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Post by Dashe on Apr 2, 2009 17:08:54 GMT -5
Salutations, citizens of the Legends Station Forums! Over the past few weeks, the MMLS Forum Staff has been designing this thread to help facilitate a better understanding of the rules and their purpose, as well as to allow for member feedback and suggestions regarding the Forum Rules. As the title states, it permits members to discuss and ask questions about the forum rules and guidelines. However, please note that this is not a place to come and complain about how unfair the system is--the forum staff still has the final say when it comes to suggestions. Due to trouble that has occurred because of rule discussion in the past, any uncivil behavior herein may be punishable with an instant ban. You have been warned. Have a nice day.
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Post by bdk336 on Apr 2, 2009 17:32:57 GMT -5
ALL OF THE RULES ARE HORRIBLE!!! THIS FORUM IS RUN BY TYRANTS!!! But not really . I do have an actual question though, what is it that would get a member temporarily banned from the forum? I mean stuff that would get you permanently banned is pretty obvious for the most part but I know people have been temporarily banned so I wanted to know what you can do that is bad enough to get banned, but not permanently.
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Post by Dashe on Apr 3, 2009 0:19:02 GMT -5
It's really more of a matter of "what could you possibly do that's so bad that it would warrant a permanent ban" instead of your original question.
A lot of perma-bans are blatantly malicious spammers just trying to make a mess of things, or if they were to show up, any advertising bots trying to make accounts. As for real members being perma-banned, a good lot of the cases in question involved outright attacks on the MMLS staff and system and flagrant disrespect toward board members (see Major Infraction #3 and its subcategories).
It also goes without saying that posting graphic, explicit things on the forums would also warrant you *at least* a very long temp ban, if not a permanent one. Despite DASH's age, there are still several very young members, and probably a few more who are just easily offended. Which again goes back to the respect thing.
Does that clear things up?
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Post by Pitch on Apr 3, 2009 15:21:35 GMT -5
I has a question: How does the “Five words or more per post” rule apply to contractions? Is a contraction considered 1¹⁄ 2 words? Two words? Just one? If it is just one or one and a half, would a person who makes a post containing a contraction that adds up to less than five words (by one word or by a half — err, 4 ≤ words ≤ 4¹⁄ 2) be punished? After all he could potentially be in the clear if he'd expressed the contraction by means of two words.. On a similar note, what about acronyms? Are those considered single words? In the same spirit as with contractions, one could express an acronym in terms of its individual components and net a greater total word count for his post. Are acronyms written out in full interpreted backward, as the acronym itself, and treated as a single word? What if the individual terms in an acronym are significant? (e.g., someone is responding to someone else who's asked what an acronym means) While we're on the subject of acronyms, might I suggest interpreting {net,chat,1337}-speak as negating real words in terms of a post's word count? (such that one would need at least five more real words in his post than words written in {net,chat,1337}-speak to satisfy the rule: i.e., (real-words ≥ (fake-words+5))) Could posts with a hypothetically negative word count be double noted? It goes against the spirit of the rest of this post, but it just sounds like a great rule to me... (I can't help myself sometimes..)
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Post by bdk336 on Apr 3, 2009 15:22:53 GMT -5
Thanks, yeah that did clear things up.
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Post by Mr. Ninja on Apr 3, 2009 21:02:14 GMT -5
Well, I think that contractions count as one word considering there are no spaces, but of course if he/she split the contraction into two words and all the words together equalled 5, they wouldn't be violating the rule. Now I don't think they really get punished for such a thing, unless they do it enough to bother other people. Again, I think an acronym counts as one word like a contraction and can be written out in full to increase the word count. But if they are significant, they should be treated as everything in the acronym. Now I'm not so sure about this, but I don't think fake words should count in the word count thing. But that's just what I think, I'm not entirely sure though... Now I'll just let the staff take care of the rest of the last paragraph, because I have no idea what the rest of the last paragraph means. So best of luck to you, staff...
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Post by bdk336 on Apr 3, 2009 21:07:25 GMT -5
I may not be staff but I'm thinking that it isn't necessary to worry so much about word count. As long as you don't chronically post 2 or 3 word responses I think no one will care if you do it every now and then, it's not like you'll be banned just for putting 4 words in a single post.
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Post by Pitch on Apr 3, 2009 21:15:54 GMT -5
Err..., what I basically meant is that (word count = (real words - fake words)) So, if you posted, say, seven fake words, your post would need to contain seven real words plus an additional five words to satisfy the oh-so-important minimum requirement. i.e.,
∗ I post with seven fake words (WordCount = -7) ∗ I must include seven real words in this post (WordCount = 0) ∗ I must also include at least five more real words, so the staff doesn't ban me. (Apparently "/me"s don't work one after another..)
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Post by bdk336 on Apr 3, 2009 21:19:05 GMT -5
Once again I doubt that anyone would normally have any issue with short posts, I seriously doubt anything bad will happen if you do a short post once or twice a month
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Post by Mr. Ninja on Apr 4, 2009 18:17:54 GMT -5
Err..., what I basically meant is that (word count = (real words - fake words)) So, if you posted, say, seven fake words, your post would need to contain seven real words plus an additional five words to satisfy the oh-so-important minimum requirement. i.e., ∗ I post with seven fake words (WordCount = -7) ∗ I must include seven real words in this post (WordCount = 0) ∗ I must also include at least five more real words, so the staff doesn't ban me.( Apparently "/me"s don't work one after another..) Well it sounds like a pretty good rule, but what would happen with misspelled words? For example, what would happen if you spelled a word like design wrong? Would that count as a "fake word" and cause you to break a rule or something? And then what would happen if your word count went into the negatives? Would there be the same consiquences or would they be harsher? And by the way Green, I don't think the staff would ban you for breaking the word count rule one time. Ya know?
