Please remain civil, folks

Hi, everyone! This is a friendly moderator checking in. Maybe it's a full moon on Saturn or something, but the tension level seems to have been rising a lot lately, especially in this forum. We want to remind folks of a few points:

1) No Insults. You may not call other posters insane, stupid, arrogant, dense, lazy, or jerks. You may not imply that about them through a roundabout method. YOu may not insult them in some new way that I haven't thought of.
2) Do not speculate about someone's thought processes. No "If you'd bothered to read what I wrote"; no "Why don't you stop to think before just denying everything I say?" No "I know you think you've got all the answers, but..." None of that.
3) If someone insults you, no matter how badly they do it, you may not respond in kind. Report their post to the mods instead.
4) Ultimately, none of us has the single, final right answer on any rules question. We don't even have a firm agreement on what a right answer looks like: some people operate according to a Rules As Written approach, while others believe that a looser interpretation based on perceived intent and overall coherence of the rules is the best way to derive the right answer. If you and another poster can't find common ground, it's perfectly okay to agree to disagree, instead of insisting on making the other poster see that they're wrong and you're right.

Things are getting pretty heated here, so we're going to start moderating with a heavier hand. If we have to warn you, don't be surprised to discover that the warning carries with it a three-day or longer ban from the boards. Remember that we may warn you, we may even ban you, even if you're just responding in kind to a real or perceived insult from another poster: having been attacked first is not a defense.

I hope this is clear, and I hope we can keep this forum as an interesting, intellectually stimulating place.

Thanks, everyone!
Daniel

Just as a followup to this - this forum (by which I mean the Rules forum in particular, not EN World in general) has developed a reputation for hostility and bickering. Nearly all of our reported posts come from this forum - and often from the same people.

We've just handed out two bans - one temporary, one permanent. We intend to be very strict in the Rules forum because it needs a much heavier hand than elsewhere on the boards. That means we will be using our option to tell people that they are no longer invited to these boards more often than we have done up until now.

Our primary aim is to keep the peace. We don't care what your rules opinions are - you can have any opinion you like, and you can state it as long as you do so politely. You might think that that goes without saying, but we're getting sick and tired of rude people who claim that we've moderated them because we disagree with their opinion. To be clear - we moderate them because they're rude.

Hopefully we can make this forum a friendlier place. With luck, the number of reported posts from here will start to decrease, and people will find it a more welcoming venue for rules discussions.

Thanks, folks!

We've received a query regarding a certain type of behaviour. I'll quote the email here, but not identify the member who asked it - and then I'll address the issue.

I would appreciate if the you (the mods collectively) could address a specific practice
that has become very common in the Rules Forum. Namely, labelling other people's
interpretations as house rules. This is the opening insult in nearly every contested
thread. X says "The RAW says ...". Y says "Because of realism/balance/intent/etc,
I would rule as follows ..." Then X says "Well, this is the RULES forum.
Y, you should go post in the house rules forum."

X never says outright Y is stupid. So, do the moderators consider X's comment an
insult? I can report each such post, but I'd rather not bother if the moderators
don't agree.

Click to expand...

We consider this to be rude behaviour, and will moderate it as such. Please feel free to report instances of this.

We have two forums, D&D Rules and House Rules. It's a fairly arbitrary division, maninly designed to keep traffic in each manageable. However, the two subjects are incredibly closely related - so closely related that any reasonable conversation of one is very, very likely to include elements of the other. This is not a problem.

We're not going to criticise people for daring to say the word "Buffy" in the General RPG forum. We're not going to criticise people for daring to say the word "D&D" in the Sci-fi forum. And we're not going to criticise people for mentioning rules in the House Rules forum or for mentioning house rules in the Rules Forum.

If it's relevant to the conversation, it belongs in the conversation. The distinction between a house rule and an interpretation of the rules can be so fine that we're really not going to argue about it.

So, please do not tell other posters to go and post in the House Rules forum. We here at EN World are not that anal. Don't prove us wrong, please. Let the conversations flow naturally, be polite and respect each others' opinions.

And for the inevitable wags out there - no that does not mean you need to start threads asking rules questions in the House Rules forum, and it does not mean you need to start threads promoting your latest house rule in the rules forum. But it does mean that conversations can drift slightly.