to turn into a clusterfuck that no one will read and lead to the rules being ignored.
If you are objecting to the very idea of 'extra clarifications' ... then I'm not sure what to do. Will need to think on it.

Again; on the matter of re-wording the clarifications with yours instead of Fallacies AND about your concerns to his wording - I need more time to think about it before I can reply.

-chronodekar
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#90
I disagree with adding 'later clarifications.' Nobody is going to read those, nor should they have to. We're not going to spoonfeed them the rules, but nor should we make it a treasure hunt to find the information you need.

If your sink is leaking, you don't add a drain under the sink. You fix the goddamn sink.
 

ArchfiendRai

Well-Known Member
#91
Rules are fine you assholes.

:)
 
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