Topic: [Suggestion]To draw more attention to the rules! (Read 659 times)

I think this suggestion indeed will bring some attention to the forum rules,
I'd also suggest that after registration, users be redirected to the thread Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ. With this being the post everyone first get to read after sign up, we can then be sure that users willingly chose to break rules if found guilty.

Well, maybe we can agree, because those who are breaking the rules accidentally, but not all the time, those are still type 1 and those newbies will rank up as the time goes by, those members are not spammers and hopefully won't be in the future as well...
But those who are breaking the rules all the time and don't care about anything but the ban, those won't become anything but spammers and the problem is that they are the majority now...

I don't think I agree with you on this. In as much that some people end up breaking the rules of this forum does not make all of them spammers. Majority are just ignorant of the fact that some activities are not tolerated on this forum and I think this additional option will be of great help to a lot of people here.

Or..

The idea of rules and guidelines could both exist. Rules could contain ban-able offenses, like cases of blatant plagiarism, or posting malware links, incentivizing people to post etc.

Guidelines could include things that iterate : " No trolling, no multi-posting, bumping to be limited to once in 24 hours".. You get the point.

And for the love of god, make an appeal system for bans that is more or less private, so only mods and admin can know, and can properly investigate. Some people will disagree on it, but it might be for the best of both worlds.

It doesn't matter if they ignore it but if the rules are there and are also shown upon sign-up then at least they have no excuses. A lot of people genuinely are oblivious to the rules, and it's one of the excuses that is commonly used (though obviously there's no excuses for copy and pasting but at least they've been told about it so can't use this excuse).


Well it depends on how theymos wants the forum to be run. He's stated he's against strict rules and probably wants as much freedom as possible with as little mod intervention as possible, but you can't have things both ways. As much freedom as possible is obviously good, but when you let people do largely what they want and staff take the backseat it quickly becomes very messy and theymos might be mostly ok with how the forum is now or accepts that's the price you pay for freedom. I think a middle ground can be found either way though. It would be easy to hire more mods to clean up the forum or crack down on signature campaigns but if that was what theymos wanted he probably would have done it by now. Boards like Bitcoin Discussion need a dedicated mod regardless of how much theymos wants to crack down on things though.


Don't call them rules then. Call them guidelines or community standards. Not having the rules or 'guidelines' displayed is what's causing a lot of the rules breaking in the first place. If people were made aware of the basic standards expected here then most wouldn't break them. We don't have to explicitly say do not copy and paste or you will die. You can just give a few examples of will likely get you banned.

This is a better idea since members won't have to be redirected to another page in order to see the rules. I was thinking that putting some snippets of the rules would catch their attentions more like :

Did you know that the penalty for plagiarism (copying and pasting other's work) is a perma-ban on your account? Found out more by reading the rules, you might be violating some of them already

Something like this would catch their attention for sure and they will probably go ahead and read the rest of the rules in order for them to avoid being banned in the forum.

I believe rules governing groups or associations define what are expected of each individuals belonging to these ecosystems should be made clear and available to them. Since ignorance is not an excuse to the law, I think this is a nice suggestion and should to be implemented as soon as possible. If the rules button is added to the forum, no one can give excuses of not knowing the basic rules of this forum.  

I'm not so active at the moment, too many projects IRL, so just coming to check something and give some merit, if I find someone deserving.
At first I thought, OK this is a new menu, I haven't seen it /open it before, it should be new and I post the thread. Then I checked all the open browser tabs on the phone ( I had some old ones) and again, this menu was there. Then I realize that this change was made not so long ago but it's nothing new. Then I read all the comments, and everything was clear.

If you just add a menu it won't draw so much attention, I already experienced it. I still thinking that the "news feed" is the best option, and if you have a running text, it will draw much more attention.

There's a reason why the rule thread is titled as unofficial:


My thoughts on the sentiment aside, I really doubt the thread's going to receive any more recognition beyond a sticky.

I can agree with The Pharmacist's pessimistic ghost, there are two types of newbies here (basically):
- those who care about the rules and they will study it and will try their best not to break them
- the spammers who won't care about the whole thing, despite of it will be put next to the more menu, will flash red and blue or will stay for 30 seconds at login...
For the first type, it will help a bit, for the rest, it won't... ever... but unfortunately they are the majority now, so I'm not sure if it worths the effort to develop this for those few newbies who are not here to spam...

Doubt that this will increase the awareness for newbies, even I myself only consciously use the "profile" and "messages" section of the menu. Even iasenko thought that the "more" section was new in the menu bar. Think like you are one of them, will you as a newbie click a button where it says "rules" on instead of going to sections trying to find threads where you can post? They simply cannot avoid it, their mind is simply fixated on posting that they are not aware that rules are in place. A proof of it is newbies posting in the meta section asking why they got banned from the forum.

@iasenko

Take a look at my Picture i have posted in the first post there you can see the " More " Button too !

Guess it is there now near 2 weeks !


Cheeers 

Great idea I think it would help a lot to alert people to the unofficial rules.

Of course it will not help with the largest and most dangerous problem of intentional scammers who will always be crafty and stealthy or just too big to tackle and bring down fully. The board will not be easy to moderate until sigs are removed. Or a decentralised version of noob jail brought back.

The unofficial rules  should come with a guide to the possible action that will be taken against you for each infraction. Merit reduction and variable time bans. They can't be too rigid (which is why i think they are not already) because there always be need for a human element to take all factors into consideration. Any bad decisions can also be discussed in meta anyway.

The problem is most people are worried about the smaller less damaging infractions more than tackling the huge scams.

Intentional bad guys that have demonstrated they are not to be trusted should be perm banned.

