Housekeeping Updates, and more!

[Azzie]

Happy timezone, everyone! 

As we make our way through November, the staff team at Reborn has been working on a few things to (hopefully) make this community a better place for everyone. To this end...

1. Rules Update!
Reborn has been around, in some form or another, for a long time now. And while the rules have undergone some changes over that time, it's been quite a while, and we felt like it was time to take another look at them. People have mentioned that some parts of the rules aren't entirely clear, and we've found a few outdated things and some things which weren't stated, but should be. As a team we've gone over these community guidelines, and come up with a new, improved version! The updated rules can be found here, or by viewing the 'Guidelines' tab under Home.  It's a very good idea to give these a read.

2. Forum Cleanup!
As well as the rules, the forums themselves are getting a little bit of a revamp. Several sections have been merged due to activity and for the sake of tidiness. As Discord activity grows (10,000 users as of today!) we want to work with the community and make the transition from the forums being a place of active discussion and toward them being more of a support structure for the discord community. 
If you have any questions about specific forum changes, please don't hesitate to ask!

And now we move on to what's almost certainly the most exciting update;

3. Starlight Divide Demo!
There was an announcement earlier, but in case you missed it, Starlight Divide's public beta starts on Monday! Starlight is Amethyst's beautiful new tactical RPG, and she and her team have been hard at work preparing this demo for you! (Speaking as someone who's played this demo, it's absolutely amazing and I think you'll all really enjoy it!) Until then, please look forward to it! 

[Mimikyu]

Much Forum, Such Update, Many Post

[SHAGGYSmurf]

I suppose its about time I get a Discord account then, huh?

[ZEL]

It's the year of our lord 2020 and the phrase "horny on main" has made it into the community rules. Incredible.

Anyway! Three things!
One, I think it would be useful if we could have a linked "clarification" post for more of the rules. The one we have for R4/derogatory language is great, but IMO R7/overtly sexual content and R5/minimodding deserve the same treatment, because it's not entirely intuitive to everyone where the line is drawn.

R7 is probably the bigger of the two, because at times it seems that even auth aren't in complete agreement over what's okay to discuss and what not, and thus far it's seemed like the line of what is considered overtly sexual has been decided more based on situational feelings than clear guidelines in the majority of cases.

Which is to say that beyond the obvious "don't creep people out with your bedroom fantasies and stories", sometimes the chat's been discussing topics related to reproductive health, advice on sexual safety, or sexual orientation, and I think there is a need for space to talk about these.

I'm aware you're trying to cover this with the "mature discussion is fine" subpoint, but the problem here is that it's very vague and leaves things up to reader interpretation.
If you're going to allow some discussion related to sexuality, you'll need to outline what, so that there's a clear guide to refer to.

Also: these discussions often can't stay long in lobby, because understandably there's people who do get uncomfortable with them. I would like to know, as an official rule/recommendation, if it would be alright to keep discussions of this nature in #atrium. As long as it stays informative, and as long as people's anecdotes don't veer into detailing their sex life, I believe this should work out. (I would rather not move any of this into the emotional support channel, because the verification hurdle means it is not a free-for-all.)
 

R5 and the subpoint of not minimodding is another that I think needs some level of clarification.
Firstly because not everyone who's gonna join our community will know the term, so a definition would be bueno.

Second because I think that as a community geared towards a more mature audience, we've always relied on some level of self-moderation between users.
I trust most people to have a sensible opinion of what constitutes as minimodding, but from a rule-writing standpoint, you can't.

One person may think it's fine for a regular user to remind another "hey, please don't do x, it counts as y which falls under rule z" or "guys, please take this to PMs, we're not allowing this thing on our server", another might already think that's trying to mod.
I think self-moderation is necessary and fine, as long as non-auth don't go around threatening people that they're certainly about to be warned, or anything in that vein, or being bossy about their concerns.

So it'd be neat to just have a couple of examples of how to correctly handle a situation vs how not to. Even just a small guide of "say it like this, not like this".

