Please make forum rules and user behavior guidelines explicitly and clearly available to all.

[Nullzone]

It is a near daily occurrence that someone gets their post moderated for things such as "calling out another player" -- sometimes not even in an accusatory manner -- and near as I can tell, this is because the actual rules governing forum behavior are nowhere to be found. The only user behavior guidelines are the FAQ, which is focused almost exclusively on game behavior/karma, and the Terms of Service, which mentions nothing about forum use.

This ask also includes exposing the Moderation Policy, which only ever seems to be linked if a moderator invokes it in a thread or if someone is reading the strike they received for moderated behavior; I've opened a bug for this specifically, here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=79935

I'm not suggesting in any way that the rules are unjust; simply that it's clear that most people don't even know what they are, which is a major problem if you want to curb behavior. This is also important as moderation actions can result in significant karma loss which impacts people's ability to play, which is by nature a necessary component of rehabilitation since playing games is the only way to repair karma.

If you want to encourage community and player interaction, this information needs to be available. Otherwise, people will only see the moderated behavior, not know what else they could get moderated for, and have no desire to interact at all.

[cigma]

I agree and voted for your suggestion. As "available to all" includes non-english speakers as well, I have also asked for translation.

To those who don't know: You can find moderation policy here: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Moderationpolicy

[Nullzone]

Bringing this back to the front page since we have another rash of threads from people running into this.

[Leard]

If they made the rules easily accessible, there'd be less people they'd be able to moderate, which I don't think they want.

[T72on1]

If they made the rules easily accessible, there'd be less people they'd be able to moderate, which I don't think they want.

Being a moderator on another forum myself, I'm really curious to know why you think people actually like to moderate other people, and as such would tuck away such info so they can moderate more. In an ideal world, we wouldn't even need moderators, and I'm quite sure 99% of the moderators would be more than happy with that.

[Leard]

If they made the rules easily accessible, there'd be less people they'd be able to moderate, which I don't think they want.

Being a moderator on another forum myself, I'm really curious to know why you think people actually like to moderate other people, and as such would tuck away such info so they can moderate more. In an ideal world, we wouldn't even need moderators, and I'm quite sure 99% of the moderators would be more than happy with that.

Power.

[T72on1]

If they made the rules easily accessible, there'd be less people they'd be able to moderate, which I don't think they want.

Being a moderator on another forum myself, I'm really curious to know why you think people actually like to moderate other people, and as such would tuck away such info so they can moderate more. In an ideal world, we wouldn't even need moderators, and I'm quite sure 99% of the moderators would be more than happy with that.

Power.

That might apply to a vast minority of moderators. Almost all are moderators to help other people. To keep places like forums a nice place to spend time. Also BGA only has things to loose when there needs to be a lot of moderation, nothing to win. So your claim really doesn't make sense.

Edit: to be clear, I do agree with the OP. This is critical information that needs to be made much more clearly visible than it is now.

[Leard]

Considering how militant moderation can be on BGA, they clearly care about maintaining the community to their standards. Yet they haven't taken this easy step to help ensure their standards are maintained. That doesn't make sense.

[T72on1]

Calling trying to keep a straight line across all moderation, which is what they do, 'militant', definitely adds quite the negative undertone to something rather neutral. People using this site agree to the standards of the site. Of course BGA and their moderators strive to keep the community to these standards. What else are rules for? Again, in an ideal world this all wouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately that is not the case, and as such rules and moderation are needed.

[zoomboom]

I agree and voted for your suggestion. As "available to all" includes non-english speakers as well, I have also asked for translation.

To those who don't know: You can find moderation policy here: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Moderationpolicy

Thank you for this!