What do you want to know when joining ENWorld?

[Blue]

We have a strong list of community guidelines which should always be the first place to send new members.

But, let's face it, we have a huge variety of posters. Worldwide reach with different cultures represented. People who played Chainmail when it came out to people who are just joining our hobby. A wide variety of neurodivergent and neurotypical posters and readers, some of whom will do better with a hard list of rules.

So I put this together as a question thread, where you can post your thoughts and they can be voted up and down by others. Reading the Community Guidelines is assumed, everyone is presented those when creating a new account. But what else should folks know?

EDIT: Hmm, can a question thread only have one solution to be voted on per poster?

 

[Blue]

A (+) thread is for positive and constructive responses only.

 

[Blue]

Follow Wheaton's Law.

 

[Tonguez]

What is that Solution thing? Whats a question thread? You can do more than just polls?

 

[Umbran]

A (+) thread is for positive and constructive responses only.

That is not quite correct .
A (+) thread is for responses that don't question or deny the base premise of the thread, or otherwise try to shut down the thread's discussion.

There was a time, years ago, when someone starting a discussion, "I think X is cool, I want to talk about X and how you use it in your games," would be met with a horde of posts of the form, "X is badwrongfun, and people who use it are ugly and their mothers dress them funny."

While both are valid opinions, the result was that a longish list of topics got bogged down in having to litigate, re-litigate, and re-re-litigate their right to existence.

Thus, the (+) thread. If someone starts a (+) thread saying, "Darksun is awesome! Let's talk about your great Darksun campaign moments", there should be no posts of the form, "Darksun is crappy and kicks puppies". If you don't want to talk about how Darksun is awesome, and hear some campaign moments, that thread isn't for you.

 

[aco175]

Some people just cannot let things go. They feel the need to be right or push their point and be combative. The filter is not there since there is no face to face communication. There should be a 'do better' button or something rather than just reporting it. It is a whole of social media problem, but this site does do a better job than most.

 

[Deset Gled]

Challenging the mods to ban you or otherwise taunting moderation (e.g. "See you after my vacation" or "I don't care if I get modded for this") is one of the fastest ways to get banned. I feel like this is obvious to almost everyone , and clearly falls under multiple of the posted rules. But the times I've seen it play out, I often get the impression the offender severely underestimated the severity of the response they got.

If someone puts you on Ignore, you should probably take a minute to think about why. Sometimes it's a you problem. Sometimes it's a them problem. Sometimes it's a both of you problem.

Don't be afraid to use the Ignore function. Sometimes, it's for the good of other posters who don't want to experience your personal beef as much as it is about your personal beef.

There are certain topics that are not technically verboten, but are so close to the edge of the rules that you probably shouldn't bring them up unless you have a really, really good reason. Example topic #1: Zak S. And I'm not even sure if using him as an example is a good enough reason.

If you think one poster is being a jerk, maybe they're just having a bad day. If you think every poster is being a jerk, maybe you're the one having a bad day.

Breaking down a quote into sections to respond to different points is completely expected from time to time. Breaking down a quote into dozens of sections to respond to it sentence by sentence is a good indication that it's time to refer to my previous point.

Jargon is supposed to assist communication; if jargon is obscuring communication, stop using it. If you can't explain your thought without jargon, you probably don't have a complete thought.

If you've repeated yourself a dozen times in a thread and feel like people still aren't listening to you, posting your opinion the 13th time probably isn't going to help.

"Understanding" is not the same as "agreeing". It is completely possible for people to understand you and still disagree with you.

 

[Morrus]

Challenging the mods to ban you or otherwise taunting moderation (e.g. "See you after my vacation" or "I don't care if I get modded for this") is one of the fastest ways to get banned. I feel like this is obvious to almost everyone , and clearly falls under multiple of the posted rules. But the times I've seen it play out, I often get the impression the offender severely underestimated the severity of the response they got.

Yup. Dare us to ban you, we’ll do it immediately. No exceptions.

 

[darjr]

Don’t hold onto things to tightly here. This is a great place to hash out ideas or discourse in the Hobby but not to be rude or angry about it.

 

[Rabulias]

I like Morrus's analogy: This is his house and you are a guest within it. Act accordingly and all will be cool.