Topic: Why not Make "Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules..." Official? (Read 298 times)

You can take the unofficial rules to mean the official rules. Moderators play by the unofficial rules. If something pops up that isn't covered by the rules, its discussed amongst the staff and it is either added to the rules if deemed necessary, or not if its not. Theymos provides moderators a few guidelines, but most of the unofficial rules are what the moderators came up with. They haven't all been officially sanctioned by Theymos for the reasons in mprep's post.

Some of them care... If they didn't care, would you see them opening up appeal threads on meta?

The name changes the perspective of how some members view the rules. You may view them differently now because you are an older member and you know what to do but If one is a newbie, things maybe different.
It happened to me that's why i made a suggestion about it. At first when I saw "Unofficial List", I Ignored reading them but had I seen "Official forum rules" or "List of Forum rules" it would have been different

Moderators' decisions varying surely can't stop them from being official rules of the forum. They are supposed to be like a standard or benchmark against which decisions will be made. Of course not everyone will follow them, but they will help to guide the members who are willing to be within the limits.
Your Country for example has Laws but has their existence stopped any crimes at all?

What would change if the rules became Official? Those who get banned for the most common reasons such as copy-pasting and spamming don't care about the rules anyway. And those who do care and abide by the rules aren't affected by the name. Many rules are subjective by nature. What one mod considers off-topic might not be completely off-topic by another mod.   

OP suggestion obviously isn't bad but since joined this forum I realize that admin is user friendly. He don't want to present himself too strictly to forum users. Perhaps that's the reason why admin not encourage to create any official rules for this forum. We got financial freedom by bitcoin and look like admin also want to give freedom to this forum user. To manage obvious corruption moderators create unofficial rules and admin not prevent them. I believe there is personal instructions to moderators from admin how they should handle forum. So we can't say that here is no rules.

Rules made by human, by admin and demands from forum community.
Rules can be changed/ adjutsted over time for some reasons (when new type of abusements occur).
Rules can be changed / adjusted due to demands from governments' demands (who knows).
So, that is why I guess it has been tittled as 'Unofficial rules" for too long, and it should be tittled like this.

Not having a set of laws or official rules gives more power to those who govern. It is impossible to have a democratic country that does not contain a set of laws that is the same for all. But the forum is not a democracy and perhaps to keep true to the original vision, this attitude of having suggestions, but not laws, may be necessary so that those who govern have the power to adjust and discuss each case as unique. But I still believe that there should be some official rules that even the moderators could be punished if they disrespected them.

Because, technically, it isn't (and probably never will be) official. To quote theymos:



So while it isn't a de jure list of rules, the de facto of the situation is that AFAIK all current mods enforce some variation / interpretation of said list of rules. However, if theymos makes someone a moderator and said moderator decides to completely disregard the list, while still managing to keep to the way theymos wants the forum to be run, he's completely free to do so.

It's an unofficial guide. The moderators have their own rules for. Each board which are official and supersede or add to those.

It's also up to the mods. Theymos is giving them more power in deciding and endorsing a kind of voting system (I guess). It also means someone who's banned can't go on a massive reporting spree of the people they think banned them or reported them.

As highlighted in the post. I understand is a reference of sorts but then why don't we at least have an Official list of the forum rules.
If some rules are not enforceable all the time, the lets start with the core rules.

All I would love to see is a catchy sticky of Official rules and perhaps guides plus FAQs if possible which could be very hard to get ignored by newly registered members.
A better title or new sticky could somehow change that.

The word "Unofficial" represents the "List" only, the rules are still "official" , that word also gives some "flexibility" since this is not an official organization and the list is not written by the forum admin/owner himself.

it also states that


which means that mprep probably wants to tell you that  " There might be other unlisted rules out there , some of these rules might not be enforced all the time, and i should not be held responsible for any flaw/mistake in this unofficial list"

The "Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ" has been there since 2014.
The thread is a sticky and is used as reference to the forum's rules by old members and new members. Now, I understand it's of course a work in progress and a collection of different Official rules and guides but why shouldn't it just be endorsed and renamed as an Official List of Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQs, since it a sticky thread already

From a newbies' perspective, when I joined the forum back then, I under-looked the list and did not read through it thinking it was "Unofficial" anyway, and I believe there are many more newbies who have done the same. Luckily I didn't break any rules like plagiarism and spamming.
To be honest, I read through the unofficial list of rules much later when I realized that there were some serious offenses that were totally not accepted here like plagiarism after I saw a half dozen chaps making ban appeal threads on Meta.

I think a sticky thread with an affirming title like "Official List of Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQs" would be much more appealing for New Members to check it out and read through.
If it's impossible to rename it for whatever reasons, then lets get the Official list from some highly respected member of the community or the Admin.