Or, How to keep the Clown happy, and keep your legs.
Okay folks, I've been one of the Great and Mighty Overseers of this crazy place for a little over a month at this point, and I've decided that the rules are a bit aged at this point, so I'm going to go back to basics and set out what the deal is (having first consulted with my illustrious companions, obviously) here as regards posting habits. Obviously, everything from the
40K Online Rules and Netiquette thread still applies, but I'm going to clarify a few things here that aren't covered there, or explain in more detail how the rules that are covered there work in here.
1)
RAW vs RAI: The Great DebateTo those of you who don't know, RAW stands for Rules As Written, and RAI stands for Rules As Intended, and it is one of the big sticking points that comes up here. Rules As Written means exactly what it says on the tin; the Rules according to the letter of the law as laid down in the various rulebooks. Rules As Intended is a little murkier, but essentially it boils down to arguing that a rule applied to the letter is silly and not what the person who wrote the rule meant to happen when writing it.
So we are clear;
on this board, all topics are to be treated as RAW. There is no way we will be able to tell what the designers intended when they wrote the books 99% of the time, and the purpose of this board is to establish what the rules in the book say. While you are of course at perfect liberty to change the rules in agreement with your opponent, and to say so in a thread here, or any other thing which does not involve sticking to the letter, if someone asks a question saying "how does this rule work?", "This is how the rule ought to work in a just and caring universe" is
NOT an acceptable answer, and will be removed, or just laughed at. If you want to discuss House Rules then head along to
The Forge. I'm sure they'll be glad to have you, the freaks.
2)
Woooooooaaaaahooooo: Your Post Is On FireOr, in other words, flaming. There is often confusion over what flaming actually consists of, so to be clear; on this board, flaming is treated as what is known as an ad hominem attack. That is to say, a personal attack on a poster. "You're wrong because you are ugly and stupid", or even "you're ugly and stupid". That's flaming, and it is a big no-no. It's also pretty common and I'd like to see less of that, and I know the other mods here agree with me on this one.
What a lot of people get confused by is when someone makes a post that is not a direct attack, but is still infuriating in some way. "How can you not see that THIS IS THE RULE!!??" Not actually an attack, but frustrating and unhelpful, as you can see by the excessive punctuation, a clear sign of a diseased mind. That is a flamebait, which is not the same as a flame. Most people tend to say that "I wasn't flaming" when called on making a post like this, as if that were an excuse. It's not. Owing to the somewhat heated nature of many of the discussions here, flamebait will be treated exactly the same way as flaming, as it only serves to exacerbate matters.
There have been many cases where a member has posted some of the most infuriating words that can ever be seen in a rules debate... "Just for the sake of arguement / going to play Devils Advocate here". Don't. The rules forum is for discussion, and being the Devils Advocate is a very frustrating experiance to come across both as a mod and as a poster seeing as how 95% of those posts lead into flames getting some gasoline poured on them. As such, any member who posts a Devils advocate post, will have that post treated as being flame bait and it will be dealt with as such.
Speaking of, the treatment itself. If there is a post that is considered flaming or flamebait, it will be removed. Simple as that. No shilly-shallying about, no calling your local union and demanding a recount, just post gone. If you feel the post had some genuinely useful and informative content, post again without the insanity. If you re-post a flame after one has been deleted, woe betide you, because I just bought a new Vacuuvin and I'm dying to test it.
An Additional Note: There have been several instances of posters trying to moderate the Rules and Questions board themselves. Don't, you're not set up for it, and you're not official, which just means things will get worse. We have the spanking powers, we will do the moderatin'. However, we are not all-powerful. We are, perhaps, 95% powerful. That last 5% requires you, the ordinary posters, to pitch in. If you see someone make an infraction, and ESPECIALLY if it is a flame, hit the Report to Moderator button and let us swoop in like the super-heroes we all are.
3)
Look At The Things I KnowOr, how to post a friendly helpful response. Okay, so we've covered the things you shouldn't do, here's one more twinned with a suggestion of how to post constructively. Another thing I'm getting fed up of seeing (and it's not been too bad lately, so well done there, but it's still happening more than I'd like) is people posting such helpful comments as "Look at the rulebook". Cheers, that's helpful. If someone has a question which can be solved pretty quickly and straightforwardly, great, it makes things nice and easy. But the way to help them is not to dismiss them. A simple page reference, and possibly an extremely brief summary of any bits that might prove tricky. Job done, let's go for tea.
On the other hand, asking for us to tell you how to play the game is also not acceptable. We're here to help, not to do your work for you. First of all, before posting, check to see if a) the rulebook has the answer you need, and b) someone else hasn't also recently asked the same question as you and received an answer. If neither of those things are true, go ahead and post to your heart's content.
Thank you for listening
Edit: You didn't need this in quotes the chuckles --- GML