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Post by Pitch on Apr 4, 2009 18:57:25 GMT -5
Well it sounds like a pretty good rule, but what would happen with misspelled words? For example, what would happen if you spelled a word like design wrong? Would that count as a "fake word" and cause you to break a rule or something? And then what would happen if your word count went into the negatives? Would there be the same consiquences or would they be harsher? Fake words meaning chat-speak, net-speak, 1337-speak or otherwords idiotspeak. l13k wh3n p30p13 7yp3 l13k 7h15. Or excessive LOL-ing etc. and so on. Thus, a post with a negative word count would be noted twice. (once for breaking the word count rule, and once for being generally incoherent) I actually did mention this all in my post. ;
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Post by bdk336 on Apr 4, 2009 19:01:59 GMT -5
okay incoherent posts are something else, but seriously I doubt that you need to worry tons about post length, it would be very hard to make enough short posts to get in trouble. Can a mod please respond and clear this up for green?
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Post by Pitch on Apr 4, 2009 19:05:45 GMT -5
bdk, geez, check your bloody PMs... I mean — yeah... I'm sure they'll get around to answering it soon. Busy people, the staff these days. Yes, yes.
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Post by Mr. Ninja on Apr 4, 2009 19:15:21 GMT -5
Fake words meaning chat-speak, net-speak, 1337-speak or otherwords idiotspeak. l13k wh3n p30p13 7yp3 l13k 7h15. Or excessive LOL-ing etc. and so on. Thus, a post with a negative word count would be noted twice. (once for breaking the word count rule, and once for being generally incoherent) I actually did mention this all in my post. ; Now that I look back at it... you did mention it all in the first post! Thing is, I just didn't understand it because you were using words I had no idea what it meant. After all, I'm only a kid. And now that you cleared things up, I think it'd be a great rule Green! ;D
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Post by Santa Melty on Apr 4, 2009 20:56:39 GMT -5
Huh. This thread got posts fast. All right, since I’m around, I’ll try addressing all this short post jazz. Briefly, if I can manage. Don’t bet on it. Regarding acronyms and contractions, I honestly think you’d end up getting a slightly different response from all the moderators. Most posts will quite clearly fall into either the short post category or the... not-short-post category, you see, but posts that fall into gray areas tend to be handled on a case-by-case basis, generally by whoever happens across it. Therefore, if you’re relying on contractions or acronyms to make the 5-word minimum, there’s a very good chance that someone or other on the staff will mark it as an infraction. There are five of us guys running around, after all, so chances are slim you WOULDN’T get marked for it. You can argue your case over PM if you like, of course, (maybe you were making a point with your briefness or something), but few people do. That’s the simplest answer, I think. But there’s a little more to it than just the raw word count. Anything clearly below that 5-word minimum is automatically marked, but when it comes to gray areas and posts that just barely meet the requirement, the thinking is a little different. It has to do with the underlying purpose of the rule. That is, the 5-word rule is really in place as an indirect, simple, empirical way of gauging CONTENT, not length. To quote the actual wording: I don’t know, perhaps the wording doesn’t make it entirely clear. But the focus here is really on the content rather than the length. The length just represent a sort of threshold; anything below it WILL be marked, but that doesn’t mean everything meeting/above it is automatically safe. Suppose someone is trying to meet the minimum word requirement. They have two choices: pad with filler, or elaborate on their thoughts. If you elaborate on your thoughts, even minimally, you can easily fly past that 5-word requirement. Thus, having to worry about exactly what each word counts as in terms of word-count really becomes a non-issue; you’re easily in the clear. Alternatively, if you simply pad, you’ll probably end up just scraping by. The latter, although fulfilling the 5-word portion of the requirement, can STILL be marked as a “short post”, as it doesn’t meet the underlying obligation for content. It’s that case that tend to be problematic with both staff and members, since a mod may mark it as an infraction, while the member doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong. Friction ensues. We could explicitly detail exactly what an abbreviation, compound, et cetera counts as word-count wise, but generally, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself fretting over such issues like what a compound word is worth word-count wise just to see if you meet the minimum word requirement, you’ll probably end up getting marked anyway for the content side of the rule. Content is the requirement. The length bit is just around to help. Gray area is a danger zone. I hope I’ve answered the question. At least in part. It seems that most people’s thinking really revolves around the length portion of the rule, when in fact the staff tends to be concerned more with what the post has to add to a discussion. Anyway, to Dashe and the rest of the mods, please do add to/amend my explanation if I’ve gotten something wrong. Now, as for the suggestion that we subtract words from the total word count for 1337sp34k and the like (now this is all my opinion, mind you), I don’t think it’d work out. Might improve content, but really, there’ve been a ton of issues already just concerning the 5-word minimum as it is. Evolving that 5-word requirement into an equation seems like an invitation for complaints and more confusion over what does or does not meet the requirement. Plus, as I’ve said, the focus is more on the content, and placing more emphasis on length requirements might just obscure that fact further. Btw, played Cave Story. Good stuff. Haven’t gotten into Sacred Grounds yet, though.
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