- Oct 20, 2012
- 5,100
- 1,664
Hello all,
This is a big one. I've tried to summarise each heading for those of you who don't have the time to read through a big ol' thread of bureaucracy for a toy gun forum. Just read the stuff in bold to get the gist of the changes.
Context
Jedi will become an administrator and will lead moderation of the forums; I will continue to be in charge of the root forums and keeping stuff running
We're coming up on a week since the forums were transferred to my possession. I promised an announcement on my and the staff's intentions for any changes to the forums rules, how we organise and any enforcement. When I say 'we' I'll mostly be referring to @Jedi_Master, who will become an administrator with a mandate to make any changes necessary in my absence. I strongly feel that - though he had good excuses - Devastator's general inactivity was detrimental to the forums health, and so I feel having delegation of these responsibilities (i.e. leading the moderation team and making administrative changes when I'm not about) will help if I'm ever unavailable.
New moderator(s) will be sought after
Jedi will comment on this. It might happen this month, but it could be a little later.
We will be clearing the backlog of forum change suggestions from the Forum Feedback subforum
In addition, we will be going through the last years worth of threads in the Forum Feedback subforum and will answer each appropriately. Many have already been earmarked for implementation below, but you may wish to comment on or add your own thread to the pile before this happens. We'll periodically check them anyway though so there's by no means a cut-off for this. We'll try and clear the backlog of suggestions within a month.
Please contact us/post below if you have anything to add from this thread, need clarification on something or if there's anything you disagree with
We've discussed many of these changes before putting them out on the forums, but will make changes based on feedback. I would therefore implore you to PM me, Jedi or just post in this thread and let us know what you think. Nothing is set in stone and I hope you'll agree that most of these changes attempt to formalise a set of set of unwritten rules that have been enforced for some time, or to roll back rules that were mostly ignored by the present moderation as they were dates and didn't reflect what we feel makes AFUK a different strain to many other airsoft forums out there.
The old moderation team has been wiped
Almost all of them were inactive so we're rebuilding the team from the ground up (minus Jedi of course, who actually did things). I'm sure they had their reasons and every one will be given honorary 'Supporter' tags, but we need some fresh eyes.
Rule changes
1.1 We will relax rules on what you can and can't say (and to whom); swearing is back on the menu
This rule change will take effect immediately
For some time we've felt that the forums have - to a certain extent - relied on self-moderation through its core membership. These core members (who are both reasonably knowledgeable and also active make up a good chunk of the valuable content providers for the forums) are ultimately one of its biggest assets. Putting it lightly, some choose to 'point out' when another forum user could be being perceived as being lazy (i.e expecting spoon-feeding of information), being an 'askhole' (i.e asking for opinions but dismissing them until they land upon one that supports a decision they made in their head before even creating a thread) or - frankly - speaking a bit out of their arse (offering second-hand advice on legal advice they heard in the safe zone comes to mind). These are what I personally feel make up someone who is unlikely to stick around for long, and this is reflected in the fact that these traits do not often appear in long-term core members (though there are exceptions and I'm certainly not innocent of this either). It is our belief that these kinds of people are - in many cases - fair game for a bit of poking fun at. However, though this clarification has been made it should be stressed that we do not have an expectation that this will happen much at all. The vast majority of harsh/bad language is usually between friends on these forums, and we expect it to stay that way or we might have to revaluate this rule change.
As such, we are - officially - allowing swearing again as a means to more freely interact with mates in good fun, or - as above - for the expression of frustration at another member (if it comes to that). This rule change will - like all the others - be evaluated carefully over then next 6 months or so to ensure it's not being abused. Racist or otherwise discriminatory language of any kind is still a reasonably instant ban - this will not change.
Once again, please exercise some discretion and measure yourself especially with new members. Though we will not moderate (except in the most extreme of cases) in arguments etc. quite as much, you should of course bring into consideration whether your language might get the desired effect across. Speaking in text is a lot different from verbally and many easily understandable tones are lost when translated into word form. Ultimately you as members will be in charge of how this rule transposes itself as we will attempt to be as hands-off as possible for the duration of this test period of 6 months.
