We have made some substantial changes to SEN's rules and Terms of Service. In most cases we have tried to clarify the existing rules as best as possible to create a better understanding of what is allowed here and what will get moderated. We have also added more rules to our "Maturity" section, as well as adding rules regarding the Shoutbox.

I'll leave this thread open for any necessary discussion and clarification.

You're killing me, man.

I see we've finally hit the point where there's so little non-staff traffic that there's nothing better for them to do in their forum than to create arbitrary rules that haven't been necessary for the 10 years this site's existed, including the era when the site actually was trafficked.

Well, whatever keeps away the boredom. Carry on.

It's very kind of you to suggest the moderation team has been perfect for all ten years (if that's what you meant by this being unnecessary), Azrael, but I'd have to disagree. There have been definite missteps in the past where the rules didn't adequately clarify or even cover scenarios, which led to a moderator making the wrong decision or a member getting angry over a differing interpretation of an ambiguous rule.

The majority of the changes are just rewrites of the old rules. Some are just stating unwritten rules that some members have become accustomed toward already, but other members are unfamiliar with completely. Take, for example:

This isn't so much a change in the rules as it is describing a process that has always been there.

Hopefully the changes will be found to be unobtrusive. I didn't advocate anything that significantly modified how the site has always functioned.

Also, I just noticed this. I assume it's a present IP left behind, and not a working draft by one of the current staff that got overlooked?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 20 2013, 11:04 pm by Roy.

Be nice if there was a diff (wiki-styles) as to what's changed. Even a brief summary in this thread would be better than what we have now - nothing.

Also this: logically implies that if you are of legal age, then SEN administrators are responsible for what appears on this site.

Not to be nitpicking, but in this case, the 'if' is more of a disclaimer than an 'if else' statement so it doesn't imply anything towards older ages. I guess it could be reworded to something like: Use this site at your own risks.

Edit: Actually, it does say "With that in mind, you use SEN at your own risk. " right after...

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 21 2013, 6:06 am by Apos.

Devlin did give a (very) brief summary, but perhaps it was too brief.

We removed two sections (I forget the titles of which) around behavior, but basically migrated/reworded them into a new section called "Maturity & Atmosphere." Also in that section, a bullet point on condescension was added (though it's just a more explicit version of one of the points under "Flaming").

The "Shoutbox" section was added, which beforehand was never mentioned in the rules. Its description states that it's a more lenient section of the site, particularly to what qualifies as spam.

More bullet points were added to the "Report Function" section, and one of the old bullet points was converted to a description of the section instead. The existing bullet points were also expanded upon.

A bullet point under "Spamming" was expanded to state it's perfectly acceptable to double-post in a topic if it's been three days since your last post (permitted it follows the rules under "Topic Bumping" and isn't just a bump for the sake of bumping).

The wording in the "Map Unprotection & Map Stealing" section for stealing maps was made more harsh.

A new bullet point on "Topic Bumping" suggests starting a new assistance topic and referring to the old one rather than bumping an old discussion.

Edit: The "Illegal Items" section contains a new bullet point stating that it is okay to provide direct links to legal downloads regardless of the source (e.g., posting a direct download to a legal torrent that's hosted on a torrent site that accepts piracy).

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I've scanned the ToS and don't see any changes compared to what I remember of the old one. I wasn't really involved on that so I couldn't give you specifics.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 21 2013, 2:26 pm by Roy.

The changes to the ToS were all me and these days I don't have much interest in changing policy on a large scale like that. Nothing substantial was changed, I just quickly went over it and removed some excess words and made some things less verbose. In a few places, the language became less harsh. Some redundancies with the rules were removed, while others remain for added emphasis.

If you don't notice any significant changes to the ToS, that's because I did it right, you're correct, or you never read it anyway.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 21 2013, 2:11 pm by Mini Moose 2707.

If *I* was a mod I would figure out someway to breathe life into the community...

I mean sure the older a game gets (Brood War) the less people there are in the associated communities... but then Starcraft 2 came out and it seems like SEN just ... lost - lost against the other mapping sites out there for SC2.

Well no matter how good a mod you are I suppose you can't stop the passage of time...

It didn't help that SEN was undergoing lots of SQL errors and lag at the time SC2 came out.

And the general "sucking up to Blizzard by 'doing the right thing' even though Blizzard doesn't care" stance of disallowing the early beta leaks etc put SEN on the back foot from which it never recovered.

From the way things are going on the SC2 communities that beat us to the punch, I'm not sure it would have mattered ultimately anyway. It's pretty apparent that the SC2 mapmaking community as a whole is nothing compared to SC1's (in terms of longevity), and unless changes are made on Blizzard's end, nothing we do will save it. I have no regrets with how we handled the beta crack ordeal, because I don't think we had a chance against the other communities - especially one backed by Curse. Would we have gotten more members? Probably, but I imagine they'd be just as inactive here as they are on the other sites. And we'd still have our older members trashing SC2 every chance they get, so I doubt those new members would have stuck around too long.

Discussion about what we could have done or what we didn't do is moot at this point. All we can do is move forward.

I don't get why a SC2 discussion even emerges in a topic about streamlined rules.

Unless you guys are suggesting since SEN wasn't revived with SC2 we should abandon the site altogether...?