Moderation, hopefully IN moderation

[dvandom]

Okay, figured I'd make a fresh announcement topic in case anyone doesn't check General anymore.

Mark asked me to help run the board, I agreed to, and once we figured out how to get it to work (for a while I was listed as a mod but had no actual mod powers, oops) I assumed the responsibilities.

My plan is to stick to post-herding, mainly trying to keep General from clogging up with stuff that should be in one of the other forums (although if I see something way off-topic in another forum I'll move that too). I'll also "sticky" posts I think are of general interest or that constitute "frequently asked questions".

I don't expect to have to do any membership work, since so far the only problems we've had have been of the "Oh, I didn't know" sort, we've managed to avoid any trolls or Problem Members. If that changes, though, I'll try to stay on top of things.

Anyway, this thread is locked, if you want to discuss/congratulate/ask to be a mod, there's a thread already in General you can use.

---Dave

[dvandom]

Just a quick addendum, people have been asking about a rules posting. That's something I don't feel comfortable formulating policy on solo, I'll need to do some emailing with Mark about it. But here's a few guidelines that should tide you all over.

1) Don't be a jerk. It's one thing to blunder about enthusiastically and make mistakes, that's okay. But deliberate jerkitude is a Bad Thing.

2) Post to the correct forum. General is for stuff that doesn't (yet) have a board of its own. The only fuzzy boundary at the moment is around Art Talk...if you want to just show off your art and it's not Miki or Akiko related, then it can go here. But if you want critiques, it should go in Art Talk.

3) This is an all-ages board. Don't post anything directly that wouldn't be appropriate to daytime broadcast TV in the U.S. So no cussin', no nudity (even tasteful), no gore. If you absolutely have to include it (i.e. you want a critique of your nude studies), then do it as an external link, don't use the img tags. And always WARN CLEARLY if the link goes someplace "Not Safe For Work" (or kids).

4) If linking to something that isn't yours, don't just link directly to an image, link to a proper page. Grabbing just an image file is called hotlinking, it bypasses any ads the host may be using to pay for bandwidth, and counts as being a jerk (see rule #1).

Hopefully we can have something a little more concrete later.

---Dave

[Mark Crilley]

These are great guidelines, Dave; thanks for putting them together and posting them. If you'd like to you could go ahead and make this a 'read this before posting' kind of thing that's always visible for first-timers who join us.

I'd just add that everyone should be aware that Dave is doing all this out of the goodness of his heart, so please don't start posting things like "Hey Dave, do this! Hey Dave, do that!" Let's try to keep this forum self-regulating to whatever degree that's possible.

Thanks a bunch, everyone!

Mark

[dvandom]

Guest posting has now been disabled, due to excessive spambot infiltration. I just closed the last holes that were left, and deleted such spambot posts as I could find.

---Dave