New Policy Announcement and Forum Rules

Discussion in 'General Martial Arts Discussion' started by Frodocious, Jul 14, 2012.

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  1. Frodocious

    Frodocious She who MUST be obeyed! Moderator Supporter

    We'd like to remind the regular posters at MAP that part of this site's goal is to provide a resource for inexperienced martial artists, as well as those contemplating getting involved in martial arts. With that in mind, we want to outline a couple of things we've noticed lately:

    1) Some questions will be asked out of inexperience. The fact that this information is old hat to regular posters here does not give anyone license to talk down to or berate someone who may be hearing it for the first time.

    2) Even when a question is posed by a troll, our responses will be read by everyone, troll or not. One of the most productive responses to trolling is to turn their efforts into something that's actually useful for sincere posters. Our time is better spent posting something informative than it is pointing out the obvious.

    3) There is a wide range of ages among MAP posters. In an online environment, it's sometimes easy to approach everyone as though they were at the same level of understanding. In reality, a 15-year-old asking a question is going to sound different from a 30-year-old asking a question. Their question isn't immature. It's age appropriate. MAP is not in the business of punishing 15-year-olds for being 15-year-olds.

    That said, we know that there are trolls. We recognize that some people post simply to cause trouble. And we understand that some of our regular "troll killers" are acting out of a desire to keep MAP free of trolling. But the intensity of this troll killing has reached a level, lately, that is beginning to sound hostile to anyone who doesn't fit the mold. We want to avoid this.

    With this in mind, we want to 1) first, ask that our regular posters please try to bear in mind MAP's larger mission and 2) inform everyone that we'll need to start handing out 2-week bans to people who cross a line in their responses to questions that might sound naive or unnecessary. We won't be putting up with trolls anymore than we have in the past, but we do want to be certain that we don't lose sight of the difference between troll and newbie.

    We didn't want to enact this policy without a full explanation, out of respect to our regulars. We do appreciate your efforts and hope that you'll work with us to keep MAP accessible to all genuinely interested posters.

    Thanks everyone.

    The Mod Team
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 12, 2016
  2. Frodocious

    Frodocious She who MUST be obeyed! Moderator Supporter

    Just bumping this because it seems a number of you have missed out on seeing it, have forgotten about it, think it doesn't apply to you or are willfully ignoring it.

    We are on the cusp of handing out the first 2 week ban, so be warned, attacking newbies is UNACCEPTABLE.
     
  3. Simon

    Simon Administrator Admin Supporter MAP 2017 Koyo Award

    The forum rules are clearly shown within the Terms of Service, however, there are few points worth making.

    No personal attacks. We have no problem with people expressing an opinion on an article, video or person's views, but verbal insults are not appropriate and will be removed.

    New threads with random videos, or one line posts such as, "what do you think of this?", where there is no input from the poster or attempt from them to start a discussion may be treated as spam and removed.

    You risk a ban if you continue to post videos or one line posts with no attempt at promoting discussion.

    Please add your own thoughts along with your video or link.

    Jokes about bodily functions will be frowned upon and may be removed. Remember we are a family friendly site.

    Make sure you comply with our no swearing policy. Masked profanity is also banned.

    You are not allowed to write asterisked curses (e.g. "You are a *******" etc) any more than you would be allowed to write the words themselves.

    Trying to circumvent the policy by posting abbreviations such as (WTF, BS etc) is also breaking the rules.

    These rules can be updated at any time and the onus is on you to check in periodically to review the forum rules.
     
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