As a result of our ongoing discussion with the community and within staff we have decided on an overhaul of the Off Topic (OT) area of the forums. With this change we will have two subforums for your posting pleasure, that we will, for the moment, call Forum Civilium and Forum Taberna. This will hopefully both widen your posting options, and allow CFC staff to both focus more on the Civ parts of the site, and direct our limited resources within the Colosseum to where they are most necessary.
The forum that we will for now call Forum Civilium will be the place for moderated discussion threads just like the kind we have always encouraged in the existing OT. Existing standards will essentially apply, so civility without trolling and personal attacks will be the order of the day. For an additional level of oversight, we will keep the Red Diamond option as a choice for new threads. Any ban that you earn from this forum (or primarily from this forum) will result in an exclusion of up to six months, at moderator discretion, in addition to your regular one week forum-wide holiday. Given we're providing you with a lower moderation alternative, we'd expect you'd behave yourselves here, so if you don't, you may find yourself facing a ban fairly promptly. Likewise, if we feel your behaviour is not conducive to the type of environment we are trying to foster, you may be summarily removed.
If you are interested in thoughtful discussions this is the forum for you. While there are no stated restrictions on what can be discussed here, those threads that do not have a serious side, or do not offer the quality of discussion we expect, may well be closed or moved to what we are for now calling Forum Taberna, at the discretion of the mods. Likewise, posts within threads that do not meet the quality we expect are liable to be infracted and/or moved to Forum Taberna at the discretion of the mods.
The forum we are for now calling Forum Taberna will be for those who want a freewheeling, lightly moderated collection of threads. We will adhere to a much more hands off approach to moderation. We will allow more spam, and banter and chatty posting that does not become mean or hateful. We will of course respond to inappropriate pictures, undisguised use of banned words, name calling, PDMA, hate speech and the obvious no nos. If you post here, you will not be protected from the bumps and bruises found in discussions about controversial topics. If you want a more orderly discussion with less risk of being overrun by lower quality posts, Forum Civilium might be a better option.
In Forum Taberna you are welcome to post threads on any topic of your choosing (even if they duplicate ones in Forum Civilium) and we will allow both discussion threads and the chatty/spammy topics that now populate OT. Please keep in mind that we will enforce the family nature present throughout CFC and shut down threads that are inappropriate in general. We will even allow you to experiment with more personal threads in Forum Taberna (so long as they comply with the PG-13 standards), but will reserve the right to close any that get out of hand. Forum Taberna is not a replacement for "Forum Games" and moderators will freely move threads like 'post the next number' there or close them. Fun stuff, jokes, puns and one liners are encouraged, as are being nice and friendly in your fun. If your idea of fun is to be mean and nasty on a personal level, you will need to rethink your reason for being here.
Generally we would like Forum Taberna to be self-regulating and will mostly only interfere if we deem it necessary to ensure a friendly posting environment for everyone on this site. Given moderators are only likely to be dealing with more serious rule-breaking, if we feel the need to intervene in any disruptive behavior we will tend to impose harsher penalties and (temporarily) remove the offenders from the forum.
We look forward to your feedback on this change (and what names we should permanently give the forums), and appreciate your co-operation as we work through any teething issues.
The forum that we will for now call Forum Civilium will be the place for moderated discussion threads just like the kind we have always encouraged in the existing OT. Existing standards will essentially apply, so civility without trolling and personal attacks will be the order of the day. For an additional level of oversight, we will keep the Red Diamond option as a choice for new threads. Any ban that you earn from this forum (or primarily from this forum) will result in an exclusion of up to six months, at moderator discretion, in addition to your regular one week forum-wide holiday. Given we're providing you with a lower moderation alternative, we'd expect you'd behave yourselves here, so if you don't, you may find yourself facing a ban fairly promptly. Likewise, if we feel your behaviour is not conducive to the type of environment we are trying to foster, you may be summarily removed.
If you are interested in thoughtful discussions this is the forum for you. While there are no stated restrictions on what can be discussed here, those threads that do not have a serious side, or do not offer the quality of discussion we expect, may well be closed or moved to what we are for now calling Forum Taberna, at the discretion of the mods. Likewise, posts within threads that do not meet the quality we expect are liable to be infracted and/or moved to Forum Taberna at the discretion of the mods.
The forum we are for now calling Forum Taberna will be for those who want a freewheeling, lightly moderated collection of threads. We will adhere to a much more hands off approach to moderation. We will allow more spam, and banter and chatty posting that does not become mean or hateful. We will of course respond to inappropriate pictures, undisguised use of banned words, name calling, PDMA, hate speech and the obvious no nos. If you post here, you will not be protected from the bumps and bruises found in discussions about controversial topics. If you want a more orderly discussion with less risk of being overrun by lower quality posts, Forum Civilium might be a better option.
In Forum Taberna you are welcome to post threads on any topic of your choosing (even if they duplicate ones in Forum Civilium) and we will allow both discussion threads and the chatty/spammy topics that now populate OT. Please keep in mind that we will enforce the family nature present throughout CFC and shut down threads that are inappropriate in general. We will even allow you to experiment with more personal threads in Forum Taberna (so long as they comply with the PG-13 standards), but will reserve the right to close any that get out of hand. Forum Taberna is not a replacement for "Forum Games" and moderators will freely move threads like 'post the next number' there or close them. Fun stuff, jokes, puns and one liners are encouraged, as are being nice and friendly in your fun. If your idea of fun is to be mean and nasty on a personal level, you will need to rethink your reason for being here.
Generally we would like Forum Taberna to be self-regulating and will mostly only interfere if we deem it necessary to ensure a friendly posting environment for everyone on this site. Given moderators are only likely to be dealing with more serious rule-breaking, if we feel the need to intervene in any disruptive behavior we will tend to impose harsher penalties and (temporarily) remove the offenders from the forum.
We look forward to your feedback on this change (and what names we should permanently give the forums), and appreciate your co-operation as we work through any teething issues.