If you feel the need to get clarity on 'what's ok' then feel free to report a post and we'll respond with our thoughts, but - again - will only take action in the most extreme cases.
1.2 The one exception to a relax on language is that of offering legal advice; trying to offer up advice to circumvent VCRA might land you with a warning
This rule change will take effect on the 24th April, 2018
Anyone who's been in airsoft for more than a couple of months knows the obvious holes in VCRA, how it interacts with UKARA (and other skirmisher registration bodies) and many flaunt it (quite rightly in some cases, but perhaps stupidly in others). Starting the end of this month we will be giving extra scrutiny towards posts made in the 'UK Law' section around VCRA and specifically how to 'dodge' it and get an RIF without really having played.
This will be rather lax at first, but moderators will weigh in over the coming months to build up a picture of what can and can't be said about how to circumvent laws meant to ring-fence airsoft as a safe and legal sport/hobby. Many suggestions in this forum aren't made in the spirit of the law and - although case law for airsoft is basically non-existant as it applies to skirmishers - we don't want to be the flashpoint for any litigation that could harm the game. As one of the premier airsoft forums for the UK we should not be surprised to know that it's possible journalists or even government officials may read (or even go as far as to cite) content from these forums in the future. We should be careful in the advice we give out and er on the side of caution instead of sending out new players to test the law to its limit in a way that might put them in jeopardy legally should they ever come a cropper.
Again, though this hasn't happened so far and although the forums are very good at providing this kind of information already, we wish to formalise our intent to weigh in occasionally if things are getting out of hand. We recognise that a lot of the time it's the poster of a thread trying to get affirmation that their scheme of obtaining an RIF is legitimate (when it may be questionable) and these will be treated in the same way as those giving a response. We will also be putting a banner up in this particular subforum indicating a stickied thread containing many of the common questions on VCRA. This should mitigate stupid questions (we hope).
Once more: This change will be incremental in enforcement and - much like the 'swearing' rule, will be on a longer 12 month evaluation. We will be lenient to start of with and will only step in when things are getting very grey indeed (and even then will likely only offer clarity that indeed the suggestions being made are not backed up by case law and might be slightly risky). Overall we simply don't want new players with little context of airsoft to go out there and test the rules on our behalf because of a few replies to a silly question.
Other changes that aren't really rules
2.1 Posting in the classifieds forum will be restricted to only the thread's creator (and moderators if necessary)
For a long time unnecessary thread bumping in the classifieds section of the forums has taken up - with no exaggeration - over 2/3s of all moderation time. We aim to slash this in half by only allowing thread posters to post in their own thread. Careful consideration was given to this as it's recognised that a couple of you do see value in calling out bogus listings and silly pricing. However, ultimately, the lesser of the two evils is stopping these threads getting bumped into people's content feeds.
However, as a part of rule change 1.1 there will be no longer be restrictions against discussing AFUK classifieds within the Airsoft Dreamers thread.
2.2 Bumping a classifieds listing can now only be done once every 7 days
Although the rule for bumping only once a week has been in force since 2013, by the time a moderator enforces this rule the damage is already done (the damage being the 'view new content' feed getting spammed up with people selling their gear). It's now impossible to bump a thread more often than once a week (and a notification will be displayed if one tries to). Threads can still be edited by the poster though if they've forgotten some information.
You will still be allowed to post for 30 seconds after the thread has been created, but your posts will simply be merged (see 2.3 below).
2.3 Making two posts within 30 minutes of each other will result in them being merged into one post
Simple one: Double-posting is a bit annoying and disrupts the flow of a thread. From now on if anybody making multiple posts within a short time span will have them merged. You won't lose any content as the merged post will simply appear below the content of the first post. This will only happen if both of these posts are made within the same thread.
