Dear Legislators,

as per Article XII Section 3 of the Charter, the Forum Administration hereby presents a new administration and moderation policy for the Assembly's review. Barring unforeseen circumstances, this new policy will be enacted one week from now. At that point in time, we will also be announcing the new roster of moderators.

Community Standards
For The South Pacific
(partially lifted from NationStates OSRS)

Jurisdiction

Principally, our community standards cover all interactions related to or originated from TSP’s official off-site property, including our forums and Discord servers. This includes private/direct messages. Interactions on unrelated websites or services will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

General Guidelines

We’re Not All Adults Here
We want our community to be accessible to anybody who is allowed to play NationStates. This means we’re not an adults-only community. Everybody is expected to behave as they would in a setting with minors as young as 13.

Civility
We’ve had serious problems in the past with people going overboard with incivility, and creating an environment nobody wants to play in. This is a political game, so there will be fighting and arguing. But to keep the game somewhere people want to be, over-the-top hostility will be dealt with swiftly.

IC/OOC
The idea of there being different “realms” of behavior is strange and some people have difficulty understanding it. “IC” stands for “in-character” and refers to behavior expressed in the game itself— debating laws, criticizing political campaigns, etc. “OOC” is “out-of-character” and is basically when we’re talking about the actual people behind the nations names and Discord handles. You can’t avoid punishment by claiming your constant insults are IC. While we handle IC and OOC behavior differently, at the end of the day we’re all actual human beings, and you-the-person-at-the-keyboard are expected to follow the rules no matter what role you see yourself in.

Use Common Sense
This should be self-explanatory. Use your common sense, don't be the person to cause trouble, and always remember to attack the argument rather than the player making it.

The Rules

Advertising/Spamming: Whether you’re a bot or a well-intentioned player just wanting to grow their own region, both of these things will likely earn you a permanent insta-ban.

Offensive Material: See “We’re Not All Adults Here”. Don’t post anything that would not be allowed in a PG-13 movie. Mild swearing may be tolerated — if it's for the rhetoric, it's fine, but if it's simply to be edgy, it's not.

Explicit Material: Once again, see “We’re Not All Adults Here”. Erotic roleplay, sharing pornographic or overly suggestive material, sending nudes, cybersexing, or excessive public displays of affection are forbidden on all offsite property regulated by TSP and will likely lead to an immediate permanent ban. Sexuality should be avoided entirely and may at most be mildly hinted, but anything explicit or excessive will result in a proportional moderation response.

Flaming: Hostile and insulting behavior against another player, particularly based in personal attacks, is unwelcome in our community. Depending on the severity, you could be banned. Being in-character does not excuse anybody from this rule. Erudite slams while maintaining a veneer of politeness can also be considered flaming.

Flamebaiting: Posts that are made with the aim of angering someone indirectly. Not outright flame, but still liable to bring angry replies. Flame baiting is a far more subtle and covert action; it is an underhanded tactic that is designed to provoke a response from another player. It's in the same context of trolling but with flamebaiting it's just the one person. Also included under flamebaiting is malicious quote editing, changing the contents of a quoted post without showing the original text, either through color changes or strike-out.

Trolling: Posts that are made with the aim of soliciting an angry response from the general community, or to mess with the community for their own amusement, and any other bad-faith content that a poster knows will be annoying, start a fight, etc.

Privacy violation: Players on NationStates have a reasonable expectation that their privacy will be respected. It is not permitted to post or otherwise share another player's personally-identifying information (i.e. social media accounts, IP addresses, postal addresses, E-mail addresses, telephone numbers, etc.), and neither is it permitted to post or share information that may not be identifying but is nonetheless of a personal nature (i.e. medical history, relationship status, etc.). The only exception is if the player in question has shared that information themselves and does not mind its dissemination.

Threadjacking: Please do not threadjack or post off-topic comments. While discussions will naturally drift from the original topic from time to time, excessive off-topic comments and threadjacking will be addressed by moderators. If you feel a thread is being threadjacked, please report it, rather than arguing about whether or not the thread is being hijacked. This rule does apply to Discord as well — while the real-time nature of that platform inherently leads to a much more fluid transition between varied topics, don't obnoxiously barge into an existing topic and try to keep each conversation in an appropriate channel.

