The 15 Theses

Disclaimer: the name of this thread does not nor is intended to insult any religious group. I am speaking of Martin Luther as a revolutionary, not as a religious leader.

The 14 Theses of Maxx Toron

I come here to show all of you this list of theses; suggestions of what we should change about the forum in order to make this a better, more enjoyable place for all members. This thread is a strong suggestion, and not an attack. I am not going to sugar coat anything; I am going to tell it like it is, and if that gets me in trouble, so be it. It’s about time that I stood up for the people. If this thread is deleted for its views, then that will just show the mark of a tyrant, however I do not expect either of those to happen. Anyways, here we go;

1) The forum censoring need to be everything or not at all, not in between. There are very few words that are censored, yet there are so many ways to get around those few words. Either every “bad” word needs to be censored, or none at all. We can’t have both.

2) On the topic of censoring, the censoring should not be abused. It should be used for curse words, not someone’s personal dislike of a nickname. The name may be annoying to you Dark, but that is extremely unprofessional to use a moderation tool just so people don’t call you a name such as that. It’s like if I set a censor because I didn’t like the name Maxx anymore. That is not proper use of the censor tool.

3) The Gallery Section of the forum needs to be cut. It serves no real purpose and is honestly just a waste of space.

4) This goes for the Portal Section, which seems to have no use whatsoever.

5) The Other section of the roleplay is not required. Nonfiction and Fiction are enough. There has never been an “Other” rp, and there never will be because there’s no other form of roleplaying that applies.

6) The moderation must become more democratic. We can no longer just ban people for looking at us the wrong way. I suggest a kind of court, where basically we have a trial for the abuser with witnesses and all, and allow all forumgoers to play the jury in finding that abused guilty or innocent. The moderation, acting as the judge, should then assign a punishment. Not showing up to your court appointment without a good reason should result in a set ban for a certain period of time.

7) There needs to be more warnings. I do not know anything about the PMs of anyone other than myself, but if someone breaks a rule a PM must immediately be sent to them as a warning. We can no longer just let things slide under the rug.

8 )We need a backup owner. Someone (vipera or op) need to step in if Darklord goes missing for long periods of time (as he just did). We need a leader who will take charge and make sure that everyone is following the rules and doing their jobs.

9) The rules need to be publicized better. Many people will not read the rules in the general discussion section. In order for a law to be fair, it must be publicized, like the Rock Edicts in Persia. I suggest making a locked section that only contains the rules so that it is much harder to miss.

10) No more Banslapping. I am the number one abuser of this rule, and I will admit to my crimes. Banslapping (banning someone and immediately unbanning them) is immature and completely uncalled for. It trivializes a ban, and makes people not care.

11) The moderators must be more approachable. People either fear the moderation or do not care about it. Wonder and Awe is a powerful combination, so they say. We need to make it known that if anyone is being abused or bullied on the forum, that they need to send a pm to a moderator or administrator so that the abuser can be punished.

12) If the abuser is a moderator, then it should be brought to an administrator, and the court should be used in the same way as anyone else.

13) No more discussing religion in the chatbox. I am also a heavy offender of this, but religion leads to more flame wars than anything else. As for politics... meh, nobody here ever discusses that un-intelligently.

14) We need a scroller, so that we can easily disseminate news and such to the people of the forum. We could use this for court calls and roleplaying advertisements, among other things, however it must be shared by all, not frequented by any one administrator.

15) We need to stop banning lurkers. Lurkers aren't stalkers; they're roleplayers like us who don't see anything that interests them, therefore they do not post. Banning them has built up animosity among other rp rings and cuts off our flow of writers.

In conclusion, today, the forum is at a crossroads; one path leads to a peaceful democracy where there is peace and prosperity for all, and one leads to a harsh, painful dictatorship ruled by a band of despots. That is what this thread really fights here; despotism; Noun: “The exercise of absolute power, esp. in a cruel and oppressive way.” We can no longer be a despotism, and that is where we are heading. This is what I hope to repair, and if I am punished for it, so be it. This should no longer be a dark despotism but a peaceful democracy of the people, by the people, for the people.

I like this. I was actually thinking of changing the Other sections to "Mature" sections for more mature RPs.

I will take the warnings into account.