 

 

Laaaastly! I think it would be really neat to have a page dedicated to explanations for our channels, or at least some of them.
For example, the difference between #lobby and #atrium, and at which point you should consider switching from one to the other. From what I gathered, initially the atrium was made as a refuge for if lobby got into one of our good ol' debates, so that people who just wanted to chat could have a place to do so while the rest of us go wild.
At other times I've seen it said that it should be the other way round - that people should switch to the atrium if they notice their conversation is turning into an in-depth debate, or just generally dominating the chat.

The atrium channel description itself notes that it is indeed where politics talk should go, but it's not quite realistic to expect everyone to have actively checked that before they manage to start politics debates in the lobby.

 

Tl;dr if someone wants to take the time, I'd love ya for a small channel guide on not-self-explanatory channels. Merci!


PS: Azzie is a cinnamon roll uwu

[ZEL]

So like, not to double post on main or whatever
But I have a second concern and I've been kinda iffy on whether or not I should bring it up because I hate being the bitch to stir up DiscourseTM
Think it's time tho because it's gotten to a point where I'm actually genuinely uncomfortable with the situation

I would like to ask for R5 to include some kind of guideline or instruction for how to proceed in case someone feels like an auth member's action hasn't been justified. A way to raise objections, if you will.
Two reasons for that:

One, obvious, while auth naturally get the final say in someone's reprimands or punishments, auth aren't infallible, and I think if people have good reasons or proof to object to a given warning or reprimand, they should have a chance to appeal to the auth team to review the case.
I don't think it's intuitive to everyone to assume that you can do this, or know who to contact about it, so a rundown a la "if you have reason to believe x, please contact us in y way" blah blah

 

 

Second, because I keep seeing instances in which I genuinely consider the actions showcased by auth members to be unprofessional, and I believe people should have a way of informing themselves on how to address such concerns 1) discreetly and 2) in a way that ensures that the team will review/discuss the matter.

I've noticed, within the past year especially, a rise in occasions on which I've seen several! members of the auth team be passive-aggressive and snappy with people for little to no reason, in addition to that I've seen people reinforce this behavior by cheering it on.

I firmly believe that if someone chooses to accept a position as auth, they have to resign themselves to the fact that they will be interacting with people who require patience, and that if they have a short temper or consider themselves a "cant stand idiots" kinda person, they ought to reconsider if they're fit for that job.
It's one thing to get exasperated when one person repeatedly tests your patience, but another when you snap at people on their first mistake, especially when it's not a rulebreak and merely etiquette.

It's understandable if one gets tired of seeing people make the same mistakes that are easy to avoid, but I believe that if you're a rolemodel for the community, you have to be able to either get past that, vent it out in private if you must, or hand off situations to another staff member instead. You should certainly be able to word your grievances in a non-antagonizing matter, at least.

 

I really, really didn't want to have to bring this up because I know I'm gonna have many people roll their eyes at me, but it makes me uncomfortable to see these situations happen repeatedly and I worry that newbies or people who only visit the server infrequently won't have the confidence to speak up, because it's a hell lot harder to speak up when you're not in the "core" of the community. A rando, as you'd say.

 

Also because R1 applies to auth, too.

[Abyssreaper99]

Hi Ama, thanks for outlining your thoughts and giving us suggestions on ways to make rules clearer and such. I'm going to go through this suggestion by suggestion across both posts and give responses. Warning text wall ahead!
 

On 11/15/2020 at 11:48 AM, ZEL said:

One, I think it would be useful if we could have a linked "clarification" post for more of the rules. The one we have for R4/derogatory language is great, but IMO R7/overtly sexual content and R5/minimodding deserve the same treatment, because it's not entirely intuitive to everyone where the line is drawn.

 

  So a few mods (myself included) have discussed this in the staff chat and everyone that was there during that discussion agree that this is definitely needed because this not only sets boundaries for members on the server but also will reduce questions between staff members too on whether something is considered an rule x violation. Also clarifying minimodding would be useful to users so they can avoid it. These are going to brought up at our next staff meeting which is coming up.

 

On 11/15/2020 at 11:48 AM, ZEL said:

I would like to know, as an official rule/recommendation, if it would be alright to keep discussions of this nature in #atrium. As long as it stays informative, and as long as people's anecdotes don't veer into detailing their sex life, I believe this should work out.