False Accusations of Misconduct: Making a claim of serious OOC misconduct (e.g. bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, etc.) against someone else, without providing evidence to moderation/administration, is considered malicious harassment. It will result in an exceptionally long ban. This applies anywhere, not just on our forums and Discord server.

Bullying: This is a form of harassment and will not be accepted in our community. Bullying is any long-term targeted flaming, flamebaiting, or over-the-top attacking of somebody based on your dislike of them personally. Being a longtime political opponent of somebody isn’t bullying, but if it crosses into the territory of regular personal attacks, it may be considered bullying. This is another rule where you can’t claim exclusion by being in-character.

Warnings & Punishment

For any violation of the rules, you will receive one and only one warning, across all of our platforms. If you break another rule, you will face punishment. Depending on the severity of your rulebreaking, you may find yourself unable to post or you’ll be banned completely (temporarily or permanently). Bans apply to both the forum and the Discord server. Particularly egregious misconduct will be punished directly without a warning first.

A Note on Adult Interactions

Over the years, we’ve run into the problem of people not quite understanding the meaning of consent or what a healthy adult relationship looks like. However, we are cognizant of the social aspects of the game as well as human nature, and realize that relationships between players will inevitably develop, and whilst these are not against our rules, they are strongly discouraged. NationStates is a political simulator, not a dating service. If a relationship does develop in spite of this, we demand that the following basic standards are met:

• Do not use TSP offsite property to conduct your relationship. Again, NationStates is NOT a dating service.
  
• We expect any relationships to be consensual and emotionally healthy. Should we suspect otherwise, action may be taken.
  
• Relationships between adults and minors are explicitly forbidden, and it is your responsibility to confirm the age of a player before entering into a relationship.
  
• Your relationship does not absolve you of the rules toward each other or any other players.
  

Private areas where adult issues may be openly discussed may be created on offsite property regulated by TSP, and in these areas, the PG-13 standard does not apply, however even in such areas, any explicit graphic or auditory content is still strictly forbidden. Access to these areas is strictly regulated, and limited to players for which we have a very reasonable assurance that they are eighteen years of age or older.

Safeguarding

We have a legal duty to our users, and the Senior Moderation team investigates any concerns we have about vulnerable adults and children. Due to the nature of NationStates we are primarily concerned about sexual abuse and exploitation, emotional abuse, and extremism and radicalization. If we have have reason to suspect that a vulnerable user is at risk, either from a fellow user or from someone they know in real life, we will conduct a confidential investigation. If necessary we will refer the matter to the appropriate legal authorities.

If you feel you or anyone else is affected, you can at any time privately contact a Senior Moderator you trust, or contact the team privately, confidentially, and (if desired) anonymously via safeguarding.tsp@gmail.com

While we claim no jurisdiction over offsite property regulated by others, if we become aware of actions or behavior on your part that we consider to break our safeguarding policies we will take preventive action to limit your access to our community.

Moderation Team

Moderators are trusted individuals responsible for enforcing our community rules. They are granted access to relevant moderation tools on all official off-site platforms of the South Pacific. The Moderation team will consist of two tiers: Senior Moderators and Junior Moderators.

Junior Moderators are appointed by the Senior moderator team through a process of their choosing. Officials of the Coalition of the South Pacific will be considered Junior Moderators ex officio, but will only receive moderation access over those areas related to their office's duties, and only for as long as they hold that office. Junior Moderators can be suspended or dismissed by the Senior Moderator team (this includes ex officio Moderators).

Senior Moderators may appoint an individual that has served as an active appointed Junior moderator for ten consecutive months, or has served at least 12 non-consecutive months as ex officio Junior Moderator, to be a Senior Moderator. The Senior Moderators may dismiss one of their own through a vote.

By default, Moderators only have moderation access in those areas where they would otherwise be permitted to read and post anyway. They will not be granted additional viewing or posting priviledges through their moderator status, except for explicitly moderation-related forums or channels. However, all areas, no matter how restricted or hidden, are subject to our community rules, and therefore Senior Moderators may be temporarily granted view access to an area otherwise restricted to them for the purposes of investigating a report or an appeal.

