Well, perhaps my efforts are pointless in light of Indirik's quote, but I'm still going to respond to Anaris. Perhaps the back and forth will prove useful to the Moderators in determining their approach.
First of all, I'd like to say that I've never fully agreed with the restrictions people want to put on posting messages that people have sent in-game. If you are willing to share the information in-game, why are you not willing to share it outside the game? Anyone who's posting it on the forum has obviously already received it, so they have the ability to share it with any group they like in-game anyway...
That said, I do understand the desire to prevent information that is still private to certain groups in-game from becoming public outside the game, and thus the restrictions on posting messages on the forum that your characters did not send.
I do not understand how preventing quoting even messages your own characters have sent helps anything. Please justify this more fully.
Because this way it's much easier to enforce since it may not always be clear to a Moderator or others whether the person who posted the quote represents the family being quoted or not (as there's no direct link between game and forum accounts). Black and white rules are much easier to enforce than ones with exceptions and other shades of gray. Beyond that, many people have talked about how they feel that too much IG information being shared on the forum. Direct quotes of characters are probably the most intimate and potentially damaging type of information that can be shared. Someone may have written a letter to all rulers, but that doesn't mean that every ruler bothered to share that letter with their realm. The forum is not for propaganda purposes, which if you think about it is one of the only reasons to ever bother sharing a direct quote here. We're supposed to be talking about the game, not playing it. More to the point, do you have a positive argument to make about the benefit of
allowing direct quotes? I cannot think of any off hand.
I like this, and in fact, I might almost say that this would be a better way to handle #2. However, I would change "realm" to either "realm or guild/religion" or "non-closed/non-exclusive group", since being public in a religion like Sanguis Astroism gets it before at least as many eyes as in many realms.
Sharing something in Sanguis Astroism (for instance) would make it public knowledge in multiple realms, so I think we're covered. I don't see a reason to be more precise in the wording. If anything, I should probably remove the reference to realms and leave it at "public knowledge." Then the Moderators can make a call if someone complains.
I don't object to this, but it seems like a restatement of #4. Perhaps it could be merged into it?
Perhaps. One says be polite. The other one says don't be an !@#$%^&. The difference is in the emphasis. But yes, they could be merged relatively easily. I won't bother to do it now, especially since the Mods will be writing their own, but yeah... The emphasis is why I kept them separate.
My main worry with guidelines like these—particularly #2 and #3—is that Tom will see them as "just another set of rules" that people can game and lawyer their way around.
Maybe, but Mod actions are not publicly announced, and if I were them I would not be in the business of considering appeals. People who get warned will get the hint quickly enough, and if they don't they'll end up muted. I don't see much lawyering being possible, or encouraged.
