questions

We managed to go nearly 5 years with just "don't spam" and "be civil" for forum rules, but the time eventually comes for all communities to lay some firm ground rules. What follows is common sense for most people, but enforcing these clearly defined rules will help foster a more positive and fun community for all:

• Hate speech - No racism, racial slurs, homophobic statements, etc.
• Harassment - No threatening other players, insulting for race, gender, nationality, etc.
• Pornography - No nudity or excessively sexually explicit content.
• Spam - No mass posting via bmail or forums for annoyance, advertising, etc.
• Staff-bashing - Respectful criticism of game mechanics and decisions is okay (and encouraged), but unnecessary disrespect towards game staff (Ender + mods), complaints about lack of updates, etc. are not.

And for violating these rules, here's roughly[*] what you can expect to happen:

• 1st offense - Just a warning and a link to this thread. We're all human.
• 2nd offense - 1 day mute (in-game) or ban (chat).
• 3rd offense - 1 week mute (in-game) or ban (chat).
• Additional offenses - Moderation team's discretion, up to and including permanent ban.

Also, evading any of these punishments will automatically bump you up to the next level (e.g. if you evade your 1 day mute, it will become a 1 week mute).

[*] These are estimates. We're not going to keep a spreadsheet with who has done what. The assumption is that if you're a repeat offender, it will be easy to remember.

Finally, this policy applies to any official medium through which players can communicate, which includes but is not limited to:

• Public forums
• Private clan forums
• Bmails
• Official #bots4 IRC channel on Quakenet
• Official bots4 social media pages
• Bot/clan profiles
• Bot/clan names

Update: I added a long-overdue rule against staff-bashing. My general approach to this up until now has been to (mostly) ignore it because it's really only a very small vocal minority of entitled players that engage in this toxic behavior, but nonetheless it can be really demotivating to deal with even when it's only a few people, so I'm not going to tolerate it anymore.

Update: To help keep the game fun, friendly, and welcoming for new players, I added a "bad word" filter to the forums. In the interest of avoiding the Scunthorpe problem, it's pretty basic and easy to work around, but please don't do this.