And I think Vipera would pose as a suitable co-leader

Darkel wrote:

I like this. I was actually thinking of changing the Other sections to "Mature" sections for more mature RPs.

What would be the definition of a "mature RP"..?

I honestly think we should just get rid of the other section.

Anything that allows more explicit content in case anyone was ever to make such an RP.

Darkel wrote:

Anything that allows more explicit content in case anyone was ever to make such an RP.

So... The Othergrounds and Black Fall would fall into this section, correct?

If they contain things like that, yes.

Darkel wrote:

If they contain things like that, yes.

They are... very mature.


I also have to say that we should rewrite the rules for the forum from scratch. They aren't exactly... the best, to say the least. I can do that.


If you need any help with the forum; I'm around.

I would agree with Lone, and if we make a Mature RP section, we should also set an age limit, and not permit members below a certain age to view the section. I think it is possible to do that.

That's a very good idea. Both of those ideas are great

this is very, very quickly starting to sound like literotica, which is NOT a good idea at all. I know you don't mean that, but we must stay as far away from that as we can.

XXX writing.

ViperaUnion wrote:

I would agree with Lone

Would?

Maxx Toron wrote:

this is very, very quickly starting to sound like literotica, which is NOT a good idea at all. I know you don't mean that, but we must stay as far away from that as we can.

When did anyone bring up sexy time? =P

I agree, it is not a good idea.

FlowerFox wrote:

Also, for the Mature Section, if you were to permit only certain aged individuals to view it, how would you keep younger viewers from viewing it? I know there is a way to put your age on your profile, but it's not mandatory. And if you did make it mandatory, you could always lie.

Well, the only thing I can think of is making a special group exclusive to those mature enough and only make the forum view-able to them... I don't agree with that notion, I prefer if it just stays open for everyone. Those not mature enough goes in there and sees something that they're not supposed to then that's on them.




I have a suggestion of my own and it's one I've been trying to push for a little bit; make the entire forum viewable to guests. There is literally no harm that can come from it other than people seeing our forum. Can anyone say one negative aside from the age old BS "We don't want people spying on us"? You cannot, and even that excuse is pure rubbish.



I also really don't like the damn court system idea....

ViperaUnion wrote:

As for the court-system idea, that's probably the only thing that I found to be wrong with Maxx's idea. A court system would not work, all it would do is provide an excuse for people to argue and debate, and as for some people, who are just outright trolls, who's going to care about a court? It would be better to ban those sorts of people so they can't run amok in the meantime. If a flame war breaks out, the offender can post in more than one thread, and all it does is make the ban system and way that we carry out punishments harder than it needs to be.

Exactly. I say that we should have a better warning/bans system set up in the super duper secret mods section. Like make profiles for every member and list every infraction then we ban once they reached enough infractions.

New theses.

I also have to say that we reword a few sections. I was thinking that we turn the Roleplay strategy section into... Say, the Roleplay Discussion section and move some of the threads out of the GD into that. Because plenty of the threads in there are about Roleplaying when it's supposed to be an off-topic place (And I regard RPing as on-topic or whatever).


I do still support the Mature Section idea. Maybe a One-on-One section too.

I agree quite strongly with Lone. All very good ideas, we should list the members, reword the sections, take away some old crud and do some cleaning up around here. Allowing guests to view the forum is okay I suppose, no harm,

I should have time to make these changes this coming Wednesday.

Now about this Mature section, in it I support total freedom writing. We could just make a group (checkout the usergroups tab) for people who can read it. Members can ask to join the group. We may accept or decline and if accepted the section becomes available to them.

Though I'm not sure how we'd determine who gets accepted and who gets declined.

Darkel wrote:

Now about this Mature section, in it I support total freedom writing. We could just make a group (checkout the usergroups tab) for people who can read it. Members can ask to join the group. We may accept or decline and if accepted the section becomes available to them.

Though I'm not sure how we'd determine who gets accepted and who gets declined.

There's a few problems with this. Obviously the main one would people be lying about age. The next problem is determining who should be let into the Mature section (Technically, not many of us aren't even mature). I would say leave it open as much as the rest of the forum, but I don't know if everyone would approve of that.

Your deal with it sig made your post so much better, Sar.