2.4 Image/attachment storage sizes are changing slightly
Members will now be able to store 256mb of attachments. Supporters will get 1gb. Believe this is actually a marginal increase.
Images will now be resized so that no dimension is exceeds 2000px. This will save server storage space but also - usefully - will stop quotas filling up so fast with those huge ugly, uncompressed phone pictures that are 3000px+
2.5 Conversation recipient limits are being being increased
At great financial expense, PMs can now have up to 10 people in them simultaneously (up from 5). You're welcome.
2.6 Reputation bands have changed
There's no way to actually lose reputation on here and many of us have contributed enough posts to accumulate thousands of reputation point thingies. Whilst meaningless, trying to make them mean at least a little has meant adjusting the bands so that not everyone can get an 'excellent' rating within a week of joining the forums. The new reputation bands are:
Reputation title
Points required
Good
100
Great
500
Excellent
1000
Future intentions and unfinished thoughts
The forum layout (i.e. the names and locations of the forums) will be tweaked
Expect a submitted list of these changes some time later in the month (perhaps at the start of May). These changes should mostly affect the Classifieds, Other Airsoft Stuff and Advice & Technical Help subforums. The core content areas should remain the same.
Something is being figured out with regards to patches
Forum patches will become a thing again, but the logistics need discussing. More on this in the next month or so.
Access to being a Supporter might be changing
Though decisions are yet to be made on what being a 'Supporter' will entail right now two things have happened:
Discord
It's 2018 so every community needs its own Discord that nobody uses and we'll be no different. Expect this to happen in the next couple of weeks.
A closing note
Hopefully the running theme through this has been bringing back some of the old AFUK rules and just enforcing some of the very oldest rules or unspoken standards. I don't expect we've got everything right so please feel free to discuss below or PM me if you want to discuss privately. Again another thing I'd like to improve is transparency from the staff (including me) so I'll make every effort to be candid.
Thanks.
This is a big one. I've tried to summarise each heading for those of you who don't have the time to read through a big ol' thread of bureaucracy for a toy gun forum. Just read the stuff in bold to get the gist of the changes.
Context
Jedi will become an administrator and will lead moderation of the forums; I will continue to be in charge of the root forums and keeping stuff running
We're coming up on a week since the forums were transferred to my possession. I promised an announcement on my and the staff's intentions for any changes to the forums rules, how we organise and any enforcement. When I say 'we' I'll mostly be referring to @Jedi_Master, who will become an administrator with a mandate to make any changes necessary in my absence. I strongly feel that - though he had good excuses - Devastator's general inactivity was detrimental to the forums health, and so I feel having delegation of these responsibilities (i.e. leading the moderation team and making administrative changes when I'm not about) will help if I'm ever unavailable.
New moderator(s) will be sought after
Jedi will comment on this. It might happen this month, but it could be a little later.
We will be clearing the backlog of forum change suggestions from the Forum Feedback subforum
In addition, we will be going through the last years worth of threads in the Forum Feedback subforum and will answer each appropriately. Many have already been earmarked for implementation below, but you may wish to comment on or add your own thread to the pile before this happens. We'll periodically check them anyway though so there's by no means a cut-off for this. We'll try and clear the backlog of suggestions within a month.
Please contact us/post below if you have anything to add from this thread, need clarification on something or if there's anything you disagree with
We've discussed many of these changes before putting them out on the forums, but will make changes based on feedback. I would therefore implore you to PM me, Jedi or just post in this thread and let us know what you think. Nothing is set in stone and I hope you'll agree that most of these changes attempt to formalise a set of set of unwritten rules that have been enforced for some time, or to roll back rules that were mostly ignored by the present moderation as they were dates and didn't reflect what we feel makes AFUK a different strain to many other airsoft forums out there.
The old moderation team has been wiped
Almost all of them were inactive so we're rebuilding the team from the ground up (minus Jedi of course, who actually did things). I'm sure they had their reasons and every one will be given honorary 'Supporter' tags, but we need some fresh eyes.
