The Zero-K Rules of Conduct

quote: blaming team members of defeat

This made me raise my brow higher than usual when reading through your posts. :)

It's funny that you listed "insulting other players" twice.

You can link "manner" to the thread by using [ url = http:/... ] blahblah [/ url ]. (without the whitespace)

Good comments!

Skasi,
"This made me raise my brow higher than usual when reading through your posts. :)"

Brow raising can be good excercise for your facial muscles. Their improvement will improve your life in various ways you will discover later. I've taken all scenarios into account.

Yes, blaming others... Let's leave that open for debate. I placed it there because it can be frustrating to see an experienced player cry and whine about the lost game. No sportmanship. Immature. Sadly it is too frequent as well. But I suppose that could be removed and let the 'no raging' take care of that.

I thank you for your other remarks.

I added a line about Cheating.

[DE]Rick
I added a line about deliberate disruption of gameplay.

Keep the suggestions coming.

Agree with Skasi. Unless the experienced player is sFireman he is probably right. You likely did lose the game. You cannot punish players for telling the truth.

Punishment should be for abusive behavior. Rude and unsportsmanlike behavior is not necessarily abusive.

Regarding this:

Players are expected to keep their language clean and treat fellow players with respect at all times. Continuous swearing, raging, obscenities, slurs based on gender, race, ethnicity or sexual preference are grounds for immediate punishment.

I don't have a problem with obscenities. I swear like a sailor myself. I only consider obscenities abusive when they're directed with hostility at a person. There's a big difference between "Fuck!" and "Fuck you!".

I welcome others' perspectives on this, of course.

I understand what your intention is there, and I'm in agreement. Writing the guidelines to make the intention clear will require some finesse.

I trust the moderators' judgment in differentiating between harmless swearing and abuse. But the moderators' task will be much easier if we can provide clear guidance that expresses the community's intent.

after reading a few of these "conduct" threads, here is my proposal for a unified troll-defense system:

level 1 - mute/kick (warning):
---insults
---offensive language (cursing, racial/religious slurs, etc.)
---spamming
level 2 - 1 week ban:
---griefing
---harassment
---3x level 1 violations
level 3 - 1 month ban:
---abuse of smurfs
---moderation dodging
---3x level 2 violations
level 4 - 1 year ban:
---cheating
---3x level 3 violations
level 5 - life ban:
---2x level 4 violations

examples of...
a ban for life:
- insult users 54 separate occasions
- grief 18 games
- dodge moderation 5 times after being caught abusing smurfs
a ban for 1 year
- harass a newbie about being a poor player, then grief 2 subsequent games, get banned for 1 week, but come back under a different account avoiding the ban
- grief 9 games

This is a very quick rough draft but hopefully it provides a bit more specificity in what is not allowed (and the consequences) than what we have currently. People have differing opinions about how severe some violations are than others, which is why I would like to have these be somewhat permissive; they would be minimum requirements, ***but they would also be cumulative***.

If you have any suggestions on adding other violations or changing the level requirements feel free to add your own comments. I'll use this as my personal guide for moderation in the meantime, and if other mods want to use it as an official template for dealing with trolls than we can finally have a clearly defined ruleset for dealing with trolls and noone needs to make any more of these silly threads :P

I'm all for official rules of conduct for respecting other players, but since when do we give a square fuck about swearing? Granted that it's not used with the intention of harrassing other players or spamming to ruin games, which are rules you have already covered. I don't see a problem with swearing.

Another forum I frequent has (IMO) a great set of rules. I'm gonna paste the 1st 2 parts, and perhaps some parts can be adapted to our needs.

*********************************************
BE NICE:


-Yes Respect:
The most important thing for you to do at these forums is respect your fellow forumers.

-No Trolling:
Just don't troll. If you're being purposefully and persistently antagonistic or contrarian in order to elicit a negative response from others, then you're trolling. It doesn't matter if you're 'technically' operating within the rules.

-No Racism/Sexism:
Racism, sexism, or any other prejudicial attitude will not be tolerated here. Be extremely careful when making 'jokes' that can be considered racist or sexist, and if you decide to go ahead and make these 'jokes', be prepared for punishment.

UPDATE: Since there is some confusion on this topic, I will clarify that this includes ALL prejudicial speech, including intolerant or insulting terms based on intellectual disability, gender orientation, sexual preference or political views. This is a direct extension of the Respect rule.

-No Porn/Shock:
Don't post or PM pornography or shock images ever. Don't post explicitly gruesome images, either. Doing so will result in a banning from the forum.

All other images that are unsafe for viewing at work or school should be marked NSFW (not safe for work) and LINKED as a URL. Do not post them as images under a spoiler, because images still load under spoilers and this can be a problem for people browsing at work or school.

-No Vigilante Modding:
If you see someone breaking the posted rules, use the report button to alert the moderators. A single, polite reminder that the offending poster has done something against the rules is fine, but don't take it upon yourself to admonish the offender or flip out about it for pages. You might even get in trouble for that! Please just use the report function and move on.

BE LEGAL:


-No Piracy:
Piracy of music, games, software, or anything short of a spanish galleon is a bannable offense. This includes asking people for files or offering to distribute them off-board. This rule will be enforced; consider yourself very fortunate if you get a warning.

-No Pedophilia:
We have zero tolerance toward pedophilia here. Linking to any pornographic material relating to children (whether it is written, drawn, photographic or video) will result in an instant permanent ban from the forums, and the latter two will likely be reported to the authorities.

-No Stalking or Harassment:
Inappropriate sexual comments, stalking or predatory behavior of any kind toward unwilling participants will not be tolerated. Same goes for any other type of harassment--if someone asks you to leave them alone, and you don't, you'll probably be banned.

-No Promoting Other Illegal Behavior:
Duh.
*************************************************

The porn, piracy, and pedophillia aren't probably an issue here, so I don't care as much about them. I really like the trolling, racism/sexism, and respect policies though.

missing stuff
voting for same map twice, also if nickname is [I]burp auto reduce rights seems fair to me.

BT: In-game rules.

Maackey,
You are suggesting a cumulative system instead of the draft on-the-spot punishment system that takes into account just few moments of the offenders history.

How do you suggest the 'crime record' is managed as the moderator needs to know a lot of offender's background? Ie. "offender, you've griefed 9 games and dodged admins 3 times. Please stand by for immediate level x punishment."