 

  Again us staff have had a talk about this and mature discussions are best suited to #atrium channel since people already talk politics in there, other mature topics would be discussed in there too. For certain topics, we probably will get users to spoiler tag it and add a content warning if needed.

 

On 11/15/2020 at 11:48 AM, ZEL said:

Laaaastly! I think it would be really neat to have a page dedicated to explanations for our channels, or at least some of them.

 

  A while ago, Cass created a welcome pop-up for those just joining the server with a list of recommended channels with a brief description of what goes where. The channel descriptions page will also be nice for older members since they will likely want a refresher of what goes where in case of any channel additions or what not. The idea of a channel descriptions page will be brought up at the meeting.

 

21 hours ago, ZEL said:

I would like to ask for R5 to include some kind of guideline or instruction for how to proceed in case someone feels like an auth member's action hasn't been justified.

 

  I think again we need a topic or channel on this to help users on how to contact someone in case of an auth member's actions isn't justified. I imagine the guideline for now would be to contact a different admin/mod who wasn't involved in the initial warn/incident with their query (this is my own interpretation not an official one so do with that what you will). Like the stuff from your first post, this will be brought up in the upcoming staff meeting.

 

21 hours ago, ZEL said:

It's one thing to get exasperated when one person repeatedly tests your patience, but another when you snap at people on their first mistake, especially when it's not a rulebreak and merely etiquette.
 

It's understandable if one gets tired of seeing people make the same mistakes that are easy to avoid, but I believe that if you're a rolemodel for the community, you have to be able to either get past that, vent it out in private if you must, or hand off situations to another staff member instead. You should certainly be able to word your grievances in a non-antagonizing matter, at least.

    I'm going to raise my hand here and say I'm guilty of getting exasperated with repeat offenders. This is something I personally need to work on. As a whole, we have become better at handing off situations to other staff members if it gets too much but I'm aware we still have improvements on this to make.

 

21 hours ago, ZEL said:

Also because R1 applies to auth, too.

 

  I'm just going to highlight this as a reminder to everyone that yes the rules also apply to us mods too. This links back in with Ama's previous point, if you see that a mod has violated the rules and it has not been picked up then DM a mod/admin (one that didn't do the rule break of course) and it will be dealt with. 

  As a final note to everyone, if you do have some suggestions on anything that could be made clearer or an improvement in general to our rules/guidelines or the server in general then feel free to DM a mod on discord or message them on the forums (discord DMs are preferred but we do try to check our forum DMs when we can) and we'll bring it up in a staff meeting or provide an answer to your query if such a thing already exists. 

[ZEL]

Thanks for the response, Abyss! ♥

I'll be glad to see some guidelines, so thanks for considering it! I think the thread we currently have for how R4 works is a pretty good framework to go off, and I personally really like having quotable sections to refer to when people seem to misunderstand or not know a rule.

For the channel description, the pop-up upon joining the server is very neat, and the welcome channel covers the game related channels, but as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong) the only way to get it to pop back up is to leave and rejoin the server, and I'd love to additionally have something more permanent that also covers general channels. It never hurts to have a linkable source in another location, and I don't think it'll be terribly much work to provide, since most channels don't need much explanation.

 

For the second post and your responses to it - I am glad to hear that there's self-reflection going on.
Like I already said yesterday, I honestly don't enjoy taking the matter to this thread, and in the past years I have always taken my concerns with staff behavior to an auth member of my choice. I've always felt that they did a good job reacting to it.
But within this past year I've simply felt like certain patterns of behavior have surfaced too frequently, I really couldn't keep sliding into someone's DMs every time - and I for one have not felt like the situation improved in the past months.

 

I just do not like seeing people receive passive-aggression, mockery or scorn for simple non-malicious mistakes, and it's a real downer when it comes from auth members. Again, higher standards and all that.

We're in a chat, not facing each other in real life. There's always time to take a deep breath and swallow the exasperation and the impulse to make a snarky remark. There's always time to ask someone nicely to do/not do something. And it's always better to express a concern openly instead of vagueing in the hopes that people will catch on.

 

But thanks for the acknowledgement, and thanks to everyone who's taking it into consideration.

[Starry Knight]

Anytime u log out then back into reborn and access reborn it pops up as well