Rule changes
1.1 We will relax rules on what you can and can't say (and to whom); swearing is back on the menu
This rule change will take effect immediately
For some time we've felt that the forums have - to a certain extent - relied on self-moderation through its core membership. These core members (who are both reasonably knowledgeable and also active make up a good chunk of the valuable content providers for the forums) are ultimately one of its biggest assets. Putting it lightly, some choose to 'point out' when another forum user could be being perceived as being lazy (i.e expecting spoon-feeding of information), being an 'askhole' (i.e asking for opinions but dismissing them until they land upon one that supports a decision they made in their head before even creating a thread) or - frankly - speaking a bit out of their arse (offering second-hand advice on legal advice they heard in the safe zone comes to mind). These are what I personally feel make up someone who is unlikely to stick around for long, and this is reflected in the fact that these traits do not often appear in long-term core members (though there are exceptions and I'm certainly not innocent of this either). It is our belief that these kinds of people are - in many cases - fair game for a bit of poking fun at. However, though this clarification has been made it should be stressed that we do not have an expectation that this will happen much at all. The vast majority of harsh/bad language is usually between friends on these forums, and we expect it to stay that way or we might have to revaluate this rule change.
As such, we are - officially - allowing swearing again as a means to more freely interact with mates in good fun, or - as above - for the expression of frustration at another member (if it comes to that). This rule change will - like all the others - be evaluated carefully over then next 6 months or so to ensure it's not being abused. Racist or otherwise discriminatory language of any kind is still a reasonably instant ban - this will not change.
Once again, please exercise some discretion and measure yourself especially with new members. Though we will not moderate (except in the most extreme of cases) in arguments etc. quite as much, you should of course bring into consideration whether your language might get the desired effect across. Speaking in text is a lot different from verbally and many easily understandable tones are lost when translated into word form. Ultimately you as members will be in charge of how this rule transposes itself as we will attempt to be as hands-off as possible for the duration of this test period of 6 months.
If you feel the need to get clarity on 'what's ok' then feel free to report a post and we'll respond with our thoughts, but - again - will only take action in the most extreme cases.
1.2 The one exception to a relax on language is that of offering legal advice; trying to offer up advice to circumvent VCRA might land you with a warning
This rule change will take effect on the 24th April, 2018
Anyone who's been in airsoft for more than a couple of months knows the obvious holes in VCRA, how it interacts with UKARA (and other skirmisher registration bodies) and many flaunt it (quite rightly in some cases, but perhaps stupidly in others). Starting the end of this month we will be giving extra scrutiny towards posts made in the 'UK Law' section around VCRA and specifically how to 'dodge' it and get an RIF without really having played.
This will be rather lax at first, but moderators will weigh in over the coming months to build up a picture of what can and can't be said about how to circumvent laws meant to ring-fence airsoft as a safe and legal sport/hobby. Many suggestions in this forum aren't made in the spirit of the law and - although case law for airsoft is basically non-existant as it applies to skirmishers - we don't want to be the flashpoint for any litigation that could harm the game. As one of the premier airsoft forums for the UK we should not be surprised to know that it's possible journalists or even government officials may read (or even go as far as to cite) content from these forums in the future. We should be careful in the advice we give out and er on the side of caution instead of sending out new players to test the law to its limit in a way that might put them in jeopardy legally should they ever come a cropper.
Again, though this hasn't happened so far and although the forums are very good at providing this kind of information already, we wish to formalise our intent to weigh in occasionally if things are getting out of hand. We recognise that a lot of the time it's the poster of a thread trying to get affirmation that their scheme of obtaining an RIF is legitimate (when it may be questionable) and these will be treated in the same way as those giving a response. We will also be putting a banner up in this particular subforum indicating a stickied thread containing many of the common questions on VCRA. This should mitigate stupid questions (we hope).