Any case that involves personally identifyable or otherwise real-life sensitive information will be handled by Senior Moderators only. If necessary, they will coordinate with Administration to receive technical information such as IP address and email addresses. Junior Moderators will not be granted access to information not otherwise visible, though Senior Moderators may be granted access to these by default at Administration's discretion.

All appeals of a Moderator action will be heard by all uninvolved Senior Moderators. These appeals are final; however, in cases of Moderator misconduct only, there may be one additional appeal made to the Administration team.

(This post was last modified: 04-19-2019, 03:02 PM by Roavin.)

Reply

A general comment just from me: The old rules did say that they were "fluid", but they weren't really in practice, and they weren't referenced much either. With our offsite resources being unified and a broader base of moderators, this should change. So if there is something here you don't like, or feel was omitted, the process of amending it should be easier and quicker going forward.

Reply

All these rules, yet you want to force me to post at times to retain legislator status. So riskyy.

Real-life Girls

Reply

Two relatively minor things:

- I think we have discussed that the forum doesn't really say that you have to be over 13 to join. This seems like a decent place to put that: 

We’re Not All Adults Here
We want our community to be accessible to anybody who is allowed to play NationStates. This means we’re not an adults-only community. Everybody is expected to behave as they would in a setting with minors as young as 13. Due to data protection laws, under 13s are not allowed on our offsite properties and, if found offsite anyway, will not be allowed back until they are over 13.

In the Junior/Senior moderation part, you mention "priviledges" - it's privileges

Rest looks good right now!

Reply

All these rules, yet you want to force me to post at times to retain legislator status. So riskyy.

To be clear, legislator status has nothing to do with the rules of the forum.

Nor ... do I believe that's how you maintain legislator status anymore. Amirght legislator committee?

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

Reply

All these rules, yet you want to force me to post at times to retain legislator status. So riskyy.

To be clear, legislator status has nothing to do with the rules of the forum.

Nor ... do I believe that's how you maintain legislator status anymore. Amirght legislator committee? 

Yep, legislator status depends on voting on at least half of votes in a month and keeping your nation alive, and has done for a few years

Reply

Well done - it is nicely written 

Would it be possible to change the wording in the False Accusation of Misconduct section from "without providing evidence to moderation/administration" to "and not cooperating with moderation/administration in their investigation (e.g. refusing to hand over screenshots of the incident)" or something similiar?

I do not think it would change anything about the rule itself, however, I think the changed wording might make it less scary for someone who has a genuine accusation but (for whatever reason) really is not sure if there is enough evidence. Under the proposed wording, they may read it, misunderstand, and think that they could be punished for making a genuine allegation when the evidence is not of the highest quality. I am confident anyone with a genuine allegation would never be punished for bringing it forward, I just think this small change in wording could prevent a potential (though extremely unlikely) situation where someone misunderstands the rules and backs away from making a true allegation for fear they would fall foul of the evidence requirement. Really, it is about reducing a theoretical risk at no real cost.

Anyway, I will leave that thought in the capable hands of the moderators.

Former Associate Justice of the High Court of the South Pacific (4 December 2019 to 5 February 2021)

Reply

I must confess, despite my love for reading all things mundane, I did not come across the Forum Moderation Policy until a whole 4 months after I joined the Assembly. I trust that in approving these new community standards, we will literally force — through a direct message or similar — every new member of our community to read it at least once.

Reply

I must confess, despite my love for reading all things mundane, I did not come across the Forum Moderation Policy until a whole 4 months after I joined the Assembly. I trust that in approving these new community standards, we will literally force — through a direct message or similar — every new member of our community to read it at least once.

...and put into Discord #welcome, and refer to it like NS mods always link OSRS, and all of that to make it obvious that yes, it's a thing, it's something to look at, and it matters.

Reply

I must confess, despite my love for reading all things mundane, I did not come across the Forum Moderation Policy until a whole 4 months after I joined the Assembly. I trust that in approving these new community standards, we will literally force — through a direct message or similar — every new member of our community to read it at least once.

...and put into Discord #welcome, and refer to it like NS mods always link OSRS, and all of that to make it obvious that yes, it's a thing, it's something to look at, and it matters.

I expect that after our dispatch initiative is launched, this will be one of the main information threads.

The Information Centre is terribly empty ...

Reply