The real dangerous ones are not going to be easily caught though.

When I open the thread for the first time there was an error on the image and I thought that it may be the German server he is uploading the picture to.
That's why I uploaded it on imgur but when I posted the new image, I saw that his link is also working just fine and  left a note that it's working now.
That's all.

Not sure what is your real problem, but I guess (only my guess) that you got trouble with normal link (I don't remember what its name truly is, I will update the post later when I am on computer); then all thing was fine when you used Direct Link.
Personally, I always use Direct Links on imgur to show attached images inside my posts.
Do I guess right, @iasenko?

Yes, you are correct, it applies only for the list, but I read it so many times that only the word Unofficial stuck in my head.
Anyway I support the suggestion with 2 hands, I even suggested it myself some months ago, that the rules have to be more visible.

To be honest, from the moment you enforce rules they do become OFFICIAL, no matter how you name them.

Keep in mind the word unofficial only applies to the list and not to the rules themselves.

However an official LIST would also be great.

They are still Unofficial rules but we enforce them quite heavily.
Isn't it time now to make the Official /complete/ Forum Rules, then this suggestion will be perfectly logical.
We need some cases/scenarios to be cleared out so we know how to react in a particular case when is't not covered by the rules.

I would suggest the following.
Once a new user registers the first thing he sees after entering his login details are the rules of the forum. I have seen that on other forums. And dont give them the option to immediately close the page by clicking accept, instead a countdown of 30 secs would be initiated and only after the time is up they would be able to click on accept and access the forum.

This should be the case every time they login to the site for as long as they are Newbies. As their rank changes to Jr. Member this would no longer be the case. It is no guarantee that they will read the rules but maybe some will. 

They don't even read the OP, let alone the other posts in the thread. Some of them don't even read the topic subject/title. They definitely don't read the stickied threads or the rules, and I don't think even having it in flashing neon size 60 text would change that.

The small number of newbies who aren't spammers will read the rules. The rest won't, regardless of what we do. More mods and more strict punishments for spamming, and word would quickly spread amongst the shitposters. That, I think, would be much more effective than any attempt to get them to actually read the rules.

Or perhaps hilarious' suggestion of subtly adding them to pictures of scantily clad women is the way to go.

If it would be seen on the Bitcointalk which accounts were banned with indicating the points of the rules that were violated then in my opinion even the laziest users and spammers would be interested to read the forum rules.

Judging by the way many of them post, they don't even read much of the other posts in the threads they are posting in. I'm not even certain if they even read and comprehend the posts that they proceed to plagiarize. 

Good suggestion. Although just as most individuals don't read terms and conditions of exchange and other sites before clicking the accept button even when the sites makes it visible enough, so will be the case on forum but with the implementation of your suggestion, defaulters who are caught won't have an excuse of "the rules not been clear enough". So I love the suggestion.

Social studies have shown that flashing red and blue colors are the best way to draw attention.

Take a Look here at  https://bitcointalk.org/modlog.php and you see self how many !

@The Pharmacist

Yeah i know that the Spam and Shitposting Army would be continue.
But as you said too maybe we can bring the Rules more to a small number of new members and it can be a hint for existing ones too!

I think it is time for Theymos to write the "Official" rules and create the button in top as you suggested.

Just my thinking , "Unofficial" word in rules does not sound great.

Not a bad suggestion at all, but the pessimist ghost that lives between my ears is telling me that our chronic shitposting/spamming/plagiarizing population is just going to ignore it, just like they fail to read everything else that might keep them from getting banned or put on ignore lists.

The rules need to be updated IMO, particularly with respect to plagiarism--what constitutes plagiarism and what doesn't, and I suggested this in another thread.  There also needs to be more enforcement of certain rules, like not making zero-value posts, not making consecutive posts, and not necrobumping threads.  I think if those improvements would require more staff members, Theymos ought to hire some.  Flying Hellfish is doing a bangup job in P&S, and I think we need more mods like him in sections like Bitcoin Discussion and Economics.  I'm not disparaging the current mods of those sections, because I know it's got to be a crazy job, but I think some help is required.

But back to what OP suggested, making the rules more visible would certainly be a good thing.  It might help at least a small number of new members who will actually take the time to read the rules.

A different colour text would sure draw attention to a text as it tends to stick out from the rest.

But how many users actually break the rules unknowingly? The basic rules are generally accepted code of conducts and is frowned upon in any community or forum.
Highlighting it won't compel others to actually read it through if they do click in it, and it won't stop those who try regularly to cheat the system, but it can help the well meaning users who might be ignorant of ne rule or the other.

This is obviously a welcome suggestion,it may actually not be changing much because the rules are there for all to see..
But creating a separate button for rules will happen to be more catchy and easily accessible to new users on the forum..
And more so highlighting them in a different color Makes it stand out, and enforces the fact that that thread ought to be read...

Here is a link to the image in Imgur :
https://i.imgur.com/bb5M31M.jpg

Edit : the image is working now, I got an error the first time.

This is just an Idea and a Suggestion and note for new and existing users about the Forum Rules.

Maybe it is more helpful for New Users and they can see the Rules earlyer this way.

Also, existing users may often be reminded of the rules.

My Suggestion:

1. Create a Forum Rules Button on the Top Buttons Bar and when you click on it you get to the Forum Rules.

2. Since usually in every subforum the rules are pinned, one could highlight the font in color so that the thread becomes more attentive to the rules.

This can be maybe looking like this :




This should actually be easy to integrate into the system and the page!

If you have any more ideas about it or others to bring the Rules more visible to Users feel free to post it !

Its just an Suggestion.

Regards Lafu