Once more: This change will be incremental in enforcement and - much like the 'swearing' rule, will be on a longer 12 month evaluation. We will be lenient to start of with and will only step in when things are getting very grey indeed (and even then will likely only offer clarity that indeed the suggestions being made are not backed up by case law and might be slightly risky). Overall we simply don't want new players with little context of airsoft to go out there and test the rules on our behalf because of a few replies to a silly question.
Other changes that aren't really rules
2.1 Posting in the classifieds forum will be restricted to only the thread's creator (and moderators if necessary)
For a long time unnecessary thread bumping in the classifieds section of the forums has taken up - with no exaggeration - over 2/3s of all moderation time. We aim to slash this in half by only allowing thread posters to post in their own thread. Careful consideration was given to this as it's recognised that a couple of you do see value in calling out bogus listings and silly pricing. However, ultimately, the lesser of the two evils is stopping these threads getting bumped into people's content feeds.
However, as a part of rule change 1.1 there will be no longer be restrictions against discussing AFUK classifieds within the Airsoft Dreamers thread.
2.2 Bumping a classifieds listing can now only be done once every 7 days
Although the rule for bumping only once a week has been in force since 2013, by the time a moderator enforces this rule the damage is already done (the damage being the 'view new content' feed getting spammed up with people selling their gear). It's now impossible to bump a thread more often than once a week (and a notification will be displayed if one tries to). Threads can still be edited by the poster though if they've forgotten some information.
You will still be allowed to post for 30 seconds after the thread has been created, but your posts will simply be merged (see 2.3 below).
2.3 Making two posts within 30 minutes of each other will result in them being merged into one post
Simple one: Double-posting is a bit annoying and disrupts the flow of a thread. From now on if anybody making multiple posts within a short time span will have them merged. You won't lose any content as the merged post will simply appear below the content of the first post. This will only happen if both of these posts are made within the same thread.
2.4 Image/attachment storage sizes are changing slightly
Members will now be able to store 256mb of attachments. Supporters will get 1gb. Believe this is actually a marginal increase.
Images will now be resized so that no dimension is exceeds 2000px. This will save server storage space but also - usefully - will stop quotas filling up so fast with those huge ugly, uncompressed phone pictures that are 3000px+
2.5 Conversation recipient limits are being being increased
At great financial expense, PMs can now have up to 10 people in them simultaneously (up from 5). You're welcome.
2.6 Reputation bands have changed
There's no way to actually lose reputation on here and many of us have contributed enough posts to accumulate thousands of reputation point thingies. Whilst meaningless, trying to make them mean at least a little has meant adjusting the bands so that not everyone can get an 'excellent' rating within a week of joining the forums. The new reputation bands are:
Reputation title
Points required
Good
100
Great
500
Excellent
1000
Future intentions and unfinished thoughts
The forum layout (i.e. the names and locations of the forums) will be tweaked
Expect a submitted list of these changes some time later in the month (perhaps at the start of May). These changes should mostly affect the Classifieds, Other Airsoft Stuff and Advice & Technical Help subforums. The core content areas should remain the same.
Something is being figured out with regards to patches
Forum patches will become a thing again, but the logistics need discussing. More on this in the next month or so.
Access to being a Supporter might be changing
Though decisions are yet to be made on what being a 'Supporter' will entail right now two things have happened:
- Supporter posts get a cool outline
- Becoming a supporter now won't require buying a patch. Right now if you have 2000 positive feedback on your posts you'll get an automatic promotion and - in the future - you'll get a supporter-only patch.
Discord
It's 2018 so every community needs its own Discord that nobody uses and we'll be no different. Expect this to happen in the next couple of weeks.
A closing note
Hopefully the running theme through this has been bringing back some of the old AFUK rules and just enforcing some of the very oldest rules or unspoken standards. I don't expect we've got everything right so please feel free to discuss below or PM me if you want to discuss privately. Again another thing I'd like to improve is transparency from the staff (including me) so I'll make every effort to be candid.
